Columbia Sportswear recently joined forces with southern Chinese authorities to raid Lianxing Garments Company, located in Zhongshan City, China. The raid is part of an aggressive campaign to stamp out counterfeiters and protect Columbia's unique brands. The raid resulted in the seizure of more than 2,000 counterfeit pullovers and jackets.
“The increasing worldwide recognition of our brands requires us to be extremely aggressive toward the illegal activities of counterfeiters,” said Tim Boyle, President and Chief Executive Officer of Columbia Sportswear. “We continue to successfully block the distribution and sale of counterfeits in key markets but it's critical that we also make efforts to stop these counterfeits at the source, such as the Lianxing factory.”
In May, SEW reported (SEW_0321) that COLM intercepted a shipment of counterfeit jackets in the Dutch port of Rotterdam that were due to land in the German market. After lengthy legal proceedings, 2,900 imitation Columbia Sportswear jackets were destroyed. As a result of this most recent Chinese raid, all jackets will be destroyed and the factory will be fined.
According to the company, all Columbia employees, sales representatives and distributors are trained to identify counterfeit products. “We are very pleased with continued efforts to dissuade counterfeiters from copying our products,” said Boyle.
In related news, Oakley has stepped up its efforts in counterfeit prevention as well. The company reported that Oakley's legal team last year oversaw the confiscation of 2.7 million fake Oakley products worldwide, representing an estimated street value totaling more than $27 million and is a 156% increase over the 1.1 million products confiscated last year.
Vance Lommen, OO's Director of Legal and Security said, “This year was a record year for product confiscations and illegal Internet auction site terminations… In 2003, we continued our focus on international arrests because most of the illegal manufacturing takes place overseas and these arrests will have the biggest impact on our efforts to curtail the flow of illegal products worldwide.”
For the year, Oakley facilitated 447 total worldwide arrests of individuals participating in the counterfeit sales, with 111 of the arrests made outside the U.S. In addition, more than 20,000 auctions were shut down, deleted, or otherwise cleansed of counterfeit Oakley products. Total restitution collected in 2003 was more than $220,000 and will be used to further Oakley's anti-counterfeiting operations.
OO Chief Executive Jim Jannard said, ” We take our brand and image very seriously Thanks to the effort and cooperation of numerous law enforcement agencies around the world, we have raised the profile of our anti-counterfeit programs.”
