Our economy has been impacted to the tune of $1.3B in 2015 alone by a steady flood of imported counterfeit goods, about 90% produced in China, where international trademark protections don’t exist. Common knock-off products seized by US Customs range from apparel with fake name-brand labels, at a quality far below their authentic counterparts, to fake electronics and auto parts, which may be flat-out dangerous. Manufacturers initially used holographic labels and other visual distinctions to authenticate their genuine merchandise against knock-offs, but a determined imitator can eventually create even passable facsimile holograms. [1]

Smaller RFID Tag Sizes, Bigger Results

A stronger deterrent against product counterfeiting is rapidly emerging: RFID tagging. Tiny RFID tags encoded with a scannable Electronic Product Code (EPC) can now be permanently embedded into apparel products, even woven into textiles, to clearly identify real items against the fakes. An individualized EPC represents a hidden digital fingerprint the counterfeiters can’t replicate. Designer brand Fendi was one of the first high-end brands to introduce RFID tagging as part of their product authentication. Luxury outerwear maker Moncler now includes RFID tagging into their products, which the consumer can verify for themselves via a smartphone app. [2]

After a similar introduction of RFID microchips into their high-end shoes and leather products, fashion brand Salvatore Ferragamo successfully thwarted almost 25K China-replicated products from reaching the open market. We recently saw an exciting presentation for the SHIELD Project of Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), another leading-edge RFID anti-counterfeiting application designed to protect government agencies from purchasing bogus or used electronics components. DARPA plans to work with contractors to develop an embedded RFID chip about the size of Lincoln’s head on a penny. [3]

The program’s goals include the chip’s ability to detect and record telltale data such as extreme temperature changes, which typically occur during a remanufacturing process. With so few other viable countermeasures to stem the rising tide of foreign product counterfeiting, analysts consider the future of RFID tagging to be bright. Visiongate expects RFID innovations to propel the anti-counterfeit packaging market to generate over $18B in global revenue in 2016. A 2015 report released by Intense Research predicts the market for similar anti-counterfeiting products for the electronics/auto industry alone to swell to $24.2B by 2020. [4]

Backed by 40 Years of Expertise

We contribute our 40 years of design and manufacturing expertise spanning multiple diverse markets. We look forward to discussing how we can deliver world-class products for OEMs across the globe. We understand our home Indian market, familiar with its vast regulatory and selling environments. We foster growth opportunities within India through our strong technology incubation ecosystem. We also assist global OEMs in entering the Indian market by leveraging the local supply chain and favorable operating environments for cost reductions.

Our flagship Chennai location opened in 2006 and lies within a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for electronics manufacturing, offering economic incentives for imports and exports. This primary facility is within 90 minutes of the Chennai seaport and 20 minutes to the international airport. Additional road and rail connectivity links to the rest of India and beyond and infrastructure advantages with faster import and export clearances. We also have labor force flexibility, both technical and manual, to scale to demand rapidly.

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