The Art of Imitation

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Last minute Christmas shopping frenzy combined with determination to buy a nice handbag to my fiancee made me wander the already crowded Myongdong streets on Sunday night. To say that the street is busy is a huge understatement. I actually relived the crowded Mumbai local train experiences on Sunday. So much so that the always cheerful shop keepers stopped saying “yo-bo-se-yo” and “kam-sa-ham-nida” to the shoppers.

Ear rings ... anyone?There are these small carts selling items ranging from imitation handbags, jewelry, clothes to toys, eateries and Christmas cakes. Pretty much everything a person wants to pick-up in the last minute.

After looking for sometime, we thought may be more varieties can be found in a shop, so we went inside one of those malls in search of leather goods shop. After escalating for what seemed like a zillion steps, we landed at a place displaying handbags neatly stacked.
The shop keeper asked us whether we are looking for ladies or men’s handbags in broken English. We told him that its for ladies. He invited us to sit inside. My initial reaction was surprise. The shop looked more like a glorified cart than actual shop. Doubting his invitation we entered the place. Inside there is a miniature sofa and micro-mini chair, the kind where you can only rest a part of one of your butts. So there we are sitting and wondering whether we are in for the “Lo, there is a foreigner, lets swindle him by a few $s” trap.

Soon after the shop owner flashed this Louis Vuitton handbag catalogue and asked us to choose a model. Boy! these branded handbags are expensive. $200 leather bag for holding some loose change, cards, chocolates and a $150 mobile? Half jokingly we pointed at one of the models and asked him to bring it. He looked at us and said, “Best? Best?” meaning whether we want the original make. We nodded our head, not knowing what it meant.

Which one is original?He got a bag from somewhere else and started showing it to us. He tried to convince us that the bag is an original LV bag. We asked him what the price could be. He said “120,000 won”. We instantly wore a disapproving look on our faces. He said, “want imitation model?” We nodded yes.
This time around he got another bag which looked bang similar to the original one. When I say similar I mean both bags actually looked and felt same. This one was 20000 won. He is ready to sell it for even 15000. The same would be available for 10000 on the street carts. And even if there is a 1000 won margin on that, that’s still 8% of the original price.

So much for a brand name. But I am more surprised at their deftness and professionalism in cloning these bags to such an extent that you would doubt the original ones.

On a side note, dont ever miss the Myongdong market if you are in Seoul. Its a place worth seeing for fashion / shopping lovers. Directions: Outside Myongdong subway, Near Sejong hotel.

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24 Responses

  1. I’d suggest simply using the subtotal function and filtering the data using the Win/Loss column.  You get the same results and the formula is more comprehensible.

    1. @John

      That is one option.

      There are times however when you want to see the whole data table or a filtered subset and still want to produce summary reports against an unfiltered field.

  2. Is there a particular reason why you are using a comma and the unary (–) operator for the second array in the SUMPRODUCT formula?  It seems to work the same if you were to string the arrays together using the asterisk (*).  The advantage is that SUMPRODUCT treats the entire string of arrays as a single array.

  3. Is there a way to do this on a large set of data? As in ~100,000 rows? When I try I get an error because the formula becomes too long. It says the max length of a formula is 8,192 characters. Excel 2010.

  4. How do I incorporate a specific text within a cell for the second array. For instance, – -(C7:C13=”Apple”)
    when I chose a specific text the formula does not work.

    1. @RB

      I am not sure what is the issue as if I use the sample data in the post the following work fine

      Count:
      =SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)), –(C7:C13=”L”))
      Sum:
      =SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)),(C7:C13=”L”)*(D7:D13))

      You may want to check that there are no leading or trailing spaces in your list of Apples

      1. I should have given a better explanation. Heres my situation. I have a column with cells filled with names like Column 1, Column 2, Pier 1, Pier 2, etc. If the cell just contained Pier and searched for that it works. But because it has other characters in the cell its not recognizing the pier. So how can I extract specific characters of a string of text in this formula?

        Hopefully this was a better explanation

  5. Hello-

    This formula works pretty well for me except that it slow down excel and prevents some of my macros from working. I was wondering if there was a way to program this in VBA so that excel isn’t always trying to recalculate it. I would like to use a push of a button to get it to run then paste in a cell.

    Thanks!

  6. I am trying to sum filtered data in a column, but would want to ignore the negative values in the column. How to go about doing this?

      1. The negative values are required for reporting purposes, but their effect on the total is distorting the required output. Please advise.

  7. I have this working for counting and summing, however, I have a list and for the second array, I need a criteria. That is, I’m looking for b13:b200=”01.??.??” or =left((a1,2) or something like that. These types of criteria matches do not appear to work as I get a blank as a result.
    Thanks!

    1. @Bob

      As your formula b13:b200=”01.??.??” looks like you are trying to check the first day of the month of the range
      What about trying Day(B13:B200)=1

  8. Hai Experts,
    i understood this formula well and working fine in MS Excel 2013
    but when the same am trying to place in google Spreadsheet it shows error as
    “SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 2014, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
    Can anyone please help me how would i get it done in Google Spread sheet
    or is there any other formula as a substitute for this.
    Thank you very much.

    1. @Vivek

      I don’t know

      I just downloaded the file and it is working fine and not showing that error

      Goto the Formulas, Calculation Options Tab and check that Calculation is set to Automatic

      What version of Excel and Windows are you using ?

  9. I know that this forum is for MS Excel, but I am trying to help someone who is working in Google Sheets. The below formula works in Excel but Google Sheets returns:
    “SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 39000, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
    This is the same problem asked by Srichirin above. Does anyone know if there is a formula for Google Sheets that will replicate what MS Excel does?

    =SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET($C$6:$C$39500,ROW($C$6:$C$39500)-MIN(ROW($C$6:$C$39500)),,1)),- -($C$6:$C$39500=H1),($D$6:$D$39500))

  10. Trying to find a SUMPRODUCT formula that counts the word Closed by date for the last 7 days in a filtered list.
    =COUNTIF(M:M,”>”&TODAY()-7) works ok for unfiltered count Column M contains Closure dates (blank if open) and Column L is Status Open or Closed

  11. I used this formula and worked like a charm! But, now I’ve been requested to use it but adding not one but two criteria in the same formula. For instance the sum I was doing added negative and positive numbers. I’ve been asked to use the exact same formula but adding that only positive numbers were considered… any idea on how to do this?

  12. Thank you so much brother literally I have been struggling since morning to get the sum of the filtered category, however, after reading your blog attentively i got my solution, so thanks a lot once again.

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