The Hindu Business Line : Look for the bad `un

VISUALISE this scene: A small town called Yiwu in China, regardless of the time, sees an endless stream of trucks unloading goods to cater to the China Small Commodities City. Close to about two lakh buyers descend on the market's 30,000 wholesale stalls and 3,500 stores.

The selection is immense and the pace of buying frantic. Buyers are faced with the prospect of picking up about one lakh different products and close to about 2,000 tonnes of goods change hands daily. And these figures are getting added to over the years.

The picture that unfolds is absolutely fascinating, right? Until you come to know that Yiwu is China's largest `wholesale market for counterfeit goods.' The goods range from high-end products such as televisions, digital camera, copiers and washing machines, to baby food and noodles.

Welcome to, or rather beware, the frighteningly real world of fake goods. No sooner is a branded product out than the fraudsters get to `work', copying the original to flood the market with cheap imitation goods.

And while counterfeit stuff isn't anything new, companies are stepping up their fight for the genuine product as never before because fake goods are eating into their revenues very significantly.

Coming back to the Yiwu example, if you trace the journey of counterfeiting here, the fake products are manufactured in factories scattered in the Southern coastal provinces and make their way into places such as Yiwu and then to retail outlets across the country.

The `distributors' in Yiwu have established offices in Brazil and South Africa, and plan to `expand' into Nigeria, Uruguay, Pakistan, South Korea, and Thailand.

If the fraudsters are `hard at work', the big companies, both IT and non-IT, such as Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Procter and Gamble are trying to stay one step ahead in the fight against piracy.

Plans are afoot to form an international consortium to fight trade in fake goods.

Alan Grant, President and Chief Executive Officer of Canon Inc, India, says the company has been innovating with new technologies.

It is sparing no resource to provide customer satisfaction and quality products based on the latest technologies.

According to Nobuyoshi Tanaka, Managing Director and Group Executive of Corporate Intellectual Property and Legal Headquarters, during 2003, about 363 cases were registered and raids conducted to bring fraudsters to book. Of this, about 243 cases were recorded in China alone, the US and the Europe accounted for 65 cases and Asia 55 cases. India recorded 27 cases.

Cracking down on counterfeit stuff, Canon has introduced a hologram that can help its customers distinguish between the company's genuine products, and imitations. At a recent Expo in Shanghai, Canon showcased the products it plans to launch in the global market.

Customers who walked in at the Expo were asked to try out the hologram strip and spot the genuine from fake products. Prizes were awarded too to discerning buyers, but for the most part, customers were unable to detect duplicate products, so `well-manufactured' were they. "Once a product hits the market, we are not sure how long it is going to take the counterfeits to copy this,'' commented a Canon dealer at the Expo. Canon's hologram is an effort to protect and educate consumers on counterfeit stuff and fraud, says Tanaka.

"We ensure that the interaction of copier and toner is as efficient as possible — an optimal match resulting in high-quality replication. The new Canon hologram can be found on Copier, Networked Office Systems and Color Laser Copier Toner boxes as our seal of approval," he says.

Canon also advises customers to always buy from the local authorised Canon dealer.

Commenting on the global scenario, Tanaka says that as counterfeiting techniques become more `sophisticated,' the goods being copied range from fake jeans, perfumes and CDs to pharmaceutical products, industrial machinery and electronic consumer goods.

Virtually anything with a brand name is a target.

In India, Canon has conducted three seminars to educate customers on imitations. The seminars have helped create awareness, says Canon.

The company plans to hold more such seminars, and has earmarked Rs 70 lakh towards this end.

The seminars are to be held over the next six weeks in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

Picture by A.M. Faruqui

rsavitha@hotmail.com

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