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Buyers,
beware producers Fair, unfair consumers Local as
foreign By Zeenia Shaukat The ghost of fake imitations haunts multinationals as much as it bothers the local manufacturers of consumer products. Many companies try to counter the challenge through establishing a counterfeit cell that monitors the growth of fake products and attempts to address it through legal means.
Editorial It all gets linked up to poverty in our case and gets justified too. Crime, overpopulation, illiteracy... or fake beauty products. After all it's the poor who use them and the poor who make them. Those who make them may not stay as poor once the business gets going but they once were poor. And they still are not as rich as the makers of the original products, the multinationals. In a crass consumerist set-up, the advertising lures both the consumer and the maker of fakes -- because the poor have to survive somehow and with the dignity of a consumer. But it would have been alright had it been as simple. The multinationals, the labels, we are told, are not hugely affected by the output of counterfeit manufacturing companies. The producers are happy reaping small time benefits and so are the users. The trouble begins when the near perfect formulas sometimes falter and falter rather badly, causing actual damage to the consumer's skins and hair, which sometimes gets impaired for life. And it matters when they are bought and sold as originals. The laws are there on the statute books, the raids conducted in hundreds, but the slow judicial process bogs everything down. And the seemingly illegal business thrives in full public view -- though in the city of Lahore it is said to be behind the confines of a few Walls. And thrives to the extent that the laws start looking fake and the fake looks real.
Right formula, wrong results It's an open secret where fake beauty products are made and sold. Still, the process involved in their production is as interesting as it is revealing By Aoun Sahi One of my friends comes from the walled city in Lahore. He
always invites me to go over to his place if and when I need to buy some
shampoos, creams, soaps or body sprays. In fact, one of his relative runs a
wholesale shop for these beauty products in the city's Shahalam market, quite
close to where my friend lives. A few days ago, I accepted his invitation. It
turned out to be an incredible experience for me. My friend took me to the shop. Though it was very small, it had dozens of shelves full of shampoos, creams, soaps and body sprays of different national and international brands. My friend offered me to take whatever I wanted to have from the shop. I hesitated because I knew the rather prohibitive prices of the beauty items lying in the shop. Seeing me dither, my friend put five large bottles of different shampoos, three body sprays and two creams of international brands into a shopping bag and handed it over to me. I told him that I did not have enough money to pay for all those items because in my estimation they would cost no less than Rs 2500. The shopkeeper and my friend amazed me even more when they said the whole stuff was a gift. After I refused to take the 'expensive' gift, the shopkeeper told me that the goodies in the bag cost him only 25 per cent of what I was thinking was their price. "Really!" I said, utterly surprised. His words made have another look at the beauty products in my hand. They all looked quite fine and original to me. But they were not. They were all fake. "Who made them and where?" I asked, dumbfounded. "Everywhere in the walled city people are making these fake beauty items," I was told. "I know many who are involved in this business," my friend told me. He asked me if I wanted to have a look at the whole process of their production. I was thrilled by his invitation. This is how my journey into exploring the production of fake beauty products began. The next step was to be there and see it all happen in front of my eyes. After crossing many dark and narrow alleys in walled city, I was taken to a locked house. My friend started knocking the door disregarding the lock. A few minutes afterwards, someone responded from the inside, asking who we were. After my friend introduced himself, the person inside the house threw a key outside for us to open the door and enter the house. Once inside, I was shocked by what I saw. To me, making shampoo, soap and creams was a serious business, requiring some knowledge of chemistry and involving some machinery. But what I saw was totally different. Two men were mixing some solution in two plastic tubs with the help of wooden rods. They were adding different chemicals to the solutions one after the other. Another man was pasting labels of a shampoo of an international brand onto empty plastic bottles. A fourth man was doing the same thing for the empty bottles of cream, utterly engrossed in the activity. In 15 minutes, solutions in both the tubs were ready to be filled in the bottles -- shampoo from one tub, cream from the other. Everything appeared quite easy to me. "No, it is not as easy as it looks," said Imran (not his original name), the owner of the production facility. "It takes a lot of effort, including the selection of material, its mixing in a standard proportion and buying of bottles and labels that look very much like the original. On top of all that, "one of our important problems is to protect ourselves from the law enforcement