Hardware Africa 2014 2014 | Page 40

BUILDING MATERIALS Tough, reliable Lasher Ian Kendal speaks exclusively to Johann Gerber about Lasher’s fight against its products being copied. Q. Tell us about some of the major is to copy our wing label, proudly South African consumer is taking the product back to the challenges currently facing Lasher. label or branding and colours and then just take retailer and de manding a solution. Whether the The biggest challenge we face is the copying of out the word Lasher and put their own name in. retailer knows that the product is counterfeit or our products. As a brand leader we constantly We are presently busy with a very interesting not, due to the product being Lasher branded, strive to innovate and bring new products to case that I will follow up with you at a later date the complaint ultimately lands up with us the market. We find that we get good support as I am not in a position to talk about this now via the retailer or disgruntled consumer. This and once the product is established in the due to the legal ramifications. enables us to track down the counterfeit market, we find that it is being taken overseas product source very quickly. The scary statistic and copied in the form of an inferior quality Q. What is the impact of these cases on remains though, that since the implementation product that is brought back into the South the market? of the CPA, of the 30 plus complaints received, African market and sold for much cheaper. The impact is mainly felt by the end user and 99% of these have been counterfeit product. obviously Lasher. The end user has a bad The up side is that there a lot more life-long Q. It seems that the Lasher brand is the experience with the fake product and we are loyal Lasher customers once we have resolved most copied tool brand locally at the left to fix this. I must, however, say that from the problem. moment. Care to tell us about some of a marketing point of view, this does create a these challenges? wonderful opportunity that our marketing and Q. In your opinion, what needs to happen Definitely in the South African and Africa sales team have learnt to take full advantage of. to help Lasher in this fight? market. The obvious challenge for us is that By the time we have rectified the problem and There are very stiff penalties in place (as much the copied products are always of an inferior educated the customer, we are left with a loyal as R5 000 per item seized) if found guilty, so quality which inevitably fails. This obviously Lasher customer for life as they say, “Every dark 300 counterfeit bowsaw blades at a cost of R5 damages our brand and necessitates in us cloud has a silver lining.” each could ultimately cost you R1,5 million. Our having to invest a lot of time and effort in legal system needs to be able to process these rectifying and educating our client base. This is Q. Surely Lasher must incur major costs cases quicker. From seizure of goods, it can time and money that could rather be spent in to curb this practice? take as long as two years to get a result. Due to marketing to assist our customers in selling Unfortunately this is true. As mentioned earlier, this, one tends to settle out of court and due our product. this is money that could be spent in far more to the nature of the crime, there is normally constructive ways to benefit all the players a non-disclosure agreement attached to the Q. Care to share some of the strangest in the supply chain. It is, however, a very settlement. I believe we should have a ‘Name cases? necessary expense and I suppose the price one and Shame’ campaign whereby the guilty Products are normally copied 100%, right down pays for being a brand leader. parties are exposed in the media. We have to the Lasher logo, font and payoff line – “Tough, Reliable Tools, Guaranteed!” Another favourite decided to pursue the current case and not 40 HARDWARE AFRICA 2014 settle due to the fact that it is pretty open and consumer foots the bill? How do we With the implementation of the CPA, there are now minimum quality standards that the suppliers of products are held accountable too. Q. I suppose at the end of the day the shut and once the conviction is handed down, lesson the load in future? we will be able to go to press with an article Yes, I would have to agree. I must say and pictures to more fully expose what is going that we have found that the Consumer on in our industry. Protection Act has really helped here. With the implementation of the CPA, there are Q. Do you believe other companies are now minimum quality standards that the facing the same challenges as Lasher? suppliers of products are held accountable Most definitely. Off-hand I know of companies too. Consumers now have recourse and this in the plumbing, ironmongery and abrasives benefits us in that with the ‘knock off’ products industry that have had to deal with being inferior, when they prematurely fail, the counterfeiting. HA