Carousell Tackles Counterfeit

Carousell, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing classifieds, has launched the Carousell Rights Owners Programme (CROP), a platform that tackles counterfeit listings in collaboration with brand partners. CROP provides assurance to brands, whose rights are more closely protected, and users, who can deal with greater confidence in the marketplace platform.

CROP allows trusted brand partners to directly remove listings of brand replicas from Carousell with zero processing time, thus tightening the content moderation process by drastically reducing the time required for takedowns. First piloted in December 2018 in Singapore, CROP has taken down 13,000 listings in the nine months since its introduction. Only select brand partners, whose activities will be closely monitored by Carousell, will have access to CROP and its content moderation capabilities. Brands that have come onboard CROP include Nike, Grab and luxury brands such as Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta.

“We want to create a trusted marketplace platform and protect Carousellers from inadvertently purchasing counterfeits or unauthorised goods, while at the same time protecting brands’ rights. CROP allows us to proactively address both these issues seamlessly, eliminating any delay in action altogether. 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,” said Serena Darcel Chin, Head of Legal, Carousell.

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 takedown, as its URL had to be first submitted to Carousell’s brand protection team for processing. To ensure swift action, Carousell is looking to further streamline and automate CROP’s processes in the near future.

“Trust and safety continues 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,” said Raffy Montemayor, General Manager, Carousell Philippines.

CROP is the latest development Carousell’s series of dedicated efforts in building a trusted environment for its users. 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.