Using digital solutions to combat counterfeiting is vital for brand and product protection. Digital authentication and tracking technologies are essential tools for detecting counterfeit products. AlpVision’s solutions offer a robust anti-counterfeiting system for brand protection strategies.
The Growing Threat of Counterfeits
Industries such as fashion, pharmaceuticals, and luxury brands are facing increasing threats from the activities of counterfeiters. Counterfeiting products cost brands billions of dollars yearly and pose a significant risk to consumers’ health and safety. According to the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, the estimated value of counterfeit products sold worldwide in 2019 was $1.77 trillion.
The problem of counterfeits has become so prolific mainly because of technological advancements. These advancements have made it cheaper and easier for counterfeiters to duplicate products and replicate traditional security measures such as holograms and barcodes. Also, while legal action and raising consumer awareness have proven helpful, these measures are often slow in response and easy to bypass. The best way to combat counterfeiting at this level is to apply digital solutions in conjunction with existing anti-counterfeiting strategies to enhance brand protection and improve counterfeit detection.
The Role of Digital Solutions in Combating Counterfeits
Counterfeiters are becoming more proficient with the products they create and can now mimic traditional anti-counterfeiting technologies. It is now considerably more challenging to determine what product is original or fake by merely looking at it. However, the advancements in technology used in counterfeit production have also prompted demand for advancement in digital solutions to combat counterfeits.
Digital solutions to counterfeiting help companies create secure systems that verify the authenticity of products and also allow brand owners and producers to track and trace their goods. In addition to product authentication, digital tools accelerate counterfeit detection and have widespread application across industries.
Digital Authentication & Verification Technologies
While there are many emerging anti-counterfeiting solutions available today, some of the most robust authentication and verification technologies are
- Image Recognition: Image recognition technologies allow consumers to verify the authenticity of products through advanced image analysis. Consumers can use smartphone cameras or specific apps to check the item for inherent physical characteristics or invisible patterns of microscopic dots on printed parts of packaging or labels that set it apart from counterfeits. These characteristics or patterns can be said to be a digital fingerprint or digital DNA
- Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency: Blockchain technology allows businesses to track products from the factory to the hands of the end consumer. It does this by storing a product’s digital information in a way that allows it to be shared but not modified. Blockchain technology is used in track and trace systems to ascertain the provenance of
- Smart QR Codes & NFC Tags: QR codes and NFC tags are widely used due to their cost-effectiveness and popularity with consumers. A simple scan or tap with a smartphone allows a consumer to verify a product’s authenticity. They are used across multiple industries for anti-counterfeiting inquiries and product tracking.
Accelerating Counterfeit Detection with Digital Tools
As technology advances and gets cheaper, counterfeiters gain access to these technologies, and their ability to imitate products becomes more sophisticated. Cheap knockoffs are being produced in large numbers and being sold as authentic items. The scope of counterfeiting has grown so large that national and international laws are finding it hard to catch up. It is now up to brand owners to devise means of authentication and verification for their products.
For brand owners to effectively combat counterfeits, measures adopted must be easy to use and quick enough to give consumers real-time counterfeit detection. A simple scan or tap should provide customers with insight into the product’s supply chain. Brand owners can also use consumer data to determine where there are clusters of counterfeits and subsequently determine their origin.
Efficacy of Traditional Anti-Counterfeiting Measures
The traditional approach to anti-counterfeiting includes technologies like holographic stickers, watermarks, barcodes, and scratch-off secret codes. Also, brand protection staff of businesses may resort to litigation to protect Intellectual Property (IP) rights or raise customer awareness on how to check the legitimacy of their products. The problem with these methods is that they are either easily duplicated or too slow and expensive to tackle the rapidly growing and evolving counterfeit market.
Litigation, consumer awareness, and other established practices certainly have a place in the modern brand protection strategy. However, using traditional measures to combat the dynamic problem of counterfeiting is not a viable solution. A new approach is needed to confront modern counterfeiting, one that combines traditional methods with the capabilities of digital technological solutions.
Digital Solutions to Tackle Traditional Brand Protection Shortcomings
In today’s digital age, it is essential to adopt innovative solutions for brand protection. Leading companies are combining digital technologies with existing anti-counterfeiting measures to secure supply chains and eliminate counterfeit risk.
The efficiency of digital tools in connecting consumers to brands makes product authentication easier and faster. Authentication or verification can be done in as little as 3 seconds. Implementing digital solutions for combating counterfeits ensure authenticity, traceability, and transparency in the supply chain.
