COUNTERFEIT brand clothing and shoes cause losses of up to €4.1 billion every year for the sector and represent a staggering 16 per cent of the total sale volume. They are estimated to destroy 50,296 jobs (13.5 per cent of the total employment positions in the sector).
These figures were presented by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), a European Union agency with its base in Alicante, which ranks Spain as the EU country with the third biggest impact on the textile sector produced by fake clothing and shoes, only beaten by Greece and Bulgaria.
In the whole of the European Union, losses produced by the sale of counterfeit items are estimated at €26.3 billion per year, 9.7 per cent of the total profit of the sector, and at a cost of at least 363,000 jobs.
In their research, the OHIM took into account all fake clothing items, shoes and accessories such as scarfs, belts and umbrellas that were sold within the EU.
The OHIM explained that the use of Facebook to share picture albums to sell counterfeit items is widely spreading. They also alerted that many illegal vendors are hosting ‘open house’ days, when they allow customers to visit their properties or workplace to browse and buy products.
Last year, the OHIM already ranked Spain at the top of the European Union ranking in the sales volume of fake cosmetics.
