Carousell crops up with new plan to tackle counterfeit listings

Online marketplace Carousell has launched a dedicated platform to tackle counterfeit listings and protect rights holders. Called Carousell Rights Owners Programme (CROP), it was done in collaboration with brand partners in a bid to provide assurance to both brands and users to deal with greater confidence in the marketplace.

The new platform CROP will allow selected brand partners to directly remove listings of brand replicas from Carousell with zero processing time. According to Carousell, this tightens the content moderation process by reducing the time required for take downs. First piloted in December last year, CROP has taken down 13,000 listings in the nine months since its introduction. Brands who have come onboard CROP include Nike, Grab and luxury group company Kering, which owns brands such as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta.

Carousell’s existing counterfeit policy prohibits the sale of fake products, replicas or counterfeits and the creation of any content that violates any intellectual property rights. However, prior to CROP, there was a longer process from the flagging of an item to the actual take down, as its URL had to be first submitted to Carousell’s brand protection team for processing. In addition, Carousell aims to further streamline and automate CROP’s processes in the near future.

CROP is the latest development in Carousell’s series of dedicated efforts in building a brand safe environment for its users. With this new feature, Carousell looks to support Singapore’s stance in protecting intellectual property rights by detecting and removing counterfeit goods even more effectively.

Besides CROP, Carousell has also invested resources in Sift Science (a third party service provider) and manual moderation teams to help combat counterfeits on the platform. Carousell is also working with the Singapore Police Force’s recently launched Anti-Scam Centre, in a joint effort to prevent eCommerce scams. According to Su Lin Tan, vice president of operations, Carousell, trust and safety continue to be a key priority for Carousell.

"Carousell has been collaborating with and supporting the police's efforts in combating the sale of counterfeit goods on its platform. We are invested in building a holistically safe and conducive environment for buying and selling and have seen very promising results from our combined efforts to tackle counterfeits,” she said.

Meanwhile, Serena Darcel Chin, head of legal, Carousell said CROP allows the company to create a trusted marketplace platform and protect Carousellers from purchasing counterfeits or unauthorised goods, while at the same time protect brands’ rights. "Once a listing has been deemed counterfeit and removed directly by the brand through CROP, the seller will automatically receive an email to notify them of the takedown due to their item’s infringement of Intellectual Property (IP) rights,” she added.

Recently, Carousell partnered with Government Technology Agency (GovTech) to launch an online identity verification feature for users, a way to combat the increasing number of fraud and scams. This new feature enables the verification of user profiles via MyInfo, allowing users to deal with authenticated accounts.

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