A test purchase delivers critical evidence in the fight against counterfeiters. It enables brands to gather concrete proof of infringements, verify the authenticity of products, and take decisive action against scammers and cybercriminals. While the concept may seem straightforward, executing an effective test purchase strategy demands time, resources, and expertise, so let’s get into it.   

In this article, we’ll explore how a test purchase works, its pros and cons, and the role it plays in intelligence and investigation strategies that protect your brand.  

What are Test Purchases, and Why Do They Matter? 

Picture this: you discover a suspicious listing on Amazon. The seller offers your product at a fraction of the price, and you don’t recognize them as an authorized reseller. What’s your next step? Without concrete evidence, it’s hard to take decisive action. To gather the required evidence, you may need to make a test purchase.   

A test purchase involves buying the product in question to verify its authenticity. Once the product arrives, you carefully inspect it for signs of counterfeiting, such as poor quality, missing branding, or incorrect packaging. This process not only confirms whether the product is fake but also provides the evidence you need to take legal action, enforce reseller policies, or request platform takedowns.   

The Complexities of Test Purchases

Test purchases offer undeniable benefits for brands looking to protect their intellectual property and revenue. One of the most significant advantages lies in its ability to provide irrefutable physical evidence. Whether you build a case for litigation or submit a takedown request to an online marketplace, having a material counterfeit product in hand strengthens your position. Additionally, a test purchase helps you identify the source of counterfeit goods, supporting broader enforcement actions against manufacturers and distributors.  These kinds of insights lay the foundations for the next steps in your enforcement actions, including litigation and physical raids that bring counterfeiters and infringers to justice. 

However, the tactic also presents drawbacks and challenges. Firstly, it requires you to give a small amount of money to the scammers themselves, funding their operation. This sacrifice, however frustrating, ultimately delivers the evidence you need to take them down.  

Beyond that, an effective test purchase requires significant time and resources. You must identify suspicious listings, place orders, and meticulously document each step of the process. Throughout this process, buyers must remain anonymous and avoid detection by the seller, otherwise they might switch out their usual counterfeits for legitimate products, or cancel the sale altogether. For businesses with limited internal capacity, this process overwhelms even the most dedicated teams. Counterfeiters often operate across multiple platforms and regions, making it difficult to scale test purchase efforts without support. Gathering the right evidence means negotiating with the complexity of regional differences and local expertise on a global scale. 

How Test Purchases Fit into Comprehensive Brand Protection Strategies 

While a test purchase proves powerful, the tactic represents just one piece of the puzzle. A truly effective Online Brand Protection strategy combines a test purchase with advanced detection tools, legal expertise, and enforcement capabilities.   

For example, innovative monitoring tools can scan platforms like Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop, and even standalone webstores for suspicious activity. Once you identify potential counterfeiters, you can use a test purchase to verify the infringement. From there, legal teams can take action, whether they send cease-and-desist letters, file lawsuits, or work with law enforcement.   

This multi-layered approach ensures that you not only detect counterfeiters but also take decisive action to stop them.   

Why Most Brands Cannot Do It Alone 

The reality is that most businesses lack the time and resources to manage a test purchase and broader Online Brand Protection. Identifying counterfeiters, conducting a test purchase without being noticed, and pursuing legal action requires a complex and time-consuming process. Successful test purchases even require buyers to go undercover, and conduct covert communications with the seller to coordinate the delivery. This illicit back-and-forth requires far too much time for a busy, product-focussed brand manager. For some, you need also to register yourself in the portal of the counterfeiters, which presents serious obstacles for business-to-business test purchases. Brand managers may not want to register and contact details or login information with the counterfeiters themselves, thereby requiring third-party support to gather the “smoking gun,” infringement-wise.  

This is where partnering with a comprehensive OBP service proves invaluable. These services combine cutting-edge detection tools with seasoned investigators and legal experts, ensuring that every step—from a test purchase to litigation—is handled efficiently and effectively.   

Conclusion: Take Action to Protect Your Brand 

Counterfeiters and scammers pose a persistent threat, but with the right tools and strategies, you can protect your brand and revenue. B2B or B2C test purchases serve as a critical component of this effort, providing the evidence you need to enforce your rights and take action against bad actors.   

However, managing a test purchase and broader Online Brand Protection efforts can feel overwhelming. That’s why partnering with experts who handle the heavy lifting for you becomes essential.   

Ready to take the next step? Start with a free brand audit to uncover counterfeiters and scammers exploiting your brand. And if you need offline investigation support, get in touch with Arkadiusz, a seasoned counterfeit investigator, to strengthen your enforcement efforts.   

Don’t let counterfeiters damage your brand—act now to secure your reputation and your revenue. 

The post Test Purchases: The Proof Is in the Package appeared first on EBRAND.

Ultimately, infringers combine online tactics (fake online shops, social media profiles and ads, and grey market listings), with offline logistics (stealing from manufacturers, infiltrating supply lines, shipping goods across borders). Effective anti-counterfeiting and grey market therefore require offline counterparts to your online efforts, to finally protect your brand and stop the infringers. Here, we’ll explore the importance of offline investigations, and how to implement a strategy that takes the issue’s full scope into account. 

How online counterfeiters exploit offline networks

Damaging operations often form vast, highly organized networks. These networks operate with one goal and several means to achieve it: generating revenue by selling fake goods. To achieve these goals, they’ll stop at nothing, executing targeted attacks on both physical and digital fronts. Tactics of counterfeiters typically include factory break-ins, counterfeit production lines, and large-scale smuggling campaigns. Once they secure their materials, counterfeiters use them to fuel fake webshop operations. Their social media scam campaigns also sell stolen goods or knockoffs.  