agencies," he said. "How do you got the formula right?," was my next question. "This is the easy party," Imran said. "We send every new product to some laboratory for chemical examination as soon as it lands in the market so as to know the proportion of different chemicals involved in its making. We make the fakes using almost same chemicals and in a similar proportion as are found in the original," he added. According to Imran, the most important ingredient of a shampoo, for instance, is its base, available in different qualities. "The best one is imported from Germany. It's expensive and is available at Rs 130 per kg. Those imported from China and Iran are cheap and are available at around Rs 100 per kg. They are used in low quality (fake) shampoos," he revealed. As a first step in production, base is mixed with either Sodium Chloride (for low quality products) or Cocodiethanolamide (for relatively better quality shampoos). Cocodiethanolamide is very expensive and costs Rs 300 for one kg. "In 10 kg of base, three kg of salt or one kg of Cocodiethanolamide is mixed." The mixture is then stirred for 15 to 20 minutes. After the stirring, "the paste becomes very thick. We then add water to it (to 12 kg of mixture, almost 100 liter of water is mixed)," said Imran. "The blend is again mixed with help of wooden rods for almost half an hour. This makes the solution very thin and viscous. We again mix either salt or Cocodiethanolamide in it. Different colours and essences are also mixed in it to make different brands." This, according to him, is the standard formula to prepare a shampoo. To enhance its quality, some manufactures use some other chemicals according to the requirements of their customers. "To make the shampoo foamier, I use Lanolin and Sodium Lauryl Sulphate powder" revealed Imran. "A large bottle of good quality shampoo, produced through this process, costs Rs 45 to Rs 50. The cost of a large bottle of shampoo produced by using the standard formula alone costs Rs 25 to Rs 30." "How do you pack the shampoo in the sachets?" I asked him, pointing to hundreds of sachets of a famous shampoo company scattered in the room. "It is not difficult. All it needs is a packing machine that costs Rs 80, 000," he said. "Where do you got all the chemicals, fake bottles, labels and sachet from?" I asked him again. "Everything is available in papar mandi, another neighbourhood in the walled city. All you need is money and the rest follows." In papar mandi, he says, the business is being done openly. Shopkeepers there do not even hesitate to provide the formula for making a shampoo or a cream, a practice Imran resents. "It is destroying our business because many new people have started doing the same thing." He claimed that this had taken profit out of the business. "It was profitable till late 1990s but now people are doing same business in every second house of walled city as well as in many other localities. Profit margins have come down to the half of what they were in late 1990s," he said. But the production of fake beauty product is not something that has started only a few years ago. "The business started some 35 years ago." "What else is made here?" I asked my friend. "Everything, including fake shampoos, soaps, creams, body lotions, body sprays, perfumes, hair and body oils, toothpastes, toothbrushes and talcum powders," he replied. Answering my question as to who are the buyers of fake beauty products, Imran said shopkeepers in small villages and towns of Punjab and Sindh were the most frequent buyers. "But many famous stores of Lahore too buy these fake beauty items," he claimed. When I pointed out that his products could cause side effects, Imran did not agree. "In my home, we have been using these shampoos and creams for almost last 20 years and every thing is ok so far," he said.
A lot of people somehow end up using fake cosmetics for personal grooming despite the fact that the negative effects of these products are all too well known. Results are obvious By Ahsan Zia Amna Nawaz, a 20-year old girl from Faisalabad, was about
to get married about three months ago. Coming from a middle-class family, she
was counting her lucky stars about her would-be husband. Totally unaware of
what the future had in store for her, she -- along with the rest of her
family -- was happily going through all the arrangements for the big
occasion, including her own grooming. Amna started having skin problems when her wedding was only days away. She was suffering from eczema and irritation that rendered her once pretty face into something utterly opposite. The wedding had to be called off after her prospective in-laws knew about her problem. She claims she was infected with the disease after getting a facial from a beauty parlour in Faisalabad. Her efforts to add a bit to her beauty proved a nightmare for her. Amna's family has now shifted to Lahore where she lives in Samanabad and is receiving regular treatment from a skin specialist. Though still ailing, she is hopeful that in the next seven to eight months she will recover fully. Amna says everything went wrong for her after she decided
to have a facial at a beauty parlour run by her friend. "My friend
persuaded me that she could do something good to my face. On her insistence,
I finally decided to get a facial a week before my marriage was
scheduled," Amna tells The News on Sunday. "During the facial, my
friend applied some non-branded whitening creams and some tonics to my face.
