OVERVIEW
JML (John Mills Limited) is one of the UK’s leading consumer products company and a world leader in the retail video screen promotions and TV home shopping. They have a diverse range of products in many of the biggest retailers throughout the UK and Ireland and an international presence in over 70 countries worldwide.
However, as is often the case with successful brands, JML found themselves in a constant battle to remove counterfeit products from online marketplaces. When their internal efforts became too difficult, time consuming, and costly, they searched for an effective solution.
Company Profile
Founded in 1986, JML began as a small family-run company, delivering live demonstrations of innovative products at consumer exhibitions.
After successfully trialing end-of-aisle video promotions in third party retail shops, the company expanded into consumer selling. Fast forward thirty years and JML is now a household name and world leader in retail screen promotions and TV home shopping, with an international presence in over 70 countries worldwide.
Counterfeit Challenges
JML was looking for a solution that would help them to enforce against counterfeit goods being sold under the JML brand, as well as by third-party affiliates.
In recent years, the way that these products are imported and sold in the UK has changed dramatically, due to the power of the internet and online market places.
In 2016, online shoppers in the UK spent more than £130 billion1, up from £114 billion in 20152. The growth of online sales channels from websites to marketplaces to social media have provided criminals multiple avenues through which to distribute counterfeit and grey market goods.
JML had dedicated significant resources to manually search the internet to identify marketplaces listings that were infringing on their intellectual property rights. However, the fast proliferation of online marketplaces, combined with increasingly shrewd illicit traders meant that undertaking this task internally was becoming increasingly difficult to manage and economically impractical.
The OpSec Solution
OpSec devised a tailored solution for JML utilizing the Online Insight® platform to provide online marketplace and voucher-site monitoring, as well as enforcement services. JML staff and their OpSec dedicated account manager conduct regular reviews to align product focus with television advertising schedules.
OpSec’s marketplace monitoring solution provides JML with round-the-clock brand protection insights into the online sales activity occurring on hundreds of global e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Taobao, AliExpress and more.
Sophisticated web-scraping combined with manual risk assessment analysis helps to uncover illegitimate sales adversely affecting JML’s brand distribution strategy and revenues.
By providing a user-friendly web interface and dashboard analytics, OpSec delivers actionable intelligence and measures the ongoing success of the brand protection program. OpSec’s team of experienced enforcement analysts react to Online Insight data by conducting fast and effective take-downs of both marketplace listings and sellers.
Results
JML’s partnership with OpSec quickly made a significant reduction in the number of counterfeit and infringing online marketplace listings. In the first year of the program, OpSec located and removed 7,796 listings, with a combined value of £25 billion*. Additionally, OpSec removed 4,025 sellers from various marketplaces.
By providing such a comprehensive online brand protection solution, JML staff are able to spend more time concentrating on building their brand globally.
Since enlisting the help of OpSec, JML have seen a huge improvement in the amount of online counterfeit activity. They have helped us in ways that would never have been possible using the manual resources in house.
Stacie McKendrickProduct Trials Manager, JML
Having a dedicated account manager really adds to the personal touch and the fact that they are from a brand protection background means that they really understand our needs as a business.
Study References
1. https://www.imrg.org/media-and-comment/press-releases/uk-online-sales-in-2016/
2. http://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2016/01/ps114bn-spent-online-in-2015/
* Listing value obtained by multiplying product item value by sellers stated volume availability