No time to play: How CATAN boosted sales by taking down 224k counterfeits

Well-known board game CATAN hits its biggest year of sales in 2020 after removing a quarter of a million worth of fake games from the market with the help of Red Points

224,359

Total units removed

$7,749,828

Value of counterfeit products enforced in 3.5 years

80.2%

Enforcement success rate

The Challenge

Counterfeits were only a small problem for CATAN until 2015, when the brand began noticing a drastic increase in material loss and negative customer reviews. After extensive research into their quality control standards, they realized a massive increase in counterfeit products online were to blame.

The brand hired lawyers and other brand protection specialists to track counterfeiting activity they saw and manually send cease and desist letters to each individual platform. This soon became overwhelming and unscalable. Counterfeits started to impact CATAN’s growth , and the sheer number of fake products combined with the manual take down process simply wasn’t working.

The Solution

Red Points was able to help CATAN protect their brand and enforce their intellectual property with counterfeit monitoring and automatic takedowns. With the always-on brand protection software handling active counterfeit threats, the brand has more time and resources to focus on building up their proactive brand protection.

The Result

Since working with the brand, Red Points has enabled CATAN to take down nearly a quarter of a million fake games out of the market. That’s equal to over $7 million in revenue, and over 20,000 fraudulent transactions the brand was able to prevent. CATAN’s legal team can now focus on Intellectual Property registration without having to spend countless hours going after counterfeiters. Addressing counterfeits at this scale allowed the brand to get their reputation and revenue back on track.

Thanks to Red Points, CATAN was able to rebuild their sales previously lost to counterfeits, and earned their highest revenue to date in 2020.

CATAN
CATAN is a well-known board game first sold by creator Klaus Teuber in 1995. Since its inception, the game has exploded in popularity. CATAN has been published in over 40 languages, and over 35 million units of the game have been sold worldwide.

catan.com
Games and Toys Industry
Germany

Games and Toys Industry

"Red Points has enabled us to take out just under a quarter of a million fake games out of the market."

Pete Fenlon, CEO of CATAN STUDIO

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CATAN story

CATAN is a well-known board game first sold by creator Klaus Teuber in 1995. Since its inception, the game has exploded in popularity. CATAN has been published in over 40 languages, and over 35 million units of the game have been sold worldwide.

Counterfeits flooding the market too quickly to handle manually

Though CATAN enlisted the help of professional IP experts, the increase in counterfeit products online was too much for the brand to handle. The volume of complaints from customers became unmanageable, and the brand was losing revenue while working through lengthy manual takedowns.

Creating more time for proactive IP defense

Before Red Points, CATAN had to focus all their intellectual property specialists and resources on catching and taking down counterfeits. It was an overwhelming task that took increasing amounts of time and had little payoff for the brand. With Red Points, monitoring for counterfeits and taking down fake products became an automatic process running behind the scenes.

Now that Red Points handles CATAN’s reactive IP defense, the brand can spend their time on proactive IP defense. They can now build stronger defenses, and identify new emerging IP threats all while combating counterfeits as they occur. Thanks to Red Points, the brand has boosted their sales, and continues to protect the quality and reputation of the brand.

If you have 15 mins, you can see Red Points in action with your brand

Ji Won Bang — Brand Protection Specialist