A headline like “Feds raid
warehouse” sounds like it could have been ripped right out of the 1920s, but
this headline could be making a comeback in 2020. The department of homeland
security has just announced plans to roll out A
slew of new measures intended to combat knockoffs being sold in online
marketplaces. These new measures primarily consist of financial penalties that
the government plans to levy on repeat offenders, but it also goes much deeper.
It also grants the power to government regulators to more closely monitor
domestic importers as well as distribution and fulfillment centers, such as
those owned and operated by retailers like Amazon. It’s very conceivable that
the “feds raid warehouse” headline could soon become a reality as authorities go
on the hunt for not alcohol but knockoff consumer goods.
The fundamental problem is that knockoff goods
have flooded into the United States, and it’s become a whole lot easier and far
more profitable as a result of technology for these knockoff peddlers to
profit. Instead of having to rely on a vast distribution network as they did in
the past, they simply have to create a few listings on an online retail
platform. They can fulfill the orders themselves or just ship them to a
fulfillment center like Amazon’s and have them do the legwork. Remember,
fulfillment centers are not inspecting and verifying goods for authenticity;
they are merely storing and shipping these goods when orders are received.
Fulfillment centers in the United States are housing and processing millions of
dollars’ worth of knockoffs every day and are blissfully unaware of their role
in this scheme.
If you are concerned about
how this could affect your business and about potentially being swept up in the
counterfeit crackdown, you should not lose sleep over it when you’re buying
liquidation from a reliable source like Foxliquidation. Foxliquidation specializes
in closeout and overstock merchandise from reliable retail sources. There’s no
grey area here. It’s a straight line of ownership from manufacturer to retailer
to you with no third parties polluting the supply with less than legit goods.