Are all authentic products legal? Between black and white there’s grey. Ok, the product sold is authentic, but does that automatically mean that it’s legal? Actually not. Not certainly, at least.
The Grey market – sometimes legal, often not.
The Grey market is another name for parallel imports, where genuine products are traded in ways that were unintended. Unintended by the trademark owner or by authorities. Still legally, sometimes, but often not. When we talk grey market, we often talk pharmaceuticals, but it may well apply to other industries as well.
A pharma example
A costly drug gets subsidized to enable a poor country to curb an epidemic. Big volumes get bought in that poor country at the subsidized price by shady entrepreneurs who ship the wares to other countries to sell them there at the local, higher price. It’s still a genuine product, but the subsidy is cashed in by the parallel importer instead of benefiting the population of the poor country as intended. It could also be the case of circumventing rules on dosage, packaging, or approvals for pharmaceuticals to be sold at all in certain markets.
These are some of the classical examples of grey market trading, but those crooks are inventive. Wherever there's a possibility to earn an extra margin if your conscience is "elastic" they will show up.
There's help around!
“Can Blue Cromos help us in dealing with the grey market?” you may wonder. “Of course, we can!” is the answer. A key step in authenticating products is identification, quite naturally. Once identified, tracking becomes much easier of where the product was sold and on which conditions.
An added digital value to your physical product made possible through authentication with isAuthentic
We're the ones cutting the edge
At Blue Cromos, we don't add fancy labels. We don't add "magic" ink. Nor do we add any transmitters of any kind. We do product authentication like nobody else, using our patented fingerprinting technology. We're cutting the edge of technology to make life easy for you.
Curious? Get in touch!
Do you want to learn more about how isAuthentic can help you fight the counterfeiters? Just get in touch here
Image by Dan Asaki via Unsplash