On my query, she told me those were special creams and were made up of very
effective ingredients. Soon after the facial was carried out, I started
feeling some strange irritation on the skin of my face. I told my friend
about that but she told me to take it easy and not to worry. 'Everything will
be all right in minutes,' she told me. But it never happened." She says: "Next day, I found some pimples on my face which started growing rapidly. I complained to my friend about the problem and she advised me to get another facial to cleanse the face. I was so perturbed that I felt myself compelled to act upon her advice. But the repercussion was even more dreadful as my face was completely swollen hours after the second facial. The situation was going from bad to worse rapidly. Soon tiny cracks started appearing on my face." By then only four days had left in her wedding. "But the problem was that even I could not recognise myself. My face had also started bleeding." Desperate, Amna's parents approached a skin specialist, Dr Mansoor Haider, who happened to be a close relative of hers. According to the doctor, fake cosmetics had landed her in this trouble and it would take the better part of a year to heal. Her would-be spouse's family could not wait for that long. Razia Ahmed, an 18-year-old girl, has suffered in a similar manner due to fake or substandard cosmetics, mostly used at beauty parlours across the country. Coming from a poor family in Hyderabad, she contracted skin disease after having a facial from a parlour. These days, she is being treated by a Lahore-based skin specialist. Dr Ali Hasnain Kazmi, a renowned skin specialist, is of the firm opinion that many of the beauty parlours are run by women who have just done some basic short courses in grooming and they do not use standard items. "They use instruments without proper sterilisation. Sub-standard cosmetics that they use result in different diseases like skin allergies, irritation, pimples, blushes, hair damage and loss, and face swelling," he says. The doctor adds that the extensive use of substandard cosmetics products, especially to lighten skin colour, is leading to serious complications due to their side effects. "Skin lightening has been linked to side effects ranging from disfiguring, scarring to system-wide health problems. Skin diseases like hyper pigmentation, stretch marks, skin atrophy (degeneration) and infections can also be caused by the use of fake or sub-standard skin lightening products." Kazmi underscores the need for imparting proper training and education to the owners as well as employees of beauty parlours. He also calls for a strong check against the use of fake cosmetics in beauty parlours.
Face value When it comes to buying beauty products, consumers know no fool-proof mechanism to ensure that they are not conned By Aziz Omar Beauty sure does lie in the eye of the beholder when it
comes to purchasing beauty products from the market. Are bright colourful
bottles and jars, fancy packaging and foreign brands enough to convince
people to dole out money for the asking price? Do they really trust whatever
gooey stuff that is in the container to satisfy their hair, skin and general
body care needs? With fake substances out there in the market being sold
under the cover of known labels, consumers could surely end up with something
that does not have the desired results and may have effects that could create
a nightmare. Maha, a housewife and mother of three, thinks that one has to exercise a lot of discretion when procuring items containing chemicals that come in contact with one's body. "Firstly, I always do my shopping of toiletries from reputable departmental stores. Even then, I go along with my instinct and experience when buying a product declaring itself to be of foreign origin," she tells The News on Sunday. Having lived for a number of years in Canada, Maha says in many cases, she can tell whether the quality and feel of the packaged contents is up to the mark. But she adds: "With regards to things such as soaps and shampoos that I am getting for my kids, I make sure that I buy them from the same place as before and after having had prior positive results". Another consumer, another story. Adnan Qureshi claims to have been a victim of a fake version of a well-recognised brand of hair conditioner. "Even though I had purchased the questionable product from an outlet of a well-known chain of stores, I discontinued its use after my scalp actually started to itch and I began losing hair." He realised that upon close inspection, one could just about tell the copy from the original through slight changes in colour, finishing and labeling of the bottle. "But if one is getting several items at the same time, one can easily be lax in judgment. Even then, the management of such shops has to be more responsible in placing orders from dubious and small-time delivery agents," he observes. Many people, especially status conscious women are usually just concerned about the brand and the country of its manufacturing. "Most women, even when buying a relatively new brand of cosmetics items such as lipsticks, go along with the exaggerated claims of the salesperson," remarks Kiren, a college student. And because these products are mostly all imported, the pricing seems to be the only quality determining factor from the buyers' point of view. "As a matter of habit, I