Ideal conditions for counterfeiters
For a variety of reasons, the last decade has presented the ideal conditions for counterfeiters to thrive. Enforcement – or lack thereof – is just one such reason. Compared to other illegal trades – such as illegal drug manufacturing and smuggling – distributing counterfeit products is a relatively low-risk, high-reward activity for criminals. The strength of enforcement varies wildly between countries, and the breakneck pace of the modern omnichannel market means fake products can be slipped across borders alongside legitimate shipments with officials none the wiser.
The supply chain chaos caused by Covid has also poured petrol on embers that were already burning. Where nearly every industry suffered from material shortages and operational slowdown during several spells of lockdown across the world, this created gaps for illicit products to fill.
The impact of this supply chain chaos means these gaps persist today in many sectors. And, as inflation and the cost-of-living crisis continues to squeeze consumer budgets, millions of shoppers across the world find themselves either knowingly or unknowingly purchasing cheap fakes.
While the majority of consumers – 71%, according to a UK government study3 – do not knowingly purchase counterfeit products, an increasing number of consumers do, with a higher proportion of younger consumers (aged 18-34) consistently purchasing products they know to be fake. 30% of 18-24 year olds and 31% of 25-34 year olds admitted to ‘currently’ purchasing forgeries compared to just 9% of 55 year olds, setting up a worrying trend for the future of brand protection.
As the shift towards eCommerce continues to accelerate, the exposure of consumers to these fakes will only increase. Businesses looking to protect their valuable IP and brand image should take action to do so now – they cannot afford to wait for legislators and enforcement agencies to do it for them.
Open up possibilities to protect your brand
In the counterfeiters’ world, success breeds success. Like any industry, increased profits enable investment in more sophisticated solutions. Except, instead of investing in anti-counterfeit measures – the locks – criminals are investing in keys.
Incorporating brand protection measures directly into packaging is a useful tool in an anti-counterfeit strategy, as it allows for multiple different approaches to be included. This is vital, as each different technique used acts as an extra lock on a brand. No matter how sophisticated they might be, single locks provide a target that criminals can pour resources into cracking. Multiple authentication measures equate to multiple locks that must all be cracked simultaneously to pass a forgery off as the genuine article.
The most effective solutions combine visible, overt features – such as colour shifting inks and holograms – with invisible, covert features like UV-Visible inks and taggants, creating a pack that can both be easily distinguished from a forgery by a consumer, but also offers trained user verification if needed. A brand that is protected by a holographic solution is protected. If that brand then adds microtext – text that cannot be read by the human eye – a complex guilloche pattern, and UV-visible inks onto the same pack, it becomes more difficult to imitate convincingly.
Spreading the anti-counterfeit solutions across the product and packaging, forms an often overlooked but very effective lock, of increasing complexity for the counterfeiter. For instance, lets look at a bottle of high end whisky. If all of the features are deployed on the label for instance, only the label needs to be replicated or reused to determine a product's authenticity. If features were deployed across the cap or shrink sleeve, label, display box and even the whisky itself, the counterfeiter would have to replicate everything.
While it is certainly possible that multiple levels of security could be bypassed by a committed criminal, it is several orders of magnitude less likely. Like most criminals, counterfeiters are opportunistic in nature, and will usually follow the easy money.
Tear tapes offer an easy to integrate solution to carry authentication features across multiple packaging types. Whether deployed in flexible packaging as an easy opening tool for overwraps or shrink sleeves, or in paper & board applications for fibreboard or corrugated boxes, you can transform tear tape from simply an opening device to a strategic lock in your authentication strategy.
Counterfeiters are growing more sophisticated and powerful by the day. In the fight against fakes, legitimate businesses have never before faced a battleground quite like the modern market. But, by taking a proactive approach to anti-counterfeiting that attacks on several fronts, progress can be made.
