Counterfeit or look-alike goods rarely announce themselves with fanfare. They slip quietly into shelves, tempting buyers with familiarity and lower cost. Writes By John Andrew Musundi, Managing Director-Africa, Sicuro Group.
There are moments in this line of work when the truth does not appear in boardrooms or formal complaints. Sometimes, the truth sits quietly on a shelf in a small shop, unnoticed by anyone except the customers who pick it up without a second thought.
A few years ago, my team and I were approached with a concern that sounded straightforward: a long-established household product had begun losing ground in several regional markets. Sales were dipping, customer loyalty was shifting, and nothing about the company’s internal operations could explain the decline.
On the surface, it looked like a normal business fluctuation. But markets rarely shift without a story behind them.
A Journey Through the Border Towns
We began where most disruptions start: at the edges. Our officers travelled quietly through several trading corridors, speaking to retailers, observing consumer behaviour, and studying the flow of goods.
In each town they visited, a pattern started to emerge.
A competing product had appeared on shelves. It looked familiar- far too familiar. Same colour tones. Same box size. Same visual cues consumers had learned to trust for years. And because it was cheaper, shoppers were picking it up believing it was the brand they had always used.
The change was so subtle that by the time the brand owners realized what was happening, the alternative product had already gained a foothold.
Behind Every Shelf Is a Supply Chain
As our work deepened, we traced how the product was entering the country, how it moved from suppliers to towns, and how it reached retailers before anyone noticed a shift. It was a silent, organized distribution system- efficient, low-visibility, and designed to blend naturally into daily commercial flows.
For retailers, it was business. For consumers, it was confusion. For the legitimate brand, it was erosion from the inside out.
What struck us most was not just the imitation, but the precision. The packaging similarity was deliberate. The pricing strategy was calculated. The supply chain was engineered to bypass the usual detection points.
This was not a random market entry. It was an infiltration.
The Real Cost of Imitation
Counterfeit or look-alike goods rarely announce themselves with fanfare. They slip quietly into shelves, tempting buyers with familiarity and lower cost.
But their impact is far from quiet:
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Legitimate businesses lose revenue they cannot easily trace
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Consumers risk purchasing goods that may not meet quality or safety standards
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Retailers unknowingly become part of unfair competition
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Entire supply chains bend under the weight of compromised integrity
Once the puzzle came together, the picture was unmistakable: a cross-border manufacturing and distribution network had strategically targeted a trusted regional brand.
What This Experience Taught Us
When you operate in dynamic African markets, your real competitors are not always brands you see in the open. Sometimes, the threat sits in repackaged familiarity slipping through borders, blending with trusted goods, and capturing unsuspecting customers.
This case reaffirmed something we see across sectors today:
Brand protection is not a legal exercise alone,
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It is an intelligence function
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It is a market surveillance function
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It is a consumer-trust function
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And it must be continuous
A Call to Action for Business Leaders
If your product sits on any shelf in Africa- whether in supermarkets, kiosks, wholesale centres, or border towns- your brand is part of a battlefield you may not see.
Ignoring this reality does not make it go away. Proactive intelligence does.
At Sicuro Group Africa, we help businesses understand market disruptions before they become financial losses, identify threats early, and protect the equity they’ve worked hard to build.
The views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Kenyan Wall Street.
