China’s dominant online retailer Alibaba Group says it has spent US$160.7 million fighting counterfeiting and enhancing shopper protection on its sites.
The investment, calculated from the start of 2013 until the end of November, has funded a task force of more than 2000 staff – and another 200 are to be recruited to join the fight next year, according to CEO Jonathan Lu, who addressed an anti-counterfeiting conference in the US this week. The Group has also around 5400 volunteers assisting with daily online surveillance and selective inspection.
Lu says Alibaba cooperated with Chinese law enforcement agencies in over 1000 counterfeiting cases during 2014, leading to the arrest of 400 suspects from 18 counterfeiting rings and the closure of 200 bricks and mortar stores, factories or warehouse involved in production and selling of fake goods.
“Ever since the founding of Alibaba Group in 1999, it has been our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere. This ease of doing business must be facilitated by trust. We believe that trust is the basis for wealth and that trust is an important currency that makes our e-commerce platforms tick. All the work that we have done over the past 15 years underscores this belief,” said Lu.
“Counterfeiting is a global problem and one that we need to face together as a society. From Alibaba Group’s perspective, we bear a serious responsibility in this fight against counterfeits. (Founder) Jack Ma said yesterday – if eCommerce does well in China, that may have little to do with Alibaba Group, but if counterfeits in society are not tackled effectively, it has a lot to do with Alibaba Group.”
Lu said it was in Alibaba’s interests to protect consumers because consumers who receive fake goods may no longer want to shop on its platforms.
“Thankfully, Internet technology has made it easier for transactions to be traced. This means that by analysing transaction data we can trace counterfeiters who sell online. Through the analysis of big data, online sources of counterfeit products can be tracked offline, making it easier to enforcement authorities to do their work.”
And the effort is working. Lu says only 3.5 transactions in every 10,000 led to customer complaints this year – 22 per cent decline from last year.
“We hope that by exposing counterfeiters and supporting the fight in a long-term fashion, fakes can be eliminated one day.”
In one example of Alibaba’s investigation and co-operation with authorities, Shanghai police and government officials probed 41 counterfeiting cases leading to the arrest of 103 suspects involved in counterfeiting brands such as Nike, Jordan, 3M, UGG, Prada and Chanel. Four regional 3M face mask counterfeiting rings were smashed in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shijiazhuang and Suzhou. The crackdown on fake 3M goods saw the arrest of 12 suspects and the destruction of over 3000 boxes of fake 3M face masks with a street value exceeding US$5 million.
