How to combat counterfeiting

It could be you…

Imagine you’ve spent months or even years of your life creating a product. You’ve carefully developed it, manufactured it and tested countless prototypes. You’ve invested an enormous amount of time, energy and resources, all to make your product the best it can be.

Once you’re satisfied with your creation, you move on to the next stage: selling. As a small business owner, you know that the simplest and most economically sensible decision is to exploit the infinite possibilities of online shopping. So you open your online store, create your professional website, plan and implement your marketing strategy. Several months go by, months of hard work during which you assimilate a thousand new notions. In the end, it’s all worth it: your product starts to gain in popularity, sales increase.

Before you can fully savor the sense of pride and accomplishment you’ve just become accustomed to, you receive a sudden and unexpected wave of negative reviews. Customers report unsatisfactory production quality, mentioning having received faulty products. Your online store is piling up negative reviews, which is a real nightmare for any small business owner, and unfortunately that’s the situation you’re currently facing. You’re particularly puzzled, because you’ve never received such complaints before. What’s more, as the expert on your project, you’ve always made sure that no product leaves your warehouses without passing a rigorous quality control.

What happened?

As you react to feedback and dig deeper, what you discover shocks you.

Someone has counterfeited your products.

Falsification: a threat on several fronts

Counterfeiting is “the act and manner of counterfeiting by imitating […] or falsifying […] or passing off as genuine similar products of lesser intrinsic and commercial value”. While one might think that only large companies and luxury brands are targeted, the reality is quite different. Counterfeiting affects businesses of all sizes: whether you’re a multinational or a small e-commerce brand, any entrepreneur and any product can fall victim to this crime. Counterfeiting is a threat with far-reaching and lasting consequences for businesses, the environment and consumers.

In 2022, more than 86 million counterfeit items with an estimated retail value of over €2 billion were intercepted at EU borders. These counterfeit products are not limited to handbags and watches, but also include toys (11%), household appliances (10%) and food and beverages (20%), endangering not only brands, but also public health and safety. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) estimates that counterfeit products cost the EU economy no less than 83 billion euros a year, resulting in the loss of some 670,000 jobs.

The impact on the environment is equally worrying. Counterfeiting operations often circumvent environmental regulations, using cheap and polluting materials and unsustainable production methods. Almost 70% of these counterfeit products arrive in small packages, often ordered online, generating a significant carbon footprint and making the problem even more widespread and difficult to trace.

Counterfeiting is not, as many think, a niche criminal activity: it’s a well-organized global trade whose consequences are closer to home than we think.

Counterfeiting: what to do after the fact

You’re petrified in front of the screen, stunned by what you’ve just discovered. What can you do about it? Don’t despair: even if the damage has been done, it doesn’t have to be irreparable. Certainly, failure to react will only exacerbate the problem disproportionately, and could ultimately jeopardize your business. Here are five tips on how to react once you’ve discovered that your products are counterfeit.

When the damage is done: 5 steps to take if your product has been counterfeited

• Document and collect evidence: Start collecting evidence: save links, screenshots, customer complaints and photos of counterfeit items. If you can, obtain a copy of the counterfeit product. This will not only support any legal action you may take, but will also reveal any loopholes in the current protection of your intellectual property.
• Report advertisements to online platforms: Most e-commerce sites offer tools for reporting counterfeit items. Use these tools on platforms such as Amazon and eBay to have counterfeit items removed from listings. Your goal is to prevent counterfeits from reaching your existing or potential customers.
• Notify the relevant authorities: A report to the customs authorities can help prevent further imports of counterfeit versions of your products, helping you to eradicate the problem as close to the source as possible. In the European Union, you can send reports via the “IP Enforcement” portal managed by the EUIPO.
• Take legal action: Depending on the extent of the infringement, consider legal action or criminal prosecution. Always remember that legal action can be costly, and is only successful in countries with strong intellectual property laws. If you decide to take legal action, always work with legal counsel.
• Communicate with your customers: Make public statements in your online store and on your company’s social networks. Protect your reputation by explaining to your customers how to recognize genuine products, and by explaining clearly and transparently the steps you are taking to resolve the problem. If possible, plan a promotional campaign: this will enable you to restore your good reputation and win back your customers’ trust.

Preventing counterfeiting

Now that you’ve done your best to limit the damage, it’s time to think about how you could have prevented the problem in the first place. As you know, prevention is better than cure. So let’s find out together what you could have done to minimize the risk of ending up in this unpleasant situation.

How to prevent counterfeiting: 3 proactive strategies to protect your brand

Register your intellectual property:

Register trademarks, designs and patents in all the regions where your company operates. This will enable you to take legal action in the event of infringement. The sooner you register, the sooner you can rely on a solid legal basis, eliminating potential loopholes that counterfeiters could exploit.

Design a unique and recognizable identity for your brand:

Work with professionals to develop unique logos, packaging and product designs. The more recognizable and difficult your brand is to reproduce, the harder it is for counterfeiters to succeed in falsifying it.

Use safe, tamper-proof packaging

Incorporate elements such as holograms, QR codes, serialized barcodes or tamper-evident seals to deter counterfeiters and enable consumers to verify the authenticity of your products. In particular, serialization services such as Amazon Transparency are ideal for protecting your brand and minimizing the risk of counterfeiting your products.

Our tip: thanks to our professional design service, labelletiquette.fr can help you not only revitalize your brand, but also create a brand new one, should you need it. Our priority is to ensure that your design is as unique as your product. Contact us to find out more: Graphic design service.

An extra layer of protection: Amazon’s transparency

With its Amazon Transparency program, the online retail giant offers a highly effective solution in the fight against counterfeiting. This serialization service uses unique Datamatrix codes to verify the authenticity of individual units before they even reach the delivery truck. Whether shipped by Amazon or directly by the seller, every item with a Transparency code is scanned. Products with invalid codes are discarded and removed from the e-commerce site.
As an official Transparency Service Provider (TSP), we are authorized to print self-adhesive labels that comply with the program and are ready for use. At labelletiquette.fr, we’re constantly striving to make the process simple and efficient. Thanks to our Amazon Transparency label generator, fast turnaround times and multilingual customer service, we are a fast and reliable partner for all brand owners who choose us for their Amazon Transparency labels.

Conclusion:

This article has shown how essential it is, especially nowadays, to protect your brand and products against counterfeiting. Not only will you benefit personally from taking appropriate measures, but you’ll also be protecting others. The more companies, large and small, take preventive measures, the more difficult it will be for counterfeiters to continue producing counterfeits. In this way, you will help to minimize the economic and ecological consequences of counterfeiting.

What are you waiting for? Visit the official Transparency by Amazon page to sign up for the program, contact our team and order your Amazon Transparency labels online.