One of the world’s fastest growing industries, counterfeiting, just suffered a major setbatck. It’s a smartphone app called Brand Reporter.
According to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service it made 3427 seizures of suspected counterfeit goods during the past financial year (2013-2014). The 1 million items captured nearly doubled the previous year's haul.
Brand Reporter is both a US anti-counterfeit app and an online business that YPB Group acquired in September this year. The app was developed by Los Angeles technology incubator company, Curious Minds, founded in 2004 by tech entrepreneurs, David & Sam Gonen.
It is an anti-counterfeit watchdog for both brand owners and consumers, that is already being used by one of Europe’s largest global oil product companies and one of the world’s largest sports apparel licensing companies. The company, Brand Reporter, has been selling it as an affordable white-labelled, cross-platform (web and app) reporting application. It provides the means to identify, track and catalogue counterfeit products, in the supply chain and at retail points anywhere in the world via its website.
This means that employees, distributors, retailers and consumers are all able to identify and report infringing items, “tell tale” signs, purchase or sale location data, price information, and other relevant data on counterfeit goods and services.
Under the terms of the acquisition, YPB established a US headquarters at the Curious Minds Los Angeles head-office. The app is being sold now in markets throughout the world, including Australia where YPB has a base. YPB has just listed in Australia.
The Brand Reporter acquisition also allows YPB to expedite its long term goal of developing a global database of counterfeit goods through croud sourcing using mobile app and web tools.
According to YPB, the Asian anti-counterfeit authentication market is valued at $US14 billion ($14.91 billion) a year and growing 20% per annum. YPB Group is one of 75 companies licensed to provide anti-counterfeiting solutions in China.
Founder and chief executive officer, John Houston, said most counterfeit goods in circulation around the world originated from China. "Counterfeiting is an enormous industry valued at $1.7 trillion, but you don't hear about it that much because people aren't that proud of it. But it is a big issue."
The hub of the Brand Reporter app is a nanotech tracer that is invisible to the human eye but can be applied to a product during or after manufacture. The tracer is the unseen equivalent of an authenticity stamp that can only be read by a YPB scanner that costs about AU$35, while inserting tracer material into a product costs less than 50¢.
Of course, counterfeiters will continue to develop ways to thwart attempts to stop them. But this seems to be a giant leap forward – it’s cheap, can be installed in almost anything, can used by anyone and may be used anywhere.
"The tracer material can be put into fibres, plastics, inks and even be put into food. You can scan a product and detect the presence of the tracer material that tells you the product is authentic," Houston added.
The Australian Retailers Association has stated its support for new ways to combat counterfeiting, adding that the first step had to be made by brands and manufacturers to protect their own products.
Australian Retailers Association executive director, Russell Zimmerman, commented, "If they can get technology down to a mini bar code for avocados grown in Queensland, there is no reason they can't get chip technology into products that can tell anybody that this product is or isn't genuine. If it is as cheap as using a mobile phone and [the tracer] is cheap to fit into the product, then anything that can reduce counterfeiting in Australia or anywhere in the world would be helpful. Once it is scanned, you know whether you have the genuine product."
