Brazil national team t-shirt very cheap? can be fake

Black Friday, a date that has been consolidating in the calendar of promotions and retail purchases, is approaching, and according to Google research, it should be pulled by the World Cup in 2022.

For the consumer who is getting ready to look for shirts from Brazil and other items in green and yellow (clothes and accessories are in the most desired category by consumers surveyed by Google and the Ipsos Institute), it is worth redoubling care and sense: if the prices are too low, there is a risk of being a fake.

The commemorative edition of the Brazil shirt for fans produced this year by Nike, for example, the one with the jaguar print on the arms, costs R$349 on the website dedicated to this collection and at authorized retailers.

On the main ecommerce platforms, however, consumers can find dozens of ads offering the piece for less than half that price.

None explicitly says it is a replica, but a closer analysis of the details of the publication will identify, for example, that in the field destined to the brand, Nike or even CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) does not appear, for other previous versions of the canary team jerseys.

Counterfeiting is not a new problem, but the pandemic has fueled the problem with the expansion of online commerce, which has reached new consumers and new sellers.

Important steps have been taken, says Edson Vismona, president and founder of the FNCP (National Forum Against Piracy and Illegality), which gained momentum in 2019.

That year, Senacon (Secretaria Nacional do Consumidor), linked to the Ministry of Justice, published a technical note rejecting the application of the Marco Civil da Internet to marketplaces, store aggregator sites.

The platforms spent years fighting not to be framed in the Consumer Defense Code. They said that the removal of ads was impossible and that it was about freedom of expression, a provision of the Marco Civil. The pressure paid off, and today all major companies have warranty and money-back policies.

Mercado Livre, which maintains the largest ecommerce operation in Latin America, has a “guaranteed purchase”. One of the possible requirements for the consumer to use the guarantee is the suspicion of forgery. However, the platform sees this guarantee as a liberality assumed by the company, and not as an obligation.

In the relationship with brands, Mercado Livre touches on several fronts to contain pirated ads, such as the Brand Protection Program (brand protection program). There are 6,700 brand owners who have direct access to a block reporting tool.

Ricardo Lagreca, the company’s senior legal director in Brazil, says that ads taken down for violations account for about 1% of the total that is published in Latin America.

The company says it has invested $100 million in recent years in technologies that can track banned and suspicious words and learn patterns in what might be an irregular ad. For every complaint made by a human being, eight come from automation.

“There is no technology that can catch everything, but from one report to another we have reduced the volume of dropped ads by about 30%”, he says.

The brand protection program is praised by the entities representing the sporting goods (Ápice) and hygiene, perfumery and cosmetics (Abihpec) industries, precisely for facilitating and speeding up complaints.

Magazine Luiza says that stopping irregularities starts with the initial registration, which prevents access to at least 10% of those who try to use the site to sell their products.

The retailer receives complaints made by brands, has a list of prohibited terms and words and has a quality team for periodic reviews. A seller with a very low price may be asked to explain.

The director of marketplace operations at Magalu, Felipe Cohen, says that by September 10,000 sellers had received some warning. Of those, 2,000 were suspended and a little over 1,000 were banned. The sale of counterfeits is one of the requirements for expulsion. “If you can’t prove the origin, you’re out.”

Shopee, a Singapore-based marketplace, says it also bans the sale of counterfeit products. The company adhered, like the others mentioned in this report, to a guide to best practices in ecommerce, published by the National Council to Combat Piracy, by Senacon, which provides for the mandatory registration with CPF or CNPJ and the active search for illegal advertisements, pirated or not approved.

For Ápice (from the sports industry and commerce), which represents brands like Adidas, Nike, Asics and Puma, Shopee’s efforts are not enough. A survey carried out by the entity identified 17,706 sellers with counterfeit products on the platform, estimated at R$ 650 million.

“It seems that the offer of counterfeit product is part of their business model”, says Renato Jardim, executive director of the association.

The company rejects the accusation that it is benevolent with piracy. Shopee says it requires sellers to abide by rules, including a ban on ads that infringe on someone else’s intellectual property.

“We are committed to providing a safe experience and serving consumers and sellers, including many well-established global brands that have stores in our Official Shopee section.”

Via, owner of Casas Bahia and Ponto, says it maintains strict criteria for evaluating shopkeepers and products. She also signed the best practices guide and works with Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency) to combat the sale of telephone items in disagreement.

Anatel also tries to contain the offer of irregular products

On another front, Anatel has tried to stop the sale of irregular products without approval by the agency, a procedure that guarantees compliance with current technical standards. The agency says it has been meeting with leading companies to discuss improving tools that prevent irregular advertisements from being posted.

Between June and August, Anatel carried out operations in Amazon, Shopee, Casa e Vídeo and Mercado Livre distribution centers, from which 17,945 irregular products were collected, estimated at R$ 2.5 million. Amazon says it “has gathered the information in cooperation with authorities” and will take action. The others say they collaborate with Anatel.

The main targets of these operations are cell phones, chargers, powerbanks (portable chargers), smartwatches, TV boxes (streaming devices), routers, headphones, antennas and cameras.

Illegal TV boxes and signal decoders are a headache for pay-TV companies, which estimate a loss of R$ 15.5 billion a year, of which R$ 2.2 billion are evaded taxes.

ABTA (Pay TV Association) maintains a monitoring and reporting center. As of September, the association says it has identified and reported 40,000 advertisements on marketplaces. About 38,000 were knocked down.

In the electronics industry, cell phones are the most counterfeited. Abinee estimates that about 10% of the market is made up of phones sold irregularly.

These products arrive in Brazil, says Luiz Claudio Carneiro, director of mobile devices at Abinee (an association for the Electric and Electronics industry), via marketplaces, via import. They are small stores that buy in Paraguay and then sell on intermediation sites. Another small portion reaches the consumer directly, via importation, generally from China.

The competitive advantage is the price. “If the officer costs R$100, one of these irregulars costs R$60”, he says. “The 40% difference is precisely what regular companies spend with tax burden and regulatory cost”.

The sector does not have an estimate of the impact of these negotiations for the industry, but points out that about R$ 4 billion in taxes are not collected each year.