Red Points Raises $38M to Battle Online Counterfeits

While the counterfeit market has become a booming business worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the effort to combat the scourge appears to be turning into its own industry. Case in point: Red Points, a Barcelona, Spain, and New York-based tech company that finds and banishes online fakes, has piqued the interest of investors, most recently through its $38 million Series C funding, revealed Wednesday. Counterfeit products may be an age-old problem for retail, from luxury apparel, jewelry and bags to electronics, but modern technology seems to have heightened the amplitude. The same digital transformation that has upended shopping and created the behemoth of digital commerce has also added rocket fuel to the fakes business, primarily in online marketplaces, everywhere from Amazon to social networks. Amazon recently — and rather notably — acknowledged the preponderance of phony goods in its marketplace and rolled out a tool that lets brands directly take down suspicious listings. But, of course, it only works on its own platform. For brands that regularly see illicit copies of their goods across the Internet, in places like eBay or Instagram, they must adhere to the policies and processes that vary from one site to the next. This is exactly the challenge

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