RFID AGAINST COUNTERFEITING
PRODUCTS COUNTERFEITING: A WIDESPREAD CHALLENGE
On a global scale, counterfeit goods represent a widespread challenge, both for products only available in stores and for those sold through e-commerce.
Counterfeiting is affecting any consumer product, especially the most successful and popular ones: clothing, footwear, jewelry, handbags, watches, personal care and home care products, food, alcohol, cosmetics, electronic equipment, toys, car parts and so on.
PRODUCTS’ COUNTERFEITING: THE RISKS
The criminals’ goal is always the same: propose goods that look identical to the authentic ones to deceive consumers and get extra-profits. These imitations are usually of lower quality than the original product and can even be dangerous or toxic, as counterfeits are often made using cheap or unsafe materials.
In addition to being illegal, counterfeiting impacts not only on consumers but also on brands, on their sales and image. It also has repercussions on national economies, above all on the Italian economy and its well-known “Made in Italy” asset.
HOW MUCH DOES COUNTERFEITING COST TO ITALY?
According to the last Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s study “global trade in counterfeit products infringing Italian trademarks amounted to € 24.3 billion in 2018. It is equivalent to 3.6% of total Italian manufacturing sales”. In particular, it affected product categories as clothing, footwear, leather product as well as electrical and optical products and scientific instruments … all replaced by “bad copies” mainly coming from China, Turkey and Hong Kong.
In 2018 the estimated cost for “consumer detriment” in Italy, that is, the price unjustly paid by consumers, amounted to almost € 6.7 billion.
Italian wholesalers and retailers lost around € 4.2 billion in sales and the cost due to infringement of Intellectual Properties rights in global trade amounted to € 16.9 billion. All these figures are frightening.
For example, only the Italian clothing industry lost almost 10% of sales due to counterfeiting of their products worldwide and altogether, almost 72.000 jobs were lost.
That’s why we are here talking about how to reduce this issue, thanks to technology.
RFID FOR ANTI-COUNTERFEITING
Among other technologies, RFID tags are very useful for identification of products. Thanks to their small, embedded chips, they make it possible to verify the authenticity of a product and hence to detect and prevent counterfeiting.
RFID is not only helpful to grant product authenticity: there’s another key aspect that is very important for brands and concerns production chain traceability.
Each product is equipped with an RFID tag with a unique and non-modifiable identification code.
The tags can be read during the productive process, and along all the products movements, so confirming in different moments authenticity and provenance.
Unlike barcodes, these chips cannot be duplicated so they represent a great anti-counterfeit method.
LUXURY “MADE IN ITALY” FAKES BEATEN BY RFID
Luxury Italian brands have been the first to fight this problem, and they found in RFID technology a strategic ally, to track item from production to final users, ensuring that who buys them is buying the authentic products.
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