personally examine every single thing before parting with my cash for it. Each aspect such as the smell, the emblem and the engravings on the container can be potential tell-tale signs of its authenticity or the lack thereof," she says. The less privileged segment of our society has little choice but to opt for the most economical option of buying knock-offs. Nasreen Bibi, a domestic helper, says: "Folks like us cannot afford the luxury of even thinking of buying costly original items. And when most fake stuff being made in Pakistan is close to the expensive imported items, the former is the more feasible choice." Mrs Daud, a middle-aged housewife residing in cantonment area in Lahore, recounts her experiences of buying items of personal hygiene and grooming in bulk from places such as Shahalam market in the old city. "I was thinking that I was being clever by buying original products in bulk at much cheaper rates but after hearing reports of bogus material being passed-off as the real thing and facing instances myself such as soap crumbling too quickly and creating no lather, I saw the error in my judgement," she says. Mrs Daud has now decided that paying extra bucks on purchases made from a convenience store in her area will at least ensure she was not being conned. Upon being informed that some such shops might be carrying, though unknowingly, the imitations on the same shelf as the genuine, she exclaimed, "May Allah help us then!"
If you are fond of imported beauty products, beware, because numerous products available in Bara markets are made locally, most probably in the tribal areas By Javed Aziz Khan The old Bara Market in the neighbourhood of Peshawar was
once famous for every kind of imported commodity, especially cosmetics,
smuggled from different parts of the world via the lawless Afghanistan. Now
there is nothing left in Bara but a few ruins of the famous markets; the
whole The new name Karkhano Market has been given for the reason the market is just opposite the biggest industrial estate of the province in Hayatabad. Apart from every daily use item made in the country, the shops here are stocked with thousands of imported commodities available at cheaper rates against the rest of the country. The reason is that no duty is being paid for most of these goods, unlawfully transported from across the western border before being offered for sale in the local shops. If you are fond of imported commodities, beware as
numerous products available in the market are those made locally with
substandard material; most probably in the tribal area located a few hundred
metres away and sold as a foreign brand with a fake wrapper. Thousands of women from all over the country can be seen shopping across the multi-story plazas, dealing in particular commodities. People from Islamabad, Lahore, Hazara region and many parts of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan are frequent visitors of the thickly populated market. Many are those who travel hundreds of kilometres for the sole purpose of shopping in Karkhanu. Though ladies go for all kind of buying in thousands of these shops; the centre of their attention always remains markets dealing in cosmetics. But who will guide them to the real imported commodity and not the substandard stuff, filled in similar packing like those of the original foreign brands? You name a foreign brand of soap, shampoo, variety of creams, lotions, perfumes, different kind of oil used for different purposes and cosmetics of all kinds and you'll find it here in Karkhano Market. These include popular brands of Europe, USA, Gulf States, India, China, Iran and so many other countries. It is not an easy to differentiate between the original and the fake,nor is there a system to check who is supplying the forged items. "A large number of people are involved in the business. They get the stock from unknown places in the nearby Khyber agency and sell it in a packing similar to foreign brands," said Umar Saim, owner of a cosmetic shop. He, however, stressed that fake commodities are being sold in cabins in front of every plaza and there would be very few 'shops' who would sell spurious cosmetics. Besides countless shops, there are many cabins and stalls set up in front of every plaza, most of which have stocked variety of fake items. The business has now spread even to the popular markets in Peshawar Cantonment and interior city. The material used in fake cosmetic items are strictly harmful for human skin, hair and also cause a number of diseases. Apart from expensive foreign brands, substandard items are available in Karkhano Market shops with the fake packing of local famous companies. The management of several local companies have taken note of the situation but with no substantial results so far. "After receiving so many complaints about selling forged stuff, an industrialist from Karachi visited different shops of the market and caught a number of traders selling fake products. It was not learnt as to why an FIR was not lodged and no action taken against the wrongdoers despite the fact that the company approached the Hayatabad Police Station that supervises the entire market," said Mohammad Ishaq, another shopkeeper. The area where the Karkhano Market is located is being supervised by the capital city police and has nothing to do with the tribal areas and still the force is reluctant to go after the forgers.
