By Stacey Altherr
Beware: Your favorite make-up or shampoo brand may not be what you think it is.
For years, federal authorities have been trying to wrangle counterfeit beauty products off the shelves of national chain stores. These products are deceivingly similar in packaging, sometimes with a simple extra sticker as the only clue that it may not be a direct shipment from its legitimate producer to even a national drug and beauty chain.
“About 90 percent of these counterfeit items come from China, where manufacturing is cheaper and there’s a copycat culture,” Bob Barchiesi, president of the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition, a D.C.-based trade organization,” said in a 2015 article in Cosmopolitan Magazine.
Diversion of products is the unauthorized sale of products, which can be diluted, have a different formula, or expired.
These counterfeit products are not just a loss of money for the famous brands, but can have health and safety for the users. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, in conjunction with the National Intellectual Property Rights Center, testing of these knock-off products has shown dangerous ingredients such as arsenic, beryllium and cadmium, all known carcinogens not permitted in U.S. products, as well as high levels of aluminum and bacteria. In perfumes and colognes, even urine has been found.
The counterfeit products have become a real problem for the famous brands most likely to be ripped off.
In the same article , Gregg Marrazzo, senior vice president of Long Island cosmetic giant, Estée Lauder called cosmetics counterfeiting, a “global epidemic.”
For years, fake makes of popular brands were usually found in flea markets, but because of supply chains and more sophisticated internet marketing of products, they are showing up in drug stores and third-party shipping sites like Amazon, despite these national companies best intentions to keep them off the shelves.
Many companies, such as Redken, only sell their products through authorized retailers, and not in drug stores, yet Redken shampoo can be found on some CVS store shelves and can be found in their advertisements.
Patricia Biancaniello, publisher and editor of Smithtown Matters had a recent experience and asked Redken for some guidance,
“We do not authorize the sale of our products in CVS… It is our business decision to sell our products only through distributors and salons by professionals who can offer advice on selecting the best products to meet your needs. These professionals also help to ensure that the customer receives fresh product that meets our quality standards. Unfortunately, some products are diverted outside our normal distribution channels. We take this diversion issue very seriously,” said the response from Redken.
How to know if you are buying the real product? It isn’t easy, but here are some things to look out for:
- The packaging may look slightly different, including the colors or lettering. Unfortunately, counterfeiters have been getting better at this.
- A separate bar code sticker may be placed over the originally packaged bar code.
- It smells differently than what you know about that particular product. The texture may also be off.
- There may not be typical information on the packaging, such as batch numbers.
- The price is either slightly or drastically lower.
Smithtown Matters was unable to reach CVS for comment