To make money, the story does not have to be good, it just needs to be convincing enough. I would not be surprised if for every person doing their homework and recognizing authenticity, there is another person who does not bother, does not know their shit, or only pays lip service to authenticity.

We're talking around the same thing. At the bottom, we have our chinese trunkslammers that are probably pocketing a dollar a watch. If they sell a thousand watches, they made a thousand dollars. If there are three people coordinating everything necessary to sell a thousand watches they're pocketing $300 each. At the next level up we have Daniel Wellington, a "$200m company" that has to pay Kendall Jenner a million dollars to put on a watch. They make a million watches a year and profit about $100 on each one. And then on the top level we have Bernard Arnault, whose wealth has increased by $32b this year.

The Movado Group paid $100m for MVMT watches because of course they did. The profit on an MVMT watch is the same as the profit on a Shinola watch is the same as the profit on a Movado is a fraction of the profit on any real contender in the marketplace. And if you want to get into the screaming, rarified profit marketplace you need to be able to perform a decent story. If you just wanna make $100 on a $300 object you need to be able to perform a semi-okay story and if you wanna make $1 on a $2 watch you can work with the barest sketch.