IACC: No brand is an island
In 1979, a handful of companies in the apparel and luxury goods sectors decided to join forces to address a common concern: the growing trade in counterfeit goods. This year, we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of that decision, and the founding of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), which has grown to include companies from more than 40 countries and in nearly 20 different industries.
This milestone has triggered numerous conversations and quite a bit of reflection over the extraordinary changes that have occurred in our field over the past four decades. While we look back over the history of the organisation, and anti-counterfeiting more generally, it’s also an opportunity to look forward, and to ponder where the next 40 years will take us.
We’ve grown ever more accustomed to the advancements in technology and global trade that have led to our present state of affairs, but it’s worth taking a moment to remember how things were in decades past. They were, undoubtedly, simpler times. Although China has emerged as a manufacturing powerhouse, and the leading source for counterfeit goods around the world Chinese exports were, relatively speaking, almost non-existent in the 1970s.
