Counterfeit producing industries are aware of the consumer's product buying desires and patterns. Because these criminal organisations entirely understand the desires of consumers, they flourish these flea markets and/or online marketplaces with counterfeits with the most sought after products.
It is no surprise that consumers are attracted to these luxury and craze appealing products to merely draw attention.
These are the five majorly affected industries by counterfeit products.
1. Footwear
Consumers love eye-catching footwear designs and fancy shoes. As a result, consumers tend to go baffled with every new launch of their favourite sole-pleaser.
It requires copious amounts of creativity, energy, resources, reiterations, and craftsmanship to get a new design at the shoe hanger of a store. However, counterfeiters require only an image or one unit of the original product to imitate and distribute a counterfeit in the market, making it available at half the price of a genuine product.
According to figures published by OECD in 2016, the footwear industry alone accounted for 22% of the counterfeits seized by customs — making it the most pirated product category, ahead of clothing and electrical equipment.
We believe there are three possible reasons for the footwear industry to become the most pirated product category amongst the five majorly affected industries by counterfeit products.
2. Clothing
Clothing is a commodity that consumers buy often. An average working-class citizen buys clothes 3 to 4 times a year, let aside the window shopping tropes. Usually, they tend to buy these clothes either from an official store or from an all-in-one store. However, during window shopping tropes, consumers go for cheaply available products — with a desire to not spend much.
This is where the counterfeit product market resides; making knock-offs, imitations, and illegally produced products available at meagre prices instigating a consumer already in a hurry during window shopping to purchase the deceptive product right away.
The fashion clothing industry tends to attract consumers from all age groups. With the upscale brands' prices extremely steep, buying a cheap alternative product is an attractive proposition for consumers. In 2016, as per the studies published by OECD, 16% of the products seized belonged to the clothing category. Moreover, a considerable amount of clothing was the imitations/knock-offs of world-leading brands like Gucci, Balenciaga, Fendi, Adidas, and more thus, harming the brands' images on a massive scale.
3. Leather Goods
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Leather items include bags, belts, purses, wallets, and other accessories. Due to the top of the line quality of the products made from pure leather, counterfeiters are always on the lookout for stealing the genuine leather market. In the same report published by OECD in 2016, customs worldwide seized around 16% of leather goods — thus clearly depicting a lucrative market for counterfeiters.
Amongst the leather items, women's leather bags rank on the top generating almost 70% of the counterfeit leather sales. Besides that, belts, purses, and wallets hold 20% of the leather market, valued at around 1.2 billion.
However, in recent years people have become aware of the consequences and the effects it causes on the environment and animals. As a result, companies have also moved to produce synthetic leather or vegan leather items for the greater good. But, with that too, the counterfeiters have proven to be smart enough to understand the needs of the consumers and started producing illegitimate synthetic leather products imitating names and delivering sub-standard quality.
4. Electrical Equipment
Electrical equipment covers a range of products, from handheld devices to home appliances to electrical components. These items must undergo tests compliant with safety rules and regulations before being released for public consumption. Moreover, with the advent of e-commerce businesses and social media marketplaces, consumers have increased purchasing power, acquiring more and more electrical equipment that makes their lives effortless.
Counterfeit trading and purchasing these products is a risk to life, and yet, the seizures as recorded by OECD in 2016 were 12% of the total items. As we humans enter the age of digitalisation, it is a no-brainer to state that this number would have increased by many leaps by 2021.
5. Watches and Timepieces
Products like Watches and Timepieces are adored and admired by consumers worldwide because of their high resale value. As a result, consumers desire to own watches and timepieces from Rolex, Omega, Titan or Jaeger-LeCoultre.
However, due to extremely expensive collections and inaccessibility for an average customer to purchase, they tend to look for a counterfeit alternative that closely resembles their fantasised and desired timepiece. This, in turn, becomes the reason and motive for counterfeiters to introduce ample counterfeit and namesake watches that they know consumers would not hesitate to purchase.
As a result, total seizures of watches and timepieces, as published in the same report by OECD in 2016, were almost 7% of the total items.
From the information stated above, as withdrawn from Statista Reports, it is evident that counterfeiting massively impacts almost every prolific consumer product sector.
One recent exciting story is – US customs and border protection seized 14,806 pairs of fake Nike shoes, which, if genuine, would have been worth a total of more than $2 million.
The customs reported that China exported the shoes in containers labelled "Napkins". But, we know, it indeed was not napkins, but shoes that imitated the special edition including Air Jordan 1 Off-White; Air Jordan 12; Air Jordan 1 in blue, black, red and white; Air Jordan 11 and Air Max '97.
Considering the affected industries, counterfeiting has a major impact on brands’ reputation and consumers’ health. It can have severe adverse effects causing financial, physical, and mental harm
