Should startups invest in anti-counterfeit solutions?
This really is a no brainer. Startups have to be particularly concerned about anti counterfeiting measures, because they are in the process of establishing credibility and trust for their new products. The last thing that they need is for knockoffs of their products flooding the market and besmirching their brand’s reputation.
You may have the most brilliant product idea backed up by a highly successful crowdfunding campaign and yet lose it all because somebody already has stolen your grand idea and is already flooding the market with copycat products. Therefore, it makes sense for startups to invest in anti-counterfeiting solutions that incorporate custom and secure packaging to guard across counterfeiting attempts, across the supply chain.
Case-in-point: Successful crowdfunded projects become prime targets for counterfeiters
For all the hype and hoopla surrounding successful crowdfunded projects, these are very often the fount of the biggest counterfeiting exercises. A case in point is the well known Fidget Cube incident. The product may only have been a simple gadget, but it managed to raise as much as $6.5 million via Kickstarter.
The problem was that hundreds of cheap imitations had already made their way to the market, before Fidget Cube could even complete their crowdfunding campaign.
In fact, a lookalike product called Stress Cube launched by a 24-year old who sourced cheap knock offs from Shenzhen in China made a killing by selling goods worth as much as $345,000 in two months.
How Can Your Customers Know the Difference?
Nothing can be more damaging for a brand than customers mistaking a low quality fake for the genuine product. Not only does it lower the image of the product in question, but also causes a large amount of financial damage on account of lost sales. It is, therefore, imperative that customers be empowered to differential between fake and genuine products.
Fortunately, one can leverage the power of anti-counterfeit technology to help consumers make the right choice. One can, for instance, use standardized coding and identification systems to authenticate packaging.
There are certain overt and covert features that help validate the genuineness of the product in question. One can, in fact, guarantee the integrity of a product’s genuine packaging right across the supply chain by leveraging the power of anti-counterfeit technology.
How to protect your startup brand?
Nothing is more important for a startup than protecting its brand integrity against the grave threat posed by would be counterfeiters. This is particularly true of great products with extraordinary potential.
If you don’t put in place the right kind of security measures in a timely fashion, counterfeit copies of your product would hit the market in no time, causing grave damage to your brand reputation.
One can imagine the gravity of the threat, given that 7 out of 10 consumers are not able to tell the difference between fake and genuine products.
Among the solutions that you can think of implementing to prevent that from happening are end-to-end track and trace solutions that protect product integrity right across the supply chain. Of particular use are anti-counterfeit labels, as well as other useful technologies like anti-copy QR codes and NFC tags.
It is also important to get a handle on the importance of product serialization and authentication. What is an added bonus in using such technology is the fact that one can leverage consumer engagement techniques and strategies to engage with one’s customers even while protecting one’s brand image.
Fortunately, for most startup brands brand protection has come a long way and is today viewed in a holistic and strategic fashion. Among the cutting edge technologies being used to make the brand protection process fool-proof are AI(Artificial Intelligence) and the Internet of Things.
These advances have made it possible for there to be virtually foolproof security for both products and documents. So whatever the industry a startup may pertain to, there will be a security system that will protect the sanctity of the product in question from the beginning to the end of the supply chain.
No longer do startups have to dread the spectre of ruthless counterfeiters sabotaging the ability of a great product to make an iconic brand name for itself.