Almost Euro 2 billion in counterfeit goods and a direct impact on the sector’s employment rate of 15,000 jobs. These are the effects of counterfeiting in the European goldjewellery sector, according to the latest figured from Indicam. The overall damage caused by counterfeiting in the gold-jewellery field is estimated at about €3.5 billion Euros, while damage due to tax evasion comes to about 600 million Euros.
In Italy, the damage is calculated as €400 million Euros on total sales (equal to 20.5%) and as a loss of 3,500 jobs – a record that our country claims in relation to the other members of the European Union.
These are just some of the data regarding the question of counterfeiting that will be discussed on the last day of VOICE, Vicenzaoro International Community Event, the show organized by Italian Exhibition Group and the jewellery industry’s first event since the lockdown.
The COVID-19 crisis has caused an ongoing trend to accelerate in the gold and jewellery sector, as in the entire national economic system: the digitization process. And although a shift from “physical to analogical” leads to numerous opportunities, it is necessary to be just as aware of the challenges that this unprecedented reality involves. Challenges that are sometimes totally new while, in other cases, are merely the simple repositioning of already familiar phenomena such as counterfeiting – which is now occurring in the digital dimension just as it has up to now in the physical.
On September 14th, Mario Peserico, President of Assorologi and CEO of Eberhard, and Dody Giussani, Editor-in-Chief of L’Orologio, analysed the theme of online counterfeiting – never more topical than now – during the conference entitled “Online anticounterfeiting, tools and strategies.” Peserico and Giussani were also able to count on valuable contributions from Brigadier General Renzo Nisi, Commander of the Financial Police’s Special Assets and Services Squad; Laurence Morel-Chevillet, IP & Brand Protection Director; Luca Vespignani, Managing Director of DcP (Digital Content Protection) and Alessandro Nicolis, Brand Relations Manager for Amazon. The event, in line with one of the show’s main objectives, that was, to promote secure and effective digitization among Small and Medium Enterprises in the Italian gold-jewellery sector, aimed to precisely outline the entity of the phenomenon and contextualize it downstream of the boom in online sales that the sector has been experiencing, particularly due to the recent lockdown.
