Emerging domestic products are heavily affected by counterfeiting, with nearly 2000 complaints from Huaxizi about counterfeiting in a month and widespread circulation on live streaming platforms

Throughout history, counterfeiting gangs have been the number one public enemy of major international brands of cosmetics and consumers. Now, this black industry has also begun to target emerging domestic brands.
On July 16th, a reporter from the Daily Economic News learned from the emerging domestic makeup brand Huaxizi that it had teamed up with the public security organs to destroy a major counterfeit hideout in a city in Zhejiang. This operation has sealed one store and two warehouses, involving tens of thousands of well-known domestic and international cosmetics brands such as Huaxizi, SK-II, Dior, Est é e Lauder, MAC, etc., with a value of up to ten million yuan in counterfeit cases.
However, even if there are frequent anti counterfeiting actions, "repeated bans and offenses" may be called the norm of cosmetics counterfeiting. According to information on the official website of the National Medical Products Administration, it has announced four times this year that it has stopped selling 237 batches of counterfeit cosmetics, involving multiple well-known brands. In March of this year, Huaxizi officially released recruitment information for "high paying anti-counterfeiting officers" to the outside world. In the month of its chief anti-counterfeiting officer's official application (June), Huaxizi had already complained about nearly 2000 counterfeit information and filed more than 300 lawsuits on various e-commerce platforms.
From the perspective of the industry, the spread of fake goods has seriously harmed the healthy development of the cosmetics industry. With the popularity of cutting-edge Chinese goods and the rise of live broadcast e-commerce, Xiaohongshu, Tiktok and other channels have become the hardest hit areas for the circulation of fake goods, and repeated criminals have been banned. In addition to enterprises and consumers, the Internet platform should work closely to combat fake goods.
According to sources related to Huaxizi, at the beginning of this year, during the process of investigating counterfeit goods, Huaxizi discovered that someone in a certain city in Zhejiang Province was producing and selling counterfeit and inferior Huaxizi products. Therefore, Huaxizi reported to the police. The police received a report and carried out a series of preliminary investigations, quickly identifying counterfeit dens, and launched a crackdown operation at 2pm on July 14th.
For both brands and consumers, it is common to encounter counterfeit cosmetics. In recent years, with the popularity of domestic cosmetics, there is a strong trend for criminals to spread their counterfeiting of cosmetics to emerging domestic brands.
According to Huaxizi, as early as May 2019, counterfeit products highly similar to "Huaxizi" products were discovered in multiple channels on the market. Some are directly high imitation counterfeit goods, comprehensively counterfeiting, from product packaging boxes to page visual and other aspects of counterfeit products, and even forging the official seal and brand authorization letter of Huaxizi's affiliated company, counterfeiting anti-counterfeiting inspection websites, which belong to long-term deliberate one-stop counterfeiting and sales.
Another form of counterfeiting is counterfeit brands, which involve trademark infringement and product plagiarism. These trademarks, product packaging, page visuals, etc. use extremely similar designs to mislead consumers, while counterfeiting and plagiarizing product design, craftsmanship, visual materials, copy, etc., and even using spokespersons for promotion and publicity.
In the industry's view, emerging domestic beauty brands have a rapid development momentum and personalized products, becoming objects of counterfeiting and counterfeiting by criminals. In fact, the more explosive a product is, the easier it is to attract the attention of counterfeiters, because this type of product has already gathered a large number of fans and is widely known to consumers, eliminating the cost of promoting and promoting counterfeiters. And these counterfeit goods with unknown origin are highly likely to be "three no" products, which bring serious skin problems to consumers, such as allergies, whole face ulcers, etc.
Bronze Capital Liu Yarong once told a reporter from the Daily Economic News that beauty is an industry with low entry barriers, but it is very difficult to establish brand awareness and form a brand moat, which is "easy to defend but difficult to attack". However, in the early stages of establishing a brand, the difficulty of ****** lies in establishing brand mentality and cognition for the entire emerging Chinese brand.
When domestic cosmetics first emerged, counterfeit cosmetics entered the market in a way that deceived consumers, which also became a major challenge for the healthy development of domestic cosmetics.
In addition to the continuous improvement of counterfeit technology, the circulation market of counterfeit goods is also spreading across all channels. Xiaohongshu, Tiktok and some emerging e-commerce live broadcast platforms are also becoming new circulation positions for fake goods while catalyzing the emergence of new domestic brands. Nowadays, a large number of fake cosmetics are entering the market in the form of "full blossom" online and offline.
"At present, in 1688, Pinduoduo, Taobao, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Tiktok and other channels, there are different forms of fake goods, and they are repeatedly prohibited. A fake link is complained of being deleted, and it may appear in another way in another place." The relevant responsible person of Huaxizi's crackdown on fake goods believes that the spread of fake goods has seriously harmed the healthy development of the cosmetics industry, Internet platforms should work closely together to combat counterfeit goods.
Taking the counterfeit goods dens that Huaxizi and the police jointly dismantled as an example, the area where the dens are located has thousands of shops, which are supply and distribution centers for various new sales forms such as live streaming, micro commerce, e-commerce, group buying, and physical stores.
For short video platforms, the vast content ecosystem is a reflection of platform diversity. But the frequent occurrence of counterfeit goods also requires the formation of a new platform supervision system.
It is worth mentioning that on June 29th, the State Council announced the new "Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Cosmetics" (hereinafter referred to as the "New Regulations"), which will come into effect on January 1, 2021. This is the first update in 30 years since the implementation of China's Cosmetic Hygiene Supervision Regulations in 1990. The new regulations have been revised in various aspects such as legislative concepts, regulatory methods, and legal responsibilities, and have been evaluated as opening a new chapter in cosmetics regulation in the digital economy era.
The new regulations clearly stipulate that e-commerce platform operators shall register their real names for cosmetic operators on the platform and assume management responsibilities for cosmetic operators on the platform. Operators selling cosmetics on e-commerce platforms should also disclose comprehensive, truthful, accurate, and timely information about the cosmetics they operate. At the same time, if the e-commerce platform discovers that cosmetic operators on the platform have violated the provisions of the Regulations, it should promptly stop and report to the drug regulatory department in the region where the e-commerce platform operator is located; If serious illegal behavior is discovered, platform services should be immediately stopped.
Huaxizi stated that due to the difficulty in verifying the source of counterfeiting, coupled with the huge interests driving it, even in the face of illegal risks, many "small workshops" still take risks, leading to the proliferation of counterfeit products in cosmetics, and the situation of cracking down on counterfeits is very severe. This is a common problem faced by the entire industry. In addition to enterprises, it is even more necessary for multiple parties to jointly implement stronger anti-counterfeiting measures, so that counterfeit goods have nowhere to hide. At the same time, we should also alert consumers, cultivate a sense of authenticity, and jointly crack down on the illegal and criminal activities of producing and selling counterfeit goods.