The output of counterfeit manufacturing companies is significant though not enough to pose a direct threat to the position of original labels... By Zeenia Shaukat The ghost of fake imitations haunts multinationals as much
as it bothers the local manufacturers of consumer products. Many companies
try to counter the challenge through establishing a counterfeit cell that
monitors the growth of fake products and attempts to address it through legal
means. The output of counterfeit manufacturing companies is significant though not enough to pose a direct threat to the position of original labels in the market. "There are various products being sold as counterfeits; ranging from refills, look-alikes, to outright fakes," explains Ronald Inayat, Associate Manager, External Relations Department of P&G. "An example that I can share with you is that in a counterfeit Safeguard manufacturing factory raid in Lahore on October 18 2005, 40,000 bars were confiscated. Another raid in Lahore exposed 22,000 labels of Head & Shoulders, along with printing plates." According to Col Muhammad Iftikhar Ahmad Khan, Brands Protection Manager Unilever, "famous consumer brands estimate that they loose sales revenue in the range of 5-15 per cent due to Counterfeit & Infringement." Col Iftikhar informs that according to an estimate by Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce & Industry (OICCI) the government loses 10 billion revenue in taxes due to Counterfeit & Infringement(C&I). Shampoos and soaps are among the leading products threatened by counterfeit." Inayat adds that the counterfeits of shampoos are available in the smallest of packaging. Understandably the manufacturers of counterfeits do try to stick as close to the original name and packaging as possible. At the same time, they avoid breaking the copyright laws with the help of a bit of an innovation. Therefore, 'Fair & Lovely' becomes 'Fare and Lonely' and 'Lux' becomes 'Luv'. However, they do try to reproduce the original look and packaging to convince the customer of the products' authenticity. Though all stakeholders agree that there needs to be stricter laws to deal with the counterfeit issues, lack of awareness of consumer rights is a factor that goes against the consumer products manufacturing companies. "Counterfeiting has become as profitable as trading illegal narcotics, the advantage being that it is a lot less risky i.e. the chances of being caught are comparatively less. Especially in Pakistan where the consumer is not too aware of his or her rights, the trade is flourishing beyond proportion," says Inayat. Counterfeits also thrive because of the low purchasing power of the rural consumer. Fake imitations of best of products are available at half the price in the market. "Consumers are easily tricked into buying fake products of popular brands, especially the sachets of shampoo, hair oils, detergents, soaps," says Inayat. Copyright Act & Trademark Act are the legal tools available to the companies seeking to counter the threat of counterfeit. The effectiveness of Intellectual Property Organisation of Pakistan, established under immense US pressure to deal with the issue of infringement of intellectual property rights issues, however, remains questionable. The organisation insists that it is a service delivery body and not an enforcement agency. Quoting an official who did not wish to be named, "IPO requires the companies seeking to protect their products from counterfeit, to register themselves with us. Registration entails them certain rights. They can turn to law enforcement agency like police, FIA or Customs Authority if they find somebody infringing upon those rights. But we are not an enforcement agency." However, even if the law enforcement agencies are at their cooperative best when it comes to a crackdown on the counterfeits, the country's slow and tardy judicial process takes the vigour out of such measures. According to Inayat, there have been hundreds of successful retail raids per year, while a few manufacturing sites have also been shut down. However, legal process takes several years for an outcome. He emphasises that a set of stricter laws along with proper enforcement is direly needed to counter the counterfeits.
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business has been
shifted to Karkhano Market, located at the border between the provincial
metropolis and the tribal Khyber Agency. The name Bara Market is still used
even for the new trade centre across the country.
