Last year’s Global Brand Counterfeiting Report estimated that the counterfeiting industry worldwide will reach $1.82 trillion by 2020. This study also concludes online counterfeiting sales have robbed legitimate industries of $323 billion in 2017 alone.
“The report explicates that the problem of counterfeiting is long-standing and is growing more and more in scope and magnitude. The government and business organizations are concerned because of the adverse impact of such illicit activities. Counterfeiting also poses threats to the welfare of consumers, along with that it also disrupts the whole society on various levels and harms the reputation of the businesses.“
What industries and geographies are most susceptible? If you have a successfully designed, manufactured and globally (or even regionally) distributed product, someone will look to take advantage and counterfeit your product. Pharmaceuticals, toys, cosmetics, beverages, replacement parts, electronics and every other major manufacturing category are affected. And the consequences to the revenue, reputation and the safety of the consumers duped into buying fakes are exponential and heavily documented.
To help fight this, several studies show that brands are investing over $100 billion annually on anti-counterfeiting technology that gets added to packaging. But all of this spend on measures like holograms, special inks and other additive items is just not stopping the global wave of product counterfeiting. The reason is simply because counterfeiters are getting faster and smarter and the technology that most brands use has yet to evolve and outpace these bad actors.
This is precisely why Systech invented and introduced its digital e-Fingerprinting and authentication solution. Despite the numerous measures brands are putting in place to thwart counterfeiting, it continues and is a growing threat. Most compelling to me is the solution’s non-additive, covert nature—deriving a product’s unique identifier—its e-Fingerprint®—from the existing package itself.
Counterfeit organizations could never replicate this measure, thus making it a trusted solution to protect brands from the safety and bottom-line pitfalls of being counterfeited. The e-Fingerprint is based on an existing barcode on packaging and stored in a bank-safe secure cloud environment. This makes it completely immune to counterfeiting.
Smartphone-enabled field authentication by inspectors and even consumers on products protected with the digital e-Fingerprint will immediately detect counterfeit products. This can lead to much quicker investigation turnaround to discover and stop the parties responsible. Not to mention the consumer safety benefit of discovering counterfeit products sooner rather than later.
Are you ready to take your brand protection strategy to the next level to totally outsmart counterfeiters by using nothing but your existing packaging label?
Written by Steve Tallant
Tune into our webinar on April 17th to learn how you can keep your products authentic, safe and connected. You can change everything… without changing anything.