How the Caledonian Tree Company Protects Consumers from Counterfeits

The Air-Pot

The Air-Pot is a revolutionary horticulture container that has been developed, patented and trademarked by the Caledonian Tree Company. Now into its sixth generation, the container has been designed to guarantee healthy root development and maximize aeration. The Air-Pots last up to ten years, and the company ensures that they have the strongest sustainability credentials by making them from recycled plastic.

The counterfeiting issue

In the early 2000s, Caledonian Tree Company first noticed that they had a counterfeit issue coming out of China and as the popularity of their product grew, so did their infringement problem. The counterfeits they found were all about creating cheaply produced imitations of the Air-Pot that undercut the cost of the legitimate product.

These illegitimate listings are easily confused by consumers with genuine Air-Pots when making purchases online. Counterfeits that do make their way into the hands of unsuspecting, would-be consumers, can damage the goodwill and trust carefully built by the company over the last two decades.

The imitations are not created with the recycled plastic that is so core to the appeal of Air-Pots, and they often get the important details of the pot wrong that make such a difference in the success of the product. Counterfeiters are unable to provide the expert advice that is supplied by either Caledonian Tree Company or one of their distributors which can play a critical role in the successful use of the product for first-time buyers.

“Counterfeits are all about making an Air-Pot people can buy cheaper than ours, but they don’t know why it’s in existence and they don’t know how to advise people to use the system”

Jamie Single, Co-founder and Director

Fixing the problem

Prior to partnering with Corsearch

Caledonian Tree Company attempted to stop the counterfeits internally. This meant staff members were having to spend time away from their regular roles to clear up online channels manually. However, with the scale of the internet and the volume of online marketplaces and websites, the problem was too large to fix without technology.

By partnering with Corsearch

Caledonian Tree Company gained a holistic view of their problem and online channels. The results so far have shown a lasting significant impact on the problem with:

• over 1,400 marketplace listings taken down
• content removed on over 60 websites
• numerous social media posts removed

This demonstrates how Corsearch’s analysts have been able to disrupt the counterfeit behavior, most notably in China, and how their work has led to a drastic reduction in infringement on Caledonian Tree Company’s brand in the region and around the world.

“Manually removing counterfeits without a partner brings many challenges. There are too many platforms and it took too many hours, which made it very ineffective. That is why we partnered with Corsearch.”

Dougal Gordon, Retail Development Manager at Caledonian Tree Company

Partner with a company that cares about your customers

At Corsearch, it is important for us to help protect not only your brand reputation and revenue but also the health and safety of your customers. Counterfeits can pose genuine risks to end consumers as illegitimate sellers cut corners in the hope of making some quick cash.

If you would like to learn how our technology and expertise help brands like Caledonian Tree Company clear up online channels and protect consumers, request a personalized demo below.