Counterfeits in Pakistan: what a brand can actually do about them
Legal action is slow and expensive, and raids do not scale. What does work is making every unit verifiable, so fakes fail in the buyer's hand rather than in a courtroom.
Founder·1 September 2026·7 min read
Ask a Pakistani brand owner about counterfeits and you get a familiar story. A customer complains about a product that failed. The batch is checked and it is not yours. Somewhere in Faisalabad or Karachi, someone is printing your label onto something cheaper, and your worst reviews are being written by people who never bought from you.
The instinct is to go legal. Sometimes that is right. But enforcement is slow, geographically limited and expensive, and while it grinds on, the fakes keep moving.
Why the usual defences do not hold
Every one of these tries to make the fake harder to produce. The more useful goal is to make the fake easy to detect, by anyone, instantly.
- Holograms are copied within months, and customers cannot tell a real hologram from a convincing one anyway.
- Special packaging raises the counterfeiter's cost briefly, then becomes the thing they copy.
- Scratch cards with SMS verification work, but the code space is usually small, the SMS cost is real, and the data ends up with a telco aggregator rather than with you.
- Raids remove one operation and rarely the next one.
Shift the check to the buyer
If every unit carries a unique code and the buyer can scan it in a shop, the counterfeit fails at the only moment that changes an outcome: before the money is handed over. The counterfeiter can copy the label, but copying a code that has already been used gives the wrong answer, and copying nothing at all gives an invalid answer.
This also solves a problem enforcement never touches. The honest retailer who unknowingly bought fake stock now has a way to check their own supply, which turns your distribution chain into a detection network instead of a suspect list.
Make the instruction obvious on the pack
Verification fails at the label more often than at the technology. If the QR code sits on the back in six point type next to the barcode, nobody scans it. Put the invitation on the front, in Urdu and English, with a one line reason: scan to confirm this pack is genuine.
The best performing labels we have seen also tell the buyer what to do if the answer is wrong, with a WhatsApp number that reaches a human. A customer who has just discovered a fake is your most motivated informant, and most brands waste that moment.
Use the scan data on your own distribution
Counterfeiting rarely happens in a vacuum. Batches leak, returns get resold, and stock allocated to one region turns up in another. Once every unit is individually identified, those patterns become visible: which batch was scanned where, which codes are being scanned repeatedly, which consignment vanished from the record entirely.
That evidence is what makes a difficult conversation with a distributor possible, and it is far more actionable than a customer complaint. We wrote about that side of it in distributor accountability and the grey market.
A realistic rollout for a Pakistani brand
BrandProtection handles the software half of that list: bulk generation of unique codes, print-ready QR labels tied to real products and batches, a customer verification portal on your own domain, and the scan analytics and CSV exports you need when a conversation gets serious.
- Start with the product that is copied most, not the whole catalogue.
- Generate a batch of unique codes and print them as QR labels alongside your existing artwork.
- Run the verification portal on your own domain, so customers learn to trust your URL.
- Tell the trade before consumers. Distributors and retailers should hear it from you first, framed as protection for them.
- Watch the first month of scan data before extending to the next product line.
You will not eliminate counterfeiting. What you can do is make it visible, make it fail in front of the buyer, and collect the evidence that lets you act on the parts of your own chain that are leaking. That is a system, not a campaign, and it starts with one batch.
Frequently asked questions
Is legal action worth pursuing against counterfeiters?
It has a place, especially against a large organised operation, but it is slow, expensive and reactive, and it does nothing about the units already sitting on shelves. Most brands get better results from making fakes detectable at the point of sale and using the resulting evidence to act selectively, rather than relying on enforcement alone.
Which categories get counterfeited most in Pakistan?
Anything with a strong brand premium and a repeat purchase pattern: medicines and supplements, cosmetics and skincare, engine oil and auto parts, agricultural inputs like seed and pesticide, electronics accessories and branded FMCG. The common thread is that the buyer cannot tell the difference by looking, and the consequence of a fake lands on the brand.
Will verification codes increase my packaging cost much?
The label itself is a small marginal cost, and it can often be applied within your existing labelling step rather than as a new line. The real budget question is the system behind it, and that is a fixed software cost rather than a per unit one, so the cost per unit falls as volume rises.