NEW YORK— Housewares suppliers are taking action to combat the spread of counterfeit goods offered through e-commerce platforms. Here are some of their stories:
Going To The Mat
Daniel Bouzide, founder and president of anti-fatigue mat maker WellnessMats, said the company has adopted a strong stance against online counterfeits to protect the brand’s network of independent retailers as much as the company’s interests.
Noting how counterfeiters selling through third-party marketplaces often hijack the company’s brand and graphics, Bouzide said he has purchased some of the alleged counterfeit products only to find them made with low-quality, sometimes potentially toxic materials.
“They are everything we are not, and they cause tremendous brand confusion,” Bouzide said.
“Last fall it became an epidemic,” he continued about the surge in suspected counterfeit mats. “Not only does it negatively affect our brand and business, the hundreds of independent retailers that have been so loyal are being dramatically hurt by counterfeit product and map violation.”
WellnessMats counterfeiters can be easy to identify, Bouzide said, because they typically are the sellers breaking MAP on third-party platforms.
Also, because all authentic WellnessMats are made in St. Louis, any indication on an e-commerce platform that the mat ships from China or any country outside the U.S. is another counterfeit marker, Bouzide said. However, he said, some WellnessMats counterfeiters have tried to skirt that by moving products though U.S. warehouses.
Bouzide and his WellnessMats team have responded by requiring retailers to sign a revised, more restrictive MAP policy that asks dealers to supply DBAs and third-party platforms on which they sell.
“We simply are not doing business with anyone who would not sign our new map policy,” Bouzide said. Third-party sellers of WellnessMats not on the company’s list of authorized sellers, he said, signal potential counterfeit and MAP violations that typically set the company’s attorneys in motion in an effort to get the violators delisted.
While there are several web crawler programs available, WellnessMats developed its own software program for identifying potential counterfeit products and associated MAP violators. The company also installed a full-time employee responsible for monitoring the WellnessMats brand on third-party platforms and working with the company’s attorneys when potential violators are suspected.
“While nothing’s bullet proof, and unethical counterfeiters and unethical retailers aren’t just going to go away, we’re taking huge steps to protect our brand, our patents and our valued authorized retail partners,” Bouzide said.
Burden Of Proof
Rob Kay, chairman and CEO of Filament Brands (formerly Taylor Precision Products), said the company has more than 600 patents across a diverse housewares portfolio that includes Chef’n kitchenware, Taylor thermometers and scales and Rabbit barware and wine tools.
“Over the past couple of months, with just one of our brands, we have had 43 different [violators]delisted,” Kay said. “It’s a continuous fight. Six months later, you could have 43 new people up.”
Kay said the burden of policing counterfeit products on e-commerce marketplaces remains squarely on the intellectual property holders. “What you first need to have is strong intellectual property,” he said.
“If you have differentiated products, [e-commerce sites] like you; they want you on the site,” Kay continued. “After we were able to affect the delisting of products, we saw sales of legitimate products markedly rise. It had a positive effect.”
Taking The Temperature
Peter Chapman, evp/sales and marketing at Maverick Industries, said the company’s attorney advised Amazon about numerous products offered through Amazon’s third-party marketplace alleged to violate Maverick patents covering its remote food thermometers.
After Amazon sent letters to the alleged Maverick patent violators, some of the specified vendors responded directly to Maverick expressing some desire to rectify the situation, Chapman said.
“But it didn’t stop anything,” Chapman said, adding the alleged violators remained on the Amazon marketplace.
Maverick went back to Amazon to seek action against the alleged violating products. The situation was unresolved at presstime after more than two months since Maverick initiated the correspondence.
“We’re hoping the response by Amazon would be the same as any retailer— to take the product down until they can prove it doesn’t violate our patents,” Chapman said.
