After conducting raids in China and Dubai that turned up more than 55,000 boxes of counterfeit parts made for its products, (NYSE:XRX) this year became one of a growing group of IT vendors to rev up its anti-counterfeiting efforts.
And the scary part, according to Xerox, is that those 55,000 boxes, which were slated for distribution in the U.S., Germany, Netherlands, Turkey, Russia, Brazil and South America, are just a drop in the bucket, given the size, and continued growth, of the counterfeit market within the printing and imaging industry.
“Globally, the size of the counterfeit market is reported to be between $3.5 billion and $4 billion. And that’s just within our industry sector,” said Kevin Weaver, vice president of Brand Protection at Xerox, citing research from The Imaging Supplies Coalition. “And do we expect it to increase? Yes, we do.”
To help curb that growth, Norwalk, Conn.-based Xerox in May introduced the Genuine Xerox Rewards program, which rewards customers for validating the authenticity of their Xerox products online.
“It’s not unlike a frequent flier program, where you sign up and every time you fly you get points equivalent to the number of miles you have flown,” explained Christian Redder, marketing manager at Xerox. “If you get a Xerox printer, you register the printer — which means you effectively sign up for the program — and we start you out with 1,000 points.”