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From a supply chain perspective, counterfeiting is only part of a wider phenomenon defined as “illegitimate trade,” which includes supply chain infiltrations, factory overruns, gray and parallel markets, retail service counterfeiting and shoplifting. Although different forms of illegitimate trade can be observed, companies address them mainly through legal action, overlooking other counterstrategies such as technology adoption, supply chain integration and communication campaigns. This paper aims to understand which illegitimate trade phenomena are the most common and damaging to high-end fashion firms, identifying the counterstrategies that companies leverage the most and assessing the effectiveness of the counterstrategies.

A survey was conducted to address the above-mentioned research goals. It was targeted at Italian high-end fashion companies and 112 usable questionnaires were collected.

Empirical evidence shows that the most common illegitimate trade events are pure counterfeiting and parallel/gray markets. Various forms of illegitimate trade can co-exist and are correlated, but each of them calls for a targeted bundle of countering strategies. A synergic relationship among strategies is also observed.

This paper addresses the issue of counterfeiting and illegitimate trade with a holistic approach, highlighting the necessity of an interfunctional approach within the company as a condition for effectively countering these problems.

The increase in international trade, the advances in technology, the growing importance of the emerging markets are the main factors that have contributed to the explosion of counterfeiting experienced in recent years, estimated to be valued at about 5-7 per cent of the world trade. The luxury industry in Italy has been particularly hard hit and most brands nowadays are urgently looking for demand-side and supply-side strategies to track and control the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to provide a supply chain view of counterfeiting and illegitimate trade phenomena, in a supply chain risk management perspective, to define and illuminate the interaction of the legitimate and the illegitimate supply chains.

The paper introduces the LISC model to represent and include all the illegitimate trade phenomena under analysis such as pure counterfeiting, factory overruns, grey and parallel market, supply chain infiltrations, product diversion and sale of stolen goods

The interrelations between legitimate and illegitimate supply chains are crucial to approach counterfeiting issue and define which illegitimate trade paths are more harmful to companies and customers.

The first limitation of the work is that the illegitimate trade categories defined in this paper mainly rely on data and phenomena collected from secondary sources that have not yet been directly observed by the authors. The second one is that a specific focus on high-end fashion industry was employed throughout this work: further analysis for evaluating the applicability and the significance of the illegitimate trade in other industries is still pending. The final limitation stems from the fact that it will be necessary to investigate the implications and the applicability of the model to the illegitimate on-line trade.

During the course of the MI-FIDO project, the model and the selection rules identified for illegitimate trade family classification were used as a basis for defining the rules for anomalies detection to be included in a “track and trace” system developed the project team currently under with a major Italian fashion brand.

To the authors ' knowledge, this is the first work that attempts to present a concise and systematic approach to luxury illegitimate trade from a supply chain perspective. Understanding which legitimate-illegitimate supply chain interactions are the most damaging will help fashion luxury and other industries to battle the counterfeiting phenomenon more effectively