Brand Protection & eCommerce Surveillance
- Automated AI online monitoring for 3rd party sellers
- Largest eCommerce database on existing 3rd party sellers
- Most advanced Test Purchase solutions
- Team of private investigators with over 20 years of eCommerce experience
How we're different
Majority of online companies that offer counterfeit monitoring and brand protection lack the ability to stop fraudsters from the source. Shutting down 1 store, will often lead to several more popping back up selling the same products.
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Counterfeit sellers on marketplaces have the ability to operate an unlimited amount of storefronts selling your products. Shutting down 1 of their storefronts, is only a minor inconvenience as the most sophisticated fraudsters will have 10-20 more storefronts ready to go.
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Our Solution: With 20+ years of eCommerce experience, BranPi is uniquely positioned with an existing database of sellers and suppliers to shut down groups of storefronts simultaneously. Track the location of where the counterfeit is being produced by having contacts with the largest retail manufacturers in China. Locating and getting the production shut down forces fraudsters to move away from products being aggressively monitored to other products with less monitoring.
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For counterfeiters that keep coming back, we setup sting operations hidden under the disguise of an ordinary shoppers by rotating over 200 residential shipping addresses throughout the country to make test purchases. The most sophisticated counterfeit sellers which are the ones making the majority of the money have learned to spot brand protecting companies/law firms doing test purchases. If a fraudster suspects a test purchase is being made, they will often times send an authentic product to pass initial security checks. Our method of using rotating residential addresses fools fraudsters into thinking we are just an ordinary buyer which means we will receive the counterfeit product on the first order.
What We Offer
- 24/7 AI online monitoring for all eCommerce marketplaces and standalone websites. Our software will crawl the web creating low & high risk profiles on every seller selling your products. Automatically adding existing sellers and new sellers to our existing database.
- Human lead seller investigative research and profiling, if there's a new seller selling more than a few of your products, we will have a full profile on them.
- Using our large seller databases to connect the same groups of counterfeit sellers allows us to group batch shut them down.
- Sting operations to permanently shut down the smartest networks of counterfeit sellers
- X-ray scanning using an industrial CT scanner for looking at internal components on products perfectly replicated on the exterior
- Social media education and awareness on how to safely purchase your products, including how to avoid buying fakes of your products
Most advanced
Test Purchase solutions
Counterfeit sellers operate an unlimited amount of 3rd party storefronts that use 3rd party fulfillment centers to ship their products. We don't stop at getting their 3rd party storefronts shut down, we go after the 3rd party fulfillment centers and get them permanently suspended as a merchant and have their products blacklisted.
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The current brand protecting companies and law firms that do test purchases from 3rd party sellers often lack the sophistication to track the smartest fraudsters in 2024, which are generally the most profitable. When these companies & law firms do test purchases, the address that is used for shipment is often times already flagged on the fraudsters side. Counterfeit sellers are usually smart and are frequently part of fraud networks that have information on black listed addresses used for test purchases. The smartest fraudsters will often times send an authentic real product to an address they suspect of being used as a test purchase address to give them credibility. Its very common in 2024 that a fraudster will operate for years under the idea they are a safe authorized seller, while secretly having a massive counterfeit operation. Our solution is making a regular monthly test purchases for suspicious sellers using our network of over 200+ unique residential addresses across the USA. Even the most sophisticated counterfeit sellers can be caught this way, and they have no solution to our test purchase method, as our purchase name and address is constantly changing.
The smartest counterfeit sellers continue to duplicate your products
- Every year counterfeit sellers adapt to eCommerce marketplace software security updates and get a little smarter on how to continue ripping off brands under the radar.
- Every year it gets harder to detect counterfeits and staying up to date with how fraudsters adapt is most important to stopping the flow of inauthentic products being sold online.
- Our eCommerce background and owning an SEO company, means we will continue to get inside information in the eCommerce world. With over 20 years of offering services such as product expansion, advertising and marketing we will keep observing and studying how fraudsters continue to adapt and sell counterfeits behind the scenes.
- One of the latest techniques we've observed that counterfeit sellers use involve having product packaging made overseas and then duplicating the actual product in the states, in order to bypass customs and inspections. A variation of this is also commonly seen, where they manufacture several parts of a product overseas, have them shipped to the USA in separate shipments and then assembled locally to avoid detection.
- Good counterfeit sellers can duplicate products to nearly 1:1, in some cases completely identical without any flaws. In some situations, we may use an X-ray CT scanner to look at the internal components of a product. A perfectly replicated product will always show cheaper internal components. These scans can be used to shut down sophisticated counterfeit sellers that sell perfectly duplicated products.
