Industrial Protection
With the proliferation of online sales, consumers now turn to Amazon for their shopping before even considering the high street. But with so much trust and so little security, how can consumers know that they’re buying the real deal?
Counterfeits are not just harmful to manufacturers and companies, fake goods can be very harmful and hazardous to the unsuspecting consumer. The consequences can be less direct, for example customers thinking they are buying real Napoleon gas grill accessories and covered under warranty, when in fact they have purchased counterfeits and are not covered at all.
There is simply not enough legal recourse for manufacturers to protect themselves from fake goods. “Winning the fight against counterfeiters requires everybody—not just manufacturers, but e-commerce platforms and search engines, customs agents and consumer safety advocates—to get serious,” said NAM Director of International Business Policy Ryan Ong, writing on their website. “Stopping the flow of these products means not just legal and policy changes, but smarter enforcement priorities, better coordination and information sharing and a serious commitment by all parties to do their part.”
The OECD and the EU’s Intellectual Property Office brought out a report in March 2019, where they revealed that counterfeit trade goods now comprise 3.3% of world trade goods.
The most counterfeit items were footwear, clothing, leather goods, electrical equipment, watches, medical equipment, perfumes, toys, jewellery and pharmaceuticals. But customs officials also noted an increase in counterfeits of goods such as construction materials. The industrial and manufacturing industry is facing a growing problem. The OCED estimated that the UK lost 86,000 jobs in 2016 and £9.2 billion from counterfeit trade.
The IT and technology Industrial Brand are one of the hardest hit, after fashion and luxury goods, having lost £2.5 billion in profit last year, in the UK alone. And it’s not just the danger to bank balances that’s the worrying thing, if consumers buy unsafe technology or shoddy building material, lives can be endangered. Toxic and poisonous material were found in counterfeit cosmetics, fake smartphones can burst into flames and burn a house down, and fake machinery parts can destroy an entire, multi million pound piece of machinery.
Counterfeit products are a massive problem for manufacturers and that’s where we step in. We have extensive knowledge of how to distinguish real and fake products and how to track down and stop counterfeiters. We use technology based solutions to help authenticate merchandise so that the manufacturers, the retail stores and the consumers can rest assured that they all have the real, safe product.
We use legal recourse, copyrights, blocking techniques and work with the police to halt the proliferation of fake goods, but we also work with manufacturers to make products too hard to fake and then educate your consumers on how to spot fakes and authenticate.
Call us today to protect your customers, your employees and yourself from the scourge of counterfeiters.
