Sports Brands are taking initiatives in order to ensure that counterfeit products don't reach consumers. Even e-commerce platforms are also making efforts. But still, there is no improvement. 

For minor sports equipment, it just causes consumers to lose trust in the brand. More important kind of equipment such as Diving Sports Gear, Pole vault. Counterfeit equipment in such cases can cause physical injuries and even death in some cases.

The revenues of the counterfeiters in turn finance terrorism and other crimes. In addition, counterfeit products resemble the original, but in most cases there are serious differences in function. For example, counterfeit sports equipment and sports nutrition can quickly pose a health risk. Moreover, it is annoying for the customer and thus damaging to the brand's image if an expensive product does not keep what the customer expected from it.

Companies like Cosco became concerned about these products and published a report that said warned E-commerce sites that are selling counterfeit products and told them to take down counterfeit products as it harmed the company’s goodwill with customers. The company also advised the firms to maintain an audit standard for the sellers. According to the companies only solution to this is that the customer makes a purchase from an only registered and authorised distributor. The price for such items goes up to 100s of dollars. And we can only trust the Distributor for his face value. People who are involved in counterfeit business have alternative production methods that make the replica look indifferentiable as compared to the original product. And of this high-value equipment, the distributor might also be involved in the counterfeit distribution.

For any brands wondering why social media is such a force for counterfeiting, there are simple explanations. Social media hasn’t been under the microscope for counterfeiting issues as ecommerce platforms like Amazon, Alibaba Group and eBay have been, so there’s less pressure for them to stringently enforce IPR. Add in the fact that there’s no real limit to how often links and posts can be placed on the platform, and you end up with today’s storm of fakes on social media.

The research also shows consumers’ willingness to trust products promoted on social media. As seen in the graph below, 79.6% of consumers are open to the idea of making purchases of sports products by following links from social media.

The real question is that what is a permanent and full proof solution. We can expect the government to roll new amendments in terms of law against buying a counterfeit product like countries France and Italy. These laws would take time to come into effect and even when they come into effects there is no surety that they will be obeyed. 

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SOURCE:

https://www.cosco.in/blogs/Cosco-India-Beware-Customers-from-Fake-Cosco-Products-on-Internet.html

https://www.localcircles.com/a/press/page/fake-products-on-ecommerce-sites#.XcAXFUUzbBI