Ahead of the Olympics, France Ramps Up War on Fakes

Within the touristy Saint-Ouen flea market, not removed from the Stade de France the place athletes will compete on this summer season’s Paris Olympics, cops swarmed in at daybreak on April 3 and shut down 11 shops promoting counterfeit luggage and footwear.

They confiscated 63,000 gadgets of clothes, footwear and leather-based items, together with pretend Louis Vuitton and Nike merchandise, and threw them into rubbish compactor vehicles on the spot. Ten individuals have been arrested.

Michel Lavaud, police safety chief for the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb that can host Paris 2024 athletics and swimming occasions in addition to the closing ceremony, described the operation as a part of a pre-Olympics crackdown on knockoffs.

Pretend vogue is huge enterprise. Counterfeit branded clothes alone is estimated to have price corporations in France 1.7 billion euros ($1.83 billion) in misplaced gross sales on common annually between 2018 and 2021, in keeping with the European Union Mental Property Workplace.

“We’ve been speaking about the issue of counterfeits for the final two years,” Lavaud stated, including the police was trying to intensify its efforts. The raid on the earth’s vogue capital bears some similarity to clean-ups carried out by earlier Olympic hosts like Beijing in 2008, which had blended outcomes, in addition to London in 2012 and Rio in 2016.

However the police crackdown on avenue retailers in Seine-Saint-Denis, the place one in three lives in poverty in keeping with French nationwide statistics, has drawn criticism for pushing individuals already in economically precarious conditions into additional problem.

Axel Wilmort, a researcher with French social science institute for city research LAVUE, stated he had seen a pointy improve in police presence and repression of casual market sellers on the outskirts of Paris during the last three months, with frequent police patrols and the set up of metallic obstacles stopping distributors from establishing stalls.

“There’s a will to erase all indicators of precarity, poverty and undesirables,” he stated, including that legislation enforcement officers usually don’t differentiate between counterfeit sellers and distributors of authorized second-hand wares.

Police in Paris didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Police raids on casual retailers close to Paris’ iconic Montmartre hillside have multiplied since February, with 10 carried out over 4 days in early June to dismantle a market of round 1,000 sellers, in keeping with a letter, seen by Reuters, from the district mayor to the inside minister. Seventy tonnes of merchandise have been destroyed in March alone, the letter stated.

Reuters documented in April how avenue distributors have been caught up in an enormous police operation aimed toward ridding disadvantaged Paris suburbs of petty crime earlier than the Video games.

Profitable Sport

The roughly 15 million guests anticipated to attend the Olympics in Paris – a magnet for luxurious items consumers – are a tempting goal for sellers of pretend designer gadgets.

Sensing a risk to branded merchandise, Paris 2024 organisers and the Worldwide Olympic Committee each turned members of French mental property safety affiliation UNIFAB final yr. The organisation works with manufacturers to boost consciousness across the dangers linked to pretend merchandise, which frequently breach security rules and assist fund unlawful actions.

“We’ve been working quite a bit forward of the Olympic Video games,” stated UNIFAB’s CEO Delphine Sarfati-Sobreira.

Paris 2024 sponsor LVMH, the world’s largest luxurious conglomerate, is a distinguished member. LVMH didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the latest anti-counterfeit measures. The corporate has stated it really works intently with authorities and customs officers to implement its mental property rights and to defend customers from counterfeiters.

France had already dialled up its combat towards fakes. Final yr, customs seized 20.5 million counterfeit merchandise, a 78 % improve on the 11.5 million confiscated in 2022, in keeping with knowledge launched in Could.

This spring, UNIFAB helped prepare 1,200 customs brokers to confirm the authenticity of Olympics merchandise, with the purple Paris 2024 mascot and clothes the most definitely goal for unlawful replicas, in keeping with officers. French authorities even have 70 brokers combating counterfeits on-line, trying to dismantle native and worldwide prison networks.

“Paris doesn’t need to be generally known as the counterfeit capital of Europe,” stated mental property lawyer John Coldham, a accomplice at Gowling WLG in London who labored with manufacturers through the ‘Pretend Free London’ pre-Olympics operation of 2012. An even bigger concern for French vogue homes might nevertheless come from international consumers’ reluctance to go to Paris through the Olympics, fairly than from revenues misplaced to counterfeits.

Air France-KLM warned final week it expects successful of as a lot at 180 million euros this summer season as some international vacationers keep away from the French capital. LVMH and rivals have stated they don’t seem to be anticipating a income increase from the game occasion, and will shift their focus elsewhere.

“Luxurious corporations are indicating that they’re able to obtain consumers elsewhere than in Paris: from the Cote d’Azur, to Milan and past,” stated Luca Solca, a luxurious items analyst at analysis and brokerage agency Bernstein.

By Helen Reid, Layli Foroudi and Mimosa Spencer