Where is the original?

Counterfeiters make 600 billion US dollars every year with sales of plagiarised products according to International Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates. What’s more, this trend is on the increase. Counterfeits detract from a brand-name company’s image and reduce its profits. In extreme cases, where drugs or car spare parts are involved, they endanger end customers’ lives or physical well-being. Effective protection measures are therefore essential for brand-name companies to prevent counterfeit products from infiltrating their supply chains. This is achieved by making product authenticity clearly visible to everybody. It is here where standard logistics requirements converge with brand protection needs. Logistics specialists need to be able to track the precise route each product takes, from the manufacturer through to the distribution partner. Brand protection specialists, on the other hand, need to be able to distinguish swiftly and reliably between genuine articles and counterfeit copies as well as identify grey market goods.

tesa scribos GmbH, a specialist in brand protection and product identification, has developed tesa® trust & trace, a concept which unites product tracking and proof of authenticity. The core component is a physically secured code. Each product is assigned an individual code and is equipped with a counterfeit-proof identification label such as the tesa Holospot®. This label stores information over several levels, which can be read, in turn, with the naked eye, with a magnifying glass, or exclusively by a reading device. This means security is applied directly onto the product or packaging, enabling its authenticity to be instantly verified and the product itself to be efficiently traced.

The tesa® trust & trace concept can be easily integrated into existing logistics processes. Goods tracking systems based on barcodes, 2D matrix codes or RFID and NFC technology are simply integrated into brand protection. It is thus possible, for instance, to register products on an individual basis during production and associate them with a transport packing code when they are packed and later link the packaging with an RFID pallet label. Orders can be assigned to individual pallets and traced by incorporating additional IT systems, such as SAP or customs and excise databases. In this way, tesa® trust & trace provides reliable data for quality control and recall campaigns in logistics systems. The advantages for brand protection are also self-evident. All parties in the logistics process as well as customs and excise officers, distribution partners and end consumers can establish a product’s authenticity at any time.

In practice, this link between brand protection and goods tracking represents savings. For instance, Zambak, a leading Turkish publisher of children’s books, school text books and pre-school books uses tesa scribos technology to ensure greater control over its distribution structures. The publisher noticed that some of its contracted dealers were selling books outside their sales areas, an activity which constituted a breach in their contracts. The tesa scribos identification system now enables Zambak to trace the distribution channel for each individual product. This results in greater transparency and fewer breaches of contract.

Continental’s Independent Aftermarket Division also uses this interconnection between brand protection and goods tracking to increase customer loyalty in its car spare parts operations. Consumers can verify product codes, which tesa scribos has entered into a database, over the Internet and thus reaffirm their trust in authenticity and the brand.

With its new tesa® trust and trace concept, tesa scribos® is broadening its range of security solutions. In addition to strategy advisory, this range also features an extensive portfolio of cutting edge security and application technologies. Such technologies include tesa Holospot® for optimum counterfeit protection und traceability, tesa® Code Seal for security in mass markets, the tesa® SecuritySeal range, with adhesive tapes and labels which show when packaging has been tampered with, and the printing of security labels tailored to clients’ needs.