[ad_1]
Amazon decided Thursday to give brands the ability to "control and delete ads directly" from its website to improve the chances of detecting counterfeit ads. (Mark Lennihan / AP)
Merchants have long complained that Amazon's lax counterfeit police have cost them sales and compromised their brands, leaving customers to determine whether the box on their door actually contains what they have ordered or a poor quality copy. The retailer wants to address this problem, in part by giving brands the power to report imitations and speed up their withdrawal from the online marketplace.
Amazon unveiled on Thursday "Project Zero", which will allow participating brands to use a self-service tool to eliminate lists of counterfeit products. The initiative streamlines a process that required brands to report and then wait for Amazon to investigate and take action. The tool is only available by invitation, but Amazon has announced its intention to open it soon to other brands.
"This gives brands an unprecedented ability to directly control and delete ads from our store," writes the company. in a press release. "This information is also incorporated into our automated protections so we can better proactively detect potential counterfeit lists in the future."
Amazon has been criticized, especially by major brands, for not having played a more active role in the fight against counterfeiting. Although the company banned the sale of fake products on its platform, the online trading giant was accused of reap the benefits of these sales while dismissing the liability on the third-party merchants who sold them.
Amazon's huge third-party market has long been a virtual Wild West, in part because of the ease of entry into the market. Merchants can register on Amazon with contact information, a business name and basic financial information such as a bank account and a credit card.
These merchants represent a huge part of Amazon's business. In 2017, more than half of the products sold on the site came from such sellers, according to a letter issued in April by Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeffrey P. Bezos. (Bezos owns the Washington Post.)
While Amazon's market was flooded with foreign merchants and manufacturers, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep an eye on vendors selling fake products.
The Counterfeit Report, a lobby group that works with companies to stop the sale of counterfeit products, says on its website that about 13% of the products sold on Amazon are fake. The group claims that e-commerce is an ideal means of distribution for counterfeit goods.
The reputation of an unenthusiastic implementation has also been costly to Amazon, especially to luxury brands. Birkenstock ripped off his shoes from Amazon in 2016, complaining that the glut of cheap imitations on the platform was hurting his brand. Daimler, the German automaker and parent company of Mercedes-Benz, has accused Amazon of allowing the sale of fake Mercedes-Benz hubcaps in connection with a lawsuit filed in November 2017.
Nick Hayek, managing director of the Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group, also criticized Amazon, saying that Chinese rival Alibaba is more determined to fight counterfeits. Swatch was in talks to sell some of its high-end watches on Amazon, but the deal failed when Amazon refused to accept active measures against counterfeits and unauthorized retailers, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"They refuse to argue because they have, I think, 10,000 lawyers who say," Please, at Amazon, we should not do anything that forces us to fight counterfeits, "" said Hayek during an interview in April with CNBC.
The launch of Project Zero follows Amazon's first public recognition of the "risk factor" that illegal traders pose to its business. In early February, Amazon acknowledged that it "may be unable" to prevent sellers from making money with counterfeits, according to a document filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"To the extent that this occurs, it could harm our business or our reputation and engage our civil or criminal liability for unlawful activities of our vendors," Amazon writes.
As part of Project Zero, Amazon is testing automated enforcement measures that use trademark information, such as logos and trademarks, to track counterfeit products in its market. The Seattle-based company claims that automated protections "proactively stop 100 times more counterfeit products" than the response to individual reports.
Project Zero also includes a "Product Serialization" tool that generates unique codes for each product unit. Codes can then be scanned when the goods reach Amazon warehouses to ensure they have not been duplicated. But it's up to brands to place codes on their products during the manufacturing process, and codes cost between 1 and 5 cents per person, depending on the volume, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
"The Amazon product serialization service has changed the game for us," said Kenn Minn, general manager of the Kenu mobile accessories company. "We are excited to have this self-serve counterfeit removal tool for the US market and consider it an insurance policy."
[ad_2]
Source link