Testimonials

Particularly in China where online shopping is thriving, when a hairstylist recommends a certain product to a customer in a beauty salon, the customer often takes a picture of that product and purchases it online on site.
Our “salon-only products” are an important factor supporting our brand, and our subsidiary Milbon Shanghai was in charge of dealing with counterfeit goods and, upon discovering a site selling counterfeit goods, took measures such as warning the site or requesting the site to delete the counterfeit goods. Nevertheless, since Milbon Shanghai basically consists of sales reps and does not have a legal department, there were limits in the measures that it can take in terms of human resources and know-how, and we were unable to suppress the ever-growing sales of counterfeit goods on ecommerce sites.
Furthermore, products being sold on auction sites could also be counterfeit goods, and it is difficult to grasp the actual conditions only with online information. Counterfeit goods not only diminish the brand value, they may also result in health problems, and we took legal action such as issuing a warning each time we discovered counterfeit goods.

In the Chinese cosmetics industry, there are numerous cases where a company’s sales take a deep dive due to counterfeit goods and, in a worst case scenario, the company is forced to withdraw from the Chinese market, and we also decided that it is imperative to take aggressive measures in addition to preventing the sales of counterfeit goods on ecommerce sites. Which is when we started using the online monitoring service provided by a certain foreign company.
Unfortunately, however, we were dissatisfied with this company’s service. The main reason is because this company only took action within the framework of their routine service, and did not take measures according to our specific circumstances and policies. Our impression was that this company did not have any employee who was familiar with the laws of China, and the results did not meet our expectations in terms of cost-effectiveness. After cancelling this company’s service, we once again considered how to proceed, and decided to introduce IP FORWARD’s online protection service.

I also feel that the members of IP FORWARD have a deep understanding of the characteristics of our products and brands. There is no doubt that they are carefully studying our brochures and brand regulation materials that we provided, and their understanding of our products and brands is continuously improving. There was a recent case where one of the members discovered that the product is counterfeit since the angle of the print on the package was slightly off in the product image uploaded on an ecommerce site.
Even our employees who are more familiar with our own products than anyone else didn’t notice, and were genuinely surprised. Currently, IP FORWARD has achieved an astonishing deletion rate of 97%. This demonstrates IP FORWARD’s ability to accurately pick out counterfeit goods.

IP FORWARD is our strong partner in protecting our “salon-only products” brand in foreign countries.
We hope to continue communicating with our person in charge to implement sophisticated and effective anti-counterfeiting measures, and ask for IP FORWARD’s continued cooperation with our meetings and training sessions related to our existing brands as well as new brands.
We will continue to promote the global distribution of our products, which will require the protection of our brands on a global scale. For instance, when our products are distributed to Germany and other European countries, there have been cases where our products get passed down to Russia and Ukraine. We hope that IP FORWARD will continue to offer high quality services in various countries by coordinating with professionals familiar with local legal practice as in China.