In export markets, Reid Fruits from Australia, was seeing thousands of counterfeits of its boxes of premium Tasmanian cherries. The brand was in high demand and had a strong reputation that was at risk from inferior products sold under fake Reid Fruits branding.
In the 2019-20 season, Reid Fruits introduced Laava Smart Fingerprints® on its cherry boxes bound for 20 export markets. The result: only 10 counterfeit attempts, all of which were automatically stopped by the Laava platform.
Backing up their success in 2020-21, the number of counterfeit attempts dropped even further, to just three: a 60% reduction over the previous year.
And in the 2021-22 season: zero. Absolutely no recorded attempts made to associate the Reid Fruits brand with inferior products. The counterfeiters had moved on to exploit other brands that were not taking measures to protect themselves.
Tony Coad, manager marketing and sales at Reid Fruit, explains: “In the 2018/19 season in China, the counterfeiters had made a complete digital copy of our carton. We were using highly intricate laser-cut stickers affixed to our carton lids at that time – a new and different sticker design at the start of each season – as an anti-counterfeit measure. The copy carton included a digital image of the new sticker for the 2018/19 season.
Screenshots of the phone interface
At that point, we had also been using a printed card within each carton with the cherries with a QR code linked to a Reid Fruits website for customers to check authenticity through the QR code. The counterfeiters had also copied this card incorporating their own QR card linked back to their own fake Reid Fruits website to verify the carton as authentic.
We were also using carton liners printed with the Reid Fruits logo and carton bases with a watermark printed Reid Fruits logo – this was also copied. All this happened within a week of our product arriving in the market in the 2018/19 season.
In the cherry season just gone (2021/22) we didn’t receive any reports of counterfeit products in market or any sign of attempts to counterfeit our cartons or labels.“
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