Ecommerce Sellers Undergo Audits to Prove Authenticity
Given the seemingly boundless scope of the internet, luxury brand owners come across anonymous online counterfeit sellers every day.An excerpt from Decoding Luxe states,
“Growing at a compounded annual growth rate of almost 40–45 per cent, the counterfeit luxury products market in India is likely to more than double to Rs 5,600 crore from the current level of about Rs 2,500 crore.”
It adds that over 80 per cent of the imitation luxury products being sold in India comes from China and most of these consists of handbags, watches, shoes, clothes, hats, sunglasses, perfumes and jewellery.
Fake Swarovski jewelry, Lacoste shirts, Apple iPhones, Mont Blanc pens and Harman Bluetooth speakers are plentiful, often sold at dirt cheap prices. The country does have a legal framework to protect trademarks but the processes are cumbersome and consumer protection laws don’t cover e-commerce effectively.
“Online commerce offers even a small seller of fakes a national footprint instantly,” said Devangshu Dutta, chief executive officer of the New Delhi-based retail consultancy, Third Eyesight. Any e-commerce company that does not vet its merchants is risking selling fakes, stolen and damaged goods, he said.
In February, Flipkart got entangled in a similar case when it announced the selling of OnePlus 3 at a discounted rate albeit the smartphone maker had an exclusive partnership with Amazons India. OnePlus was only available online at that time and was not available in the offline channels. Hence, it raised a few eyebrows on how the sellers of Flipkart got access to the yet-to-be launched devices.
Flipkart says it constantly monitors sellers for quality and has a three-strike policy to blacklist them. However, if sellers are found pushing fake products or refurbished items as new, they are immediately blacklisted.To ensure ethical business practices among sellers, they have a strict seller review/rating process along with on-ground teams carrying out regular quality checks at seller facilities.
Amazon has more than 200,000 sellers on its platform and Flipkart about half that, both are known to de-list dubious sellers. While in China, Alibabahas struggled to take off its name from the notorious markets list put out by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. To avoid similar problems, Paytm has joined the race to create an authentic seller base across its products categories.