On Amazon, fake products plague smaller brands
AMAZON.COM Inc has made it easy for small brands to sell their products to large numbers of customers, but that has also enabled some counterfeiters to cut into their business.
Sassa Akervall gets much of the sales for the SISU-brand mouthguards that her family invented from Amazon. The Michigan-based entrepreneur said fake versions of the product on the site have undercut her price and hurt her business. She has reported the problem repeatedly to Amazon, but the fakes keep resurfacing.
“It’s frustrating,” Akervall said, adding that the fake products and their reviews have hurt the brand’s reputation.
Amazon said it prohibits the sale of counterfeit products. “We invest heavily to protect the integrity of our stores,” a spokeswoman said in a statement, and “will continue to aggressively pursue those who harm our customer and seller experience.”
Counterfeiters, though, have been able to exploit Amazon’s drive to increase the site’s selection and offer lower prices. The company has made the process to list products on its website simple – sellers can register with little more than a business name, e-mail and address, phone number, credit card, ID and bank account – but that also has allowed impostors to create ersatz versions of hot-selling items, according to small brands and seller consultants.
When retailers log into Amazon’s website for sellers, most product pages have a button next to the item that makes it easy for someone to list the same product. That strategy works well for consumers and Amazon on widely distributed items like shampoo and sneakers because it increases competition and that usually leads to lower prices for consumers.
Most small brands, however, are closely held and harder to get access to outside of authorised distribution. So, in some cases, counterfeiters are listing their versions of hot-selling items on the same page and at lower prices. Amazon’s pricing algorithms see the lower price and then assigns the default “add to cart” option to the counterfeiter, elbowing brands out of selling their own goods.