iTRACE Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of secure Anti-Grey Market and Anti Counterfeit solutions, announced today the opening of its first Secure 2DMI Marking Service based in Dongguan China. The iTRACE Secure 2DMI Marking Service is focused on helping brands fight the issues of Counterfeit, Grey Market Diversion and Production Overrun of their products. With this service, companies can easily secure their actual products to the Blockchain, not just the packaging they come in, creating authenticity with track and trace for any product they produce.
Products secured with iTRACE 2DMI can be connected directly to any blockchain implementation creating a secure and irrefutable link between the actual product and the distributed ledger. The weakest link in any supply chain blockchain implementation today is the connection between the actual product and the blockchain.
Relying on secure packaging alone can’t deliver this and current technologies like barcodes, datamatrix, and QR-Codes are easily reproduced and unsuitable for security applications. This leaves the authenticity of the product in doubt, regardless of what the blockchain says.
How does it work?
Selected components can now be sent directly to iTRACE in their own manufacturing region to be securely marked with iTRACE 2DMI. These securely marked components are then returned to the brands manufacturing partners as secure tokens that can be integrated into the products final assembly. Creating a secure component or token outside of the contract manufacturer takes the security application out of their control and prevents them making additional authentic but unlicensed products. The brand owner maintains the control over the production of genuine and licensed products.
“Companies are now able to cost-effectively identify and prevent production overrun of their products, stopping genuine but unlicensed product entering the grey market and disrupting their retailer and distributor pricing. 3rd shift or production overrun is traditionally the most difficult counterfeit to detect as the product that goes out the back door of a contract manufacturer is made by the same trained people, on the same production processes, with the same materials as the genuine licensed product. To all intents and purposes, it’s the real product, only the brand and their retail or distribution partners never see any revenue from the sale.”
iTRACE is currently processing around 40 thousand pieces per week in its first new facility.
Once the product has been secured with iTRACE 2DMI, the brand has a powerful tool to fight counterfeit and grey market trading of their products. Using the iTRACE 2DMI 2 Factor Product Authentication (2FA) solution in combination with the iTRACE Blockchain Gateway provides a robust and flexible authentication solution for any product or component.