At first glance, the kids' Olympic T-shirts on sale at Liquidation World outlets across the country might have come directly from their designers and exclusive retailers, Please Mum.
The familiar 2010 inukshuk logo was emblazoned on the front of the colourful shirts, precisely as patterned by the Canadian children's wear company.
But the paltry $5 price tag was a giveaway, not to mention the lack of an official 2010 Olympic label and hologram.
The shirts were fakes, and the brand police of the 2010 Winter Olympics pounced.
Within days, the purported Olympic apparel was gone, ordered off the shelves by store officials who said they had no idea they were selling counterfeit goods.
Bill Cooper, director of commercial rights for local Games organizers, pointed to the incident as a "significant win for us" in the organization's stepped-up struggle to combat a rising tide of phony merchandise as the Games near.
"The threat is real. We are seeing a growing number of cases," Mr. Cooper told a national anti-counterfeiting conference here Thursday.
"[Olympic counterfeiting] is happing in significant numbers.
"It's happening in great variety ... and it's national in scale. It isn't beyond what we planned for, but those trends are definitely happening."
More than 30,000 fake Olympic items have been uncovered and seized to date, mostly clothing, but also glassware, mugs, key chains, pins and even official 2010 maple syrup, Mr. Cooper said.
Customs officials have confiscated several shipments of counterfeit products at the border, while others were discovered by what the VANOC official called "our eyes and ears across
VANOC has called on anti-counterfeiting specialists Kestenberg Siegal Lipkus for assistance in its battle to ferret out fakes.
"We are doing regular sweeps across the country ... from
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As well, too many unauthorized sales could eat into the $500-million VANOC expects to reap from Olympic-branded merchandise and harm its 41 official licensees, who have paid for the right to market official 2010 products.
Please Mum vice-president Stephen Lee said the presence of copy-cat goods at Liquidation World was a shock to the 20-year-old Vancouver-based firm, which has about 80 stores across
The fake, $5 Olympic T-shirts were very crude counterfeits of children's wear that Please Mum sells for $24, Mr. Lee said. "It looked the same, but the quality was poor. When you see something like that up against your brand, it's disheartening."
He said the theft ripping off of its Olympic design was a first for the company. "They say copycatting is the sincerest form of flattery, but that sure doesn't make it very exclusive."
Liquidation World president Seth Marks said the retail chain in no way condones the sale of counterfeit goods. "We take the matter very seriously. When we found out about this [from VANOC], we immediately recalled all that merchandise off the floor."
Mr. Marks said the company accepted the T-shirts in good faith from a long-time supplier, without knowing they were unauthorized.
Liquidation World is pursuing legal action against the supplier, which Mr. Marks would not name. "We had never had a problem with them before, so we are extremely disappointed."
He said only several thousand Olympic T-shirts were put on sale "but whether it's one or a million pieces, that's not what we're all about."
Mr. Cooper said no criminal charges have been laid in any of the 40 or so seizures of merchandise with unauthorized Olympic logos, with VANOC preferring to work out private settlements with offenders.
He added that no one has been able to track any counterfeit goods to their original source. Much of the trade in fakes comes from-offshore, Mr. Cooper said. "Typically, in the counterfeit industry, there are many layers."
SOURCE: http://www.ctvolympics.ca/
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