Special Porsche Team Specifically Hunts Counterfeit Goods

Cracking Down on Fakes

These days, luxury brands are as popular as ever. But that popularity isn't all peaches and cream, of course. It also comes with its own set of unique problems, counterfeit goods chiefly among them. To combat this growing problem, Porsche has its own crack team of folks who confiscated a whopping $67 billion in fake goods last year alone.

Photos: Porsche 

Find It, Stop It

Porsche's "brand protection" team has but one very important job - to shut down counterfeit operations and seize the merchandise before it can be sold to the public. And clearly, they're very good at what they do.

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Trio of Hunters

Even more impressively, this team consists of only three people: Thomas Fischer, Michaela Stoiber, and Andreas Kirchgäßner. Together, they confiscated over 200,000 counterfeit items in 2018, which totaled $67 million in value.

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Even Mix

Of those 200,000 items, 33,000 were spare parts worth around $2.24 million. The remaining items were a mixture of apparel, memorabilia, and other assorted goods.

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Chief Source

According to Porsche, around 80 percent of those fake items came from China. Chiefly from the city of Shenzhen, which is about an hour north of Tokyo. Stoiber visits there often, playing the role of mystery shopper and even participating in raids on counterfeit factories.

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That's No Horse!

"Sometimes the counterfeits are quite obvious," Stoiber explained. "The products are far cheaper than normal, or the Porsche emblem has been poorly copied. We sometimes also find that a different animal is shown in the center of the logo. For example, instead of the Porsche horse, it could be a sheep standing on its hind legs."

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Making Progress

The majority of these items are sold via eBay or Amazon, but the numbers are dwindling. Thanks to the efforts of Porsche's brand protection team, those listings have dropped roughly one third in the last year.

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Hard To Reach

Of course, the biggest challenge the team faces are items sold on the street or at trade shows. Things like baseball caps, T-shirts, and sunglasses routinely pop up at places like the Retro Classics trade show in Stuttgart and the Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair. 

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Strange Findings

And it doesn't stop there. Michaela admits that perhaps the strangest item she's encountered were thousands of erectile dysfunction pills shaped like the Porsche emblem from Turkey.

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Growing Trend

Counterfeit parts are a fast-growing segment, driven by demand for old, legit parts that are now going for big money. "This is where things get dangerous," Fischer said. "These spare parts are neither tested nor approved. It goes without saying that we want to prevent products like this ending up in our cars." But you can bet that as counterfeiters continue to expand, Porsche will be there to protect their brand.

Photos: Porsche 

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