eCommerce Boosts Counterfeiting, Risking Planet’s Sustainability

E-commerce has proven to be a boon for industries and businesses worldwide in scaling, propagating, and promoting their products, especially those belonging to the fashion and luxury world.

However, it has encouraged dubious sellers to infuse their counterfeits into every person’s lifestyle.When a customer is tricked into buying a counterfeit product, it not only has adverse effects on a brand’s credibility and reputation but also has consequences that jeopardise a consumer’s health and safety, eventually leading to a deteriorating impact on the planet’s sustainability.

The perpetrators of counterfeiting disregard the adverse environmental impacts and the planet’s sustainability, as their sole interest lies in loading their accounts.

While they are unconcerned about the post-effects of counterfeit products, it becomes the responsibility of brands, right holders, and mitigating organisations to:

• Block these items from reaching a consumer
• Discard or dispose of them by effective means to limit the increase in carbon footprints

The production and transportation of counterfeit goods can have significant carbon footprints. As a record, EUIPO estimated that counterfeit goods contributed to 195 million tonnes of CO2 in 2019, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of fifty-six coal-fired power plants in the EU.

Per estimates from the FBI, Interpol, World Customs Organization, and the International Chamber of Commerce, counterfeit products comprise 7 to 8 percent of global commerce each year — leading to brands expending resources merely to protect their goodwill and customers.

A standard practice for the disposal of counterfeit products is to incinerate them so that these products do not harm the aspirational values of luxury brands.

However, incineration gives rise to problems of its own by negatively impacting the environment’s health, including harming the populace and nature in the vicinity.

On top of that, the investments propagated by Counterfeit Mitigation departments cost a fortune to brands and eCommerce platforms. Amazon, for example, invested 900 million dollars in brand protection services for aggregating, lodging, and discarding unauthorised items, incurring negative investments of one Billion dollars each year.

A case study of the European Union collected data on the detentions of counterfeits linked to eCommerce to gain further insights into the matter. And surprisingly, more than ninety percent of detentions are associated with mail and postal transport modes, irrespective of the sale of counterfeit goods online.

It is because the overall dominance of the mail and post is related to importing counterfeit goods and components on a wholesale purchase and further distributing them to be assembled or incorporated at retailing outlets. Thus, the greater the number of seizures, the higher the practice of incineration, leading to unsustainable conditions around the incineration points.

Fortunately, brands and anti-counterfeiting organisations can now remove counterfeit items out of circulation with Countercheck’s first-in-the-market anti-counterfeiting solution.

Being “proactive” in brand protection strategy in removing counterfeits from the supply chains before they are shipped to the customers is the most effective way to fight counterfeiting.

And while the collaboration of logistics companies, brands, right holders, enforcement agencies, customs, and police should be the sole motive of stakeholders in protecting IP, Countercheck sits at the centre by providing relevant information and insights to imply further actions.

The company has been constantly participating and showing their presence in important events and official gatherings with a clear motive to let stakeholders know “Countercheck is optimizing sortation flows and protecting customers from the insidious illicit trade”.

Their reliable, easy-to-install and scalable solution is effortlessly capable of identifying and sidelining more than 1000 counterfeit small parcels within a month and providing relevant data to the stakeholders with no jitters.

A brand might not require this data, but their customer’s loyalty depends on it, and Countercheck believes brands must take action to form an excellent brand-customer relationship.