AlpVision’s Revolutionary Counterfeit Detection Technologies
AlpVision is a leading anti-counterfeiting solution provider that designs revolutionary solutions that allow brand owners and businesses to combat counterfeiting effectively and ensure brand protection. We have developed two cutting-edge solutions for detecting counterfeit products: AlpVision’s Fingerprinting and Cryptoglyph technologies.
What are they?
AlpVision’s Digital Fingerprinting technology captures, analyzes, and catalogs inherent physical characteristics unique to products that set them apart from imitations. This information is stored in a secure database to be accessed for later verification.
AlpVision’s Cryptoglyph technology is a brand protection solution that provides brand owners with a means of product authentication. It also serves as an important source of data about distribution that could feed into track-and-trace systems. Cryptoglyph is an invisible security marking feature embedded in printed parts of packaging or labels.
How do you detect them?
AlpVision’s Fingerprinting and Cryptoglyph technologies can instantly verify products using a smartphone. Customers simply need to capture the product’s image using a smartphone application that compares the product’s surface structure against the original scan to determine whether the product is genuine.
Seamless Integration & Scalability
An effective digital solution should easily fit into production lines with minimal adjustments. An anti-counterfeiting measure that causes infrastructural changes would likely lead to a loss of optimization and costly downtimes. Downtimes result in businesses losing revenue, which is what anti-counterfeiting measures were supposed to prevent in the first place.
A significant advantage of digital anti-counterfeiting tools is their ability to grow as businesses expand or even shift to new products or industries. Digital tools are designed to adapt and evolve to match the current security needs of the business.
Why Brands Need to Adopt Digital Anti-Counterfeiting Solutions Now
The Growing Threat of Counterfeiting in Online marketplaces And Global Supply Chain
The most prominent driver of counterfeiting today is e-commerce. The popularity of e-commerce platforms worldwide has given counterfeiters access to a near-unlimited market of customers. Counterfeiters are now leveraging the anonymity that online marketspaces provide to fool unsuspecting shoppers into buying their imitations.
The inability of online shoppers to physically examine the goods makes the traditional approach to anti-counterfeiting ineffective. Reputable e-commerce platforms often perform digital checks to ensure that unscrupulous sellers are not selling their customers copies of brands.
Another brand vulnerability is in the global supply chain. Outsourcing production to third parties, often in foreign countries, may result in the illegal spread of secret Intellectual Property. Counterfeiters can make even more convincing imitations when they have access to this. Digital solutions, like Blockchain technology, allow brands to track and trace their entire supply chain to determine where counterfeits are coming from.
Building Brand Trust through Production Authentication
Counterfeiting destroys brands’ integrity by deceiving customers into buying goods that are not authentic and will disappoint them. The use of counterfeit products, such as fake drugs, could even have fatal consequences. So, it is in the best interest of brands to provide means by which consumers can verify, authenticate, and trace brands back to manufacturers.
Counterfeiters are now able to clone traditional anti-counterfeiting technologies. Fortunately, digital solutions can help customers verify the authenticity of products. These solutions can be combined with other anti-counterfeiting technologies to create a comprehensive brand protection strategy. For instance, RFID tags can feed data into Blockchain to allow supply chain tracking.
Solutions for Revenue Loss Prevention From Counterfeiting
Counterfeits absorb a portion of the available market for products. The circulation of such fake products causes brands to be unable to maximize their market potential, which leads to revenue loss. The poor quality of these counterfeits also lowers consumer confidence in the brand. Counterfeiters are essentially saboteurs and invisible competitors to brand owners.
There are many innovative digital tools to combat counterfeiting, and it is up to the brand to choose the most effective security system to safeguard its intellectual property. For a robust security measure against counterfeiting, a combination of different measures would be better suited to provide more comprehensive brand protection.
Using digital solutions to combat counterfeiting has proven to be a more dynamic and responsive measure against fake products. However, anti-counterfeiting measures are more effective when digital solutions and traditional measures are combined to create a robust security system. Physical verification technologies such as holograms, watermarks, barcodes, QR codes, and so on should complement security systems such as tracking and tracing, product authentication, and brand protection.
AlpVision’s anti-counterfeiting solutions are revolutionary. We offer secure, easy-to-implement, and scalable technology for brand protection. Partner with us to stay one step ahead of counterfeiters. Contact us today to learn how our solutions can enhance your brand protection strategy.
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