China, Covid-19 and counterfeiting’s new e-frontier
Local media has reported a decline in fashion companies’ investment in anti-counterfeiting activities in China, owing to the negative impact of Covid-19 on brands’ financial resources.
Guangdong province, in particular, has been identified as a current “hotbed” of illegal counterfeiting activity, in part due to the sheer number of shoe and apparel manufacturing enterprises in the area.
In September, Shanghai police seized more than ¥100 million RMB (around $15 million USD) worth of counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags and counterfeiting equipment. The counterfeiters were allegedly assisted by the brand’s retail staff in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, who facilitated a sophisticated, illegal trade in fake products, which they sold “before the genuine [products] were even on the market”.
While counterfeiting is becoming less of a problem on larger platforms, such as those operated by Alibaba and JD.com, counterfeit products are “increasingly” appearing on emerging e-commerce platforms, such as Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) and Pinduoduo (a Shanghai-based social e-commerce platform), whose users tend to be younger in age.
Local experts suggest that brands’ level of investment in anti-counterfeiting measures is directly proportionate to the rate at which their products are counterfeited in China, despite “significant progress” being made in the country in recent years.
