Toppling fakes

How Mighty Mug are protecting their innovative brand from counterfeiters

113

Websites selling fakes

7,677

Counterfeits removed

91%

Enforcement success rate

The Challenge

Mighty Mug products are distributed around the world. As a result, the company was having a hard time finding and addressing counterfeits on their own.
It was an expensive, time-consuming process with minimal return on investment. While Mighty Mug was trying to address the problem of infringements with a legal team, they were slowly losing money to counterfeits — $15 to 20 million in sales, in fact.

The Solution

The company turned to Red Points to tackle copyright infringements on a global scale. The automated, adaptable solution has worked wonders for the brand by implementing machine-learning features to find fakes at an incredible rate.

The Result

Since working with Red Points, Mighty Mug has addressed over 7,500 infringements. Smaldone says the solution has had an incredible impact on the company’s business and bottom line, allowing them to harness revenue that was being siphoned off by counterfeiters.

Mighty Mug

After a spilled mug ruined an important computer, Jayme Smaldone and his team of mechanical designers and industrial engineers set out to create a new type of mug – one that would stand up to falling down and ruining your day.
Three years and a successful Kickstarter campaign later, the company released its patented no-spill travel mug with SmartGrip Technology. Today, Mighty Mug is available around the world.

themightymug.com

Kitchenware industry

New Jersey, USA

“I could go on and on about the benefits, but the truth is if you are building a brand, you need to use Red Points”

7,677

Counterfeits removed

Jayme Smaldone,
CEO at Mighty Mug

The Mighty Mug story

After a spilled mug ruined an important computer, Jayme Smaldone and his team of mechanical designers and industrial engineers set out to create a new type of mug – one that would stand up to falling down and ruining your day.
Three years and a successful Kickstarter campaign later, the company released its patented no-spill travel mug with SmartGrip Technology. Today, Mighty Mug is available around the world.

Counterfeiters undermine brand credibility

People worldwide trust Mighty Mug’s innovative creations, which are the result of three years of research and development by a team of mechanical designers and industrial engineers. Their Kickstarter campaign drew the support of over 2,000 backers and the attention of counterfeiters around the world. Almost immediately, the company began finding lower-quality knock-off products online during simple internet searches.
While Mighty Mugs are assured to withstand being knocked over, cheap knock-offs are not. So having these fakes for sale online meant risking Mighty Mug’s reputation in the eyes of consumers. A few bad reviews from people accidentally buying fakes could mean big trouble.

A problem too big to handle alone

Mighty Mug’s online virality, with videos online of people amazed by the Smartgrip technology, drew in masses of excited customers – but it also attracted a wave of counterfeiters eager to make a quick buck.
As the Mighty Mug company grew and developed distribution contracts around the world, it became harder to identify and take down every instance of infringement. Distributors in countries where the problem was most serious grew reluctant to carry Mighty Mug at all.

Simple, cost-effective brand protection

The company was scrambling to track down offenders, burning through legal fees and wasting employees’ time in the process. On the advice of a colleague in the industry, they adopted Red Points’ 360° solution to tackle counterfeits on platforms around the world.
Now Mighty Mug can monitor instances of infringement wherever they take place and remove them within hours. Keyword monitoring and image recognition make it easy to identify fakes anywhere in the world, while machine learning technology automates tasks that used to cost the company valuable time.
Best of all, internet searches are now free of counterfeit products and customers can be sure they’re buying an authentic Mighty Mug.

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