With findings based on data from over $50 million dollars worth of merchandise authenticated in 2018 reveal insights and trends across markets worldwide
On World Anti-Counterfeiting Day, Entrupy, the AI-driven luxury authentication solution, released its first “State of the Fake Report,” which analyzed data from over $75 million in global merchandise between 2017 and 2018 to identify trends in the counterfeit luxury goods market.
For the past three years, Entrupy has been helping to fight the battle against counterfeits with our proprietary product authentication technology. Using artificial intelligence and microscopy, the company enables sellers of high-end accessories to verify the authenticity of their merchandise. This has the dual benefit of bringing trust to transactions of these products while also keeping fakes out of the supply chain.
In the first-ever “State of the Fake” report, Entrupy has analyzed the data from all of the authentications performed by every Entrupy customer around the world to identify trends in the counterfeit luxury goods market and derive insights on how we can further deter its growth.
In 2018, Entrupy performed authentications on nearly $50 million of merchandise, more than double the total in 2017. The majority of the items not certified as Authentic (referred throughout the report as “Unidentified”) were of “very good” to “super-fake” quality. The Entrupy authentication solution consists of a proprietary, handheld scanner and accompanying app that guides the user through the process of collecting microscopic images from different areas of the item. These images are processed using customized deep learning algorithms that have been trained with Entrupy’s proprietary database. The results, returned in seconds for most items, will either result in certification as Authentic or identification as Unidentified.
Entrupy currently supports 15 of the world’s most popular luxury brands, and it’s the one that was the company’s first that remains its most-frequently authenticated: Louis Vuitton. Given that it’s the most valuable luxury brand in the world, this makes perfect sense.
Unfortunately, Louis Vuitton is also one of the most frequently counterfeited brands in the world. Not only a function of popularity, but this is also aided by the fact the brand has changed relatively little since its inception 150 years ago. Because the brand has produced many of the same styles and uses the same materials decade after decade, bad actors have had more time to develop near-perfect replicas. This is all the more reason why visual inspection is an unreliable way to tell a knock-off from the real deal.
In the US, where the majority of Entrupy’s authentications occur, total authentications in 2018 were up from $19.6 million in 2017 to $39.7 million in 2018. Non-U.S. authentications experienced a higher growth rate, rising from $1.4 million in 2017 to $9.7 million in 2018. This was driven by Entrupy’s global expansion including the opening of an office in Japan, as well as organic customer growth.
View the report here.
Entrupy is used by hundreds of secondary retailers and marketplaces around the world to authenticate handbags and accessories from the most popular high-end luxury brands. Entrupy is a hardware-enabled SaaS company which aims to establish itself as the global standard for the verification of physical goods — the Verisign of physical goods — enabling businesses and consumers to instantly verify a wide spectrum of products. Entrupy’s mission is to protect businesses, borders and consumers from transacting in counterfeit goods.
