West Africa, the influx of fake textiles and wax prints have plagued manufacturers, especially in the last 10 years. The only way to identify them involved using task forces who raided shops and markets to pick out fake prints and confiscate them.

Logistically, exercises proved to be very costly in terms of time, money and impact, as only a few people were caught due to the whole overt nature of the process. In addition, all fakers needed to do was to close shops in the heat of the moment and open them back to the market immediately the surveillance team was gone.

“In the 1970s and early 80s there were 13 textile manufacturers in Ghana but that number has dissipated to just about two, according to the Marketing Manager of GTP Mr Stephen Badu. He said the activities of counterfeiters, as well as other factors had eroded the gains made in the industry.

In a shocking reality of the negative impact of counterfeiting in the textile industry, Mr Badu said about 60-70 per cent of textile designs in the market today are fake. “Counterfeiting in the textile industry is not new. It is an old phenomenon but the challenge we are facing of late is that their modus operandi is changing. It is becoming difficult for people such as ourselves to even distinguish between the fake and the original.

“In the past they will just pick your designs and put their own labels on it so you can easily tell this is not my label or they will pick your design and then fake your label so if it is GTP, you will see something like JTTP, or GTTP. So you can tell the difference. However they have advanced from there. Now they copy everything from the outside you will not notice the difference.

 

IMPLEMENTATION

mPedigree’s labels are applied on the labels of the textiles at the time of packaging, and buyers just scratch of the hidden numbers and text to 1393 for a response that tells them whether the product they are buying is an original fabric or not.

 

IMPACT

Between the months of July and October 2015, GTP used the services of mPedigree to run the GTP Oga Promotion, where buyers of textiles who checked for authenticity also stood to win prizes, a first of its kind implementation. Over 1,500 different prizes were awarded, through electronic coupons that when redeemed offered items such as fabrics and mobile phones.

There were also 400 winners of airtime of various denominations on all mobile networks. The airtime was vended automatically to winners via their phone numbers and respective networks.

According to the marketing manager the deployment of the mPedigree has saved GTP from a slippery road to collapse, just like the many stories of textile industry collapse.

“This year in particular has been difficult year for our industry where sales is not too good but we have got a particular line called the GTP Nustyle. As we speak today we are about 12 per cent above our target for the year.

“We believe but for mPedigree we don’t think we could have been able to match our target. We think this has contributed to such a performance, he added.