SECURE{IT}
Fool Proof Anti-Counterfeiting Solution
Challenge
In its annual filing to the US Securities Exchange Commission, Amazon disclosed the following: "We also may be unable to prevent sellers in our stores or through other stores from selling unlawful, counterfeit, pirated, or stolen goods". That is Amazon's way of telling manufacturers & consumers that they are on their own. A large percentage of buyers believe products bought online from large marketplaces of repute must be genuine. Apparently, most buyers don't understand or appreciate the difference between an online marketplace and an actual seller on the online marketplace. This not to suggest online marketplaces gave birth to counterfeiting. It certainly existed far before online marketplaces came into existence. However, as a result of the relative anonymity that the online marketplaces provide to sellers of counterfeiters, it has certainly skyrocketed.
Background
Most traditional anti-counterfeiting techniques rely on creating complex patterns that fulfil two conditions: (1) pattern should be difficult to duplicate and (2) even if counterfeiters duplicate them, consumers should be able to easily differentiate between a high quality pattern (created by the Brand) and low quality replica (created by the counterfeiter). This worked well in the old times when counterfeiters didn't have access to state of the art printing equipment. However, modern day counterfeiters have access to the same technology that is available to brands of international repute. As a result, counterfeiters are increasingly able to duplicate the security features with very high accuracy. Consequently, it has become almost impossible for the end-consumers to distinguish between the genuine products and the counterfeit products. And if that wasn't already a bad news, presence of a fake security features can sometimes convince a customer that a counterfeit product is a genuine. As a result, customer starts to attribute bad experiences of the counterfeit product directly to the brand. Counterfeiting costs brands much more than the loss of revenues.
Solution
Secureit is a platform that eliminates the need for consumers to manually identify fakes. It also eliminates the need for Brands to conduct expensive ground investigations. Secureit combines the power of AI & crowd sourced data to detect instances of counterfeiting anywhere in the world. As soon as any such instance is detected, it is reported to the brand in real time. The entire process is machine learning driven and requires almost zero user awareness of the nuances of anti-counterfeiting features.