This dual approach combines offline theft, grey markets, and counterfeiting with online distribution. Integrating their tactics allows infringers to infiltrate legitimate markets while evading detection. Each link of complexity in their supply and distribution chain makes them harder to detect and harder to bring to justice. Infringers span continents to exploit weaknesses in global trade. 

One striking example involves counterfeiters directly targeting legitimate factories where thieves broke into a Chanel factory in Milan. They stole 30,000 serial number cards during the middle of the night, which Chanel had earmarked to authenticate its products. The cards, along with holograms, verify the authenticity of luxury items. Counterfeiters later used the stolen serial numbers to produce fake goods which could pass as genuine, undermining brand integrity. The theft highlighted how counterfeiters infiltrate legitimate production systems, flooding both physical and digital markets with convincing fakes. 

Smuggling, grey markets, and the global supply chain

Beyond factory thefts, counterfeiters rely on sophisticated smuggling operations. They exploit global shipping networks to distribute fake goods. According to the OECD, containerships transport 56% of the total value of seized counterfeits, and major ports in East Asia serve as key hubs. These networks move counterfeit goods through complex logistics chains, often concealing fakes within legitimate shipments. Their evolving tactics make it difficult for anti-counterfeiting authorities to detect and intercept fakes on the open market. Clearly, robust offline investigations complement digital enforcement efforts for comprehensive anti-counterfeiting coverage. 

Online Brand Protection solutions play a critical role in tackling these trends across digital landscapes. However, brands must also address the physical logistics of counterfeiting and parallel trade distribution networks. Digital monitoring tools identify suspicious online listings, and investigators then verify the origin and distribution of these goods. Crucially, Online Brand Protection helps address the influx of small packages, while supply chain data delivers the tools and insights to tackle larger shipments. By integrating online and offline strategies, brands and authorities can disrupt the entire counterfeiting chain.  

How to fight back against counterfeits and grey markets

Counterfeit networks operate on a scale that many businesses find overwhelming. These operations don’t just push fake products online; they run like professional businesses, complete with customer service teams, supply chains, and even quality control measures. Their operations seem seamless, shifting between online platforms and physical distribution channels, making them difficult to track and disrupt.    

Ultimately, they are sophisticated, but by no means unstoppable. With the right strategies and a dedicated team, businesses can dismantle counterfeit supply chains and reclaim lost revenue. Combining online brand protection with on-the-ground investigative services, companies eliminate uncertainty and take direct action against counterfeiters.   

Revenue recovery is not just about enforcement. It’s also about ensuring that businesses regain control over their brand, their market share, and their customer trust. A strong anti-counterfeiting approach integrates both digital monitoring and physical investigations, allowing brands to track, trace, and shut down counterfeit operations at every stage of the supply chain.   

Here are three key strategies to fight back against counterfeit, but also grey market / parallel trade, networks:  

Online investigations

Online investigations form the backbone of modern brand protection efforts. They leverage vast amounts of open-source intelligence (OSINT) to track illicit networks. By analyzing digital footprints, investigators identify key players in illicit operations, map out online supply chains, and uncover hidden connections between online sellers and physical distribution hubs.  

That being said, digital intelligence alone is not enough. Criminal networks operate across both online and offline spaces, requiring a broader approach. By integrating OSINT with intelligence on exporters, importers, and intermediaries, investigators gain a clearer picture of how counterfeit or grey market goods move from exporters to global markets. This combination of digital forensics and traditional investigative techniques ensures that enforcement actions are not only reactive. They also work proactively, disrupting bad actors at their source. Online investigations, and the results that follow, deliver valuable revenue recovery, wresting ecommerce finances from the hands of criminals back to their rightful owners. 

Test purchases

A crucial tactic in anti-counterfeiting efforts, test purchases help verify the authenticity of products and expose grey market supply chains. By acquiring suspect goods from online marketplaces, social media vendors, and even physical storefronts, investigators gather direct evidence. This method provides also insight into packaging, labelling, and distribution methods. 

In many cases, test purchases reveal links between online sellers and large-scale grey market operators. For instance, a test purchase from an online marketplace may lead to a brick-and-mortar distributor supplying identical products. By conducting test purchases across multiple regions, investigators can map the scope of an operation and trace goods back to their origin. This approach strengthens legal actions and enhances enforcement measures, ensuring that both digital and physical networks are dismantled. 

Offline investigations in anti-counterfeiting and grey markets

While online monitoring provides critical intelligence, on-the-ground investigations offer unparalleled insights into production and distribution. Field investigators visit suspect locations, including manufacturing sites, warehouses, and physical retail outlets, to confirm illicit activity and gather actionable intelligence. 

These investigations often reveal hidden supply routes, identify key players within counterfeit networks, and expose connections that digital analysis alone cannot uncover. By coordinating with law enforcement, customs agencies, and industry experts, investigators. document evidence firsthand. This supports targeted enforcement actions such as raids, seizures, and factory shutdowns. The ability to physically verify and disrupt counterfeit supply chains ensures a comprehensive anti-counterfeiting approach that extends beyond digital monitoring. 

What’s next? Integrating your brand protection

Counterfeiting networks and grey market goods operations obstruct your revenue, damage brand integrity, and erode customer trust.  

If you’re ready to take action, start with a free brand audit to uncover how bad actors are targeting your business online. Get in touch with Arkadiusz, our Director of Intelligence and Investigations, to see how we can work together to prioritize revenue recovery, stop counterfeiters, grey market and parallel traders, while protecting your brand—and your clients—with effective strategies. 

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