Tag: Fakes

The company is starting a new initiative to banish counterfeiters.

Spencer Soper
November 28, 2016 — 7:00 AM EST November 28, 2016 — 7:00 AM EST

Randy Hetrick first noticed counterfeits on Amazon.com Inc. in 2013. He had been selling his TRX Training System– an exercise kit of suspension straps– on the site since 2008. When he began noticing cheap imitations, he had his employees scour Amazon for more, then go through the tedious process of reporting them for removal. But new imposters would pop up right away, and by 2014, “We realized this was an epidemic,” said Hetrick, who estimates phonies cost him $100 million a year, twice his annual sales.

Amazon’s Marketplace gives inventors like Hetrick exposure to hundreds of millions of shoppers without the big expense of building and promoting a website from scratch. Merchants give Amazon a commission on each sale. But a hot-selling product on Amazon encourages counterfeiters to make flimsy knockoffs with cheap materials, steal sales and damage a brand with few consequences.

Amazon has known the problem is getting worse, according to a source familiar with the matter, but for years, the company has been largely silent about the flourishing fakes. That has frustrated manufacturers and brand owners who bear the cost and responsibility of policing the site, reporting problems and hoping Amazon takes action. It’s the subject of the latest episode of the Decrypted podcast (subscribe here on iTunes).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-gets-real-about-fakes?cmpid=BBD112816_BIZ