How counterfeit sellers get approval to sell your products
They use fake invoices to get approval to sell your products on some of the largest eCommerce marketplaces. Counterfeit sellers can become authorized distributors of your brands simply by tricking 3rd party marketplace approval services. The largest networks of counterfeit sellers have internal connections to most online marketplaces which can get them fast approval and authorization to sell any branded products, even if the brand is registered & protected.
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A brand protection company may complain about a 3rd party seller or issue them a cease and desist letter to get them shutdown or reviewed. That 3rd party seller may then provide fake invoices in combination with internal bribes, social manipulation and or internal connections to get reinstated. Once reinstated it can be harder to get that same 3rd party seller shut down as they are now considered "previously verified" under an account annotation, which means they can continue to sell your products for longer without interference.
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Being in the eCommerce niche for over 20 years has allowed us to have our own unique internal connections that are able to 2nd hand review invoices and seller brand approvals. We can request invoices and previously used approval data and run it through our AI detection software. Our software can scan hundreds of invoices to detect digital authenticity by looking at certain image metrics. With proof that invoices have been altered we have the ability to permanently shut down 3rd party illegitimate sellers. It's also common to find counterfeit sellers using real invoices which they modified with a fake buyer & seller - in these cases it requires our team of private investigators to review for authenticity. Using our existing database and network of suppliers, we can further validate invoices flagged for potential high risk sellers.
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Fake invoices and approvals on the left
Social media marketing
- We are the first ever brand protecting company that utilizes, TikTok, Instagram and X, formerly twitter, to create viral videos of "the dangers of purchasing fake products" and incorporate educational videos of "how to avoid buying fake products and how to find legitimate sources of products"
- Our viral videos will reach millions of views and impressions which will help the general public distinguish between buying products from a high risk seller and a trusted seller online.
- The counterfeit sellers success relies on providing cheaper products and taking advantage of naive people looking to save money. With increased market awareness & education via viral social media videos, we believe we can reduce the amount of counterfeit being purchased online. This is especially true for brand products that have potentially harmful fake versions, such as pet food, supplements and beauty products.
Our vision and goal
- We are eCommerce sellers with 20 years of experience, our background is primarily eCommerce. After seeing the non stop growth of inauthentic sellers online we have decided to pivot from selling retail products and team up with brands, to protect retail customers from purchasing fake products online. In the last 10 years our competitors were more often than not, counterfeit sellers. As counterfeit continued to run rampart throughout the years, we started monitoring and observing how these counterfeit sellers were operating, and how no matter how many times we reported them they continued to come back. What we learned over 10 years is that the counterfeit sellers get smarter and more sophisticated every year. Most eCommerce marketplaces have automated software and security that updates frequently to combat these counterfeit sellers, but its never enough, they continue to adapt and come back.
- Our passion is now to keep the online marketplace safe from counterfeit and harmful products. Our goal is to protect and monitor every brand we work with, using our vast knowledge in the eCommerce world.
- Our AI software will automate the initial process while our team of investigators will authenticate the potential high risk 3rd party sellers.
- Majority of counterfeit sellers will move on from products that are heavily under surveillance to products that are not closely watched. They will continue cycling through products and find new products that are not currently being monitored. Their success heavily lies on the ability to stay under the radar.
Monthly Report Packages
Package 1 includes:
- All current sellers across all major eCommerce platforms selling more than a couple of your products, updated monthly.
- Name, address, associated with, business info, and all related storefronts of the same seller
Package 2 includes:
- 3rd party sellers we have identified as potential high risk
- Name, address, associated with, business info, and all related storefronts of the same seller
For high risk sellers, you have the option to:
- Choose for us to make a test purchase
- Deeper private investigative research on where the seller is based, where they get their products, how they are duplicating your products, where they are shipping to, all other marketplaces they are selling on, distribution center information (if used).
- Shut down their 3rd party fulfillment logistics
- Shut down their 3rd party storefront(s)
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Try our 1 week Free Trial
We are so confident in our ability to sniff out and stop counterfeit sellers that we are providing a free 1 week monitoring service. We will run our AI software to crawl the web and look for suspicious 3rd party sellers selling your products. We will compile a list of storefronts, information and potential lost revenue estimates based on the information we find. We do not offer any action taken on any high risk 3rd party sellers found as the trial is only a monitor and report service.