October 18, 2022
Asahi Kasei Corp.
TIS Inc.

Asahi Kasei and TIS established Akliteia™ as a new digital platform providing a solution to the issue of counterfeit goods, and started its service in October 2022 optimized for the apparel industry dealing with leather goods, bags, etc. in Japan.

Supply chains are exposed to a variety of risks in the course of delivering products and services to end users. Counterfeit goods are a problem in many industries, particularly apparel, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and foods. It is said that their annual economic and social damage could be as high as $4.68 trillion worldwide.¹ As it is difficult to quantify the actual state of damage, reactive and stopgap countermeasures were generally all that could be done, leaving many companies feeling limited in their ability to act alone. According to independent research by Asahi Kasei, there is an unmet need for measures spanning the whole supply chain, including end-to-end visualization.

• ¹Finance, published by Japan's Ministry of Finance, May 2020. Total damage from counterfeit and pirated goods as well as indirect adverse effects in 2022 forecasted in the range of $3.44 trillion to $4.68 trillion.

As a solution, Asahi Kasei and TIS established the Akliteia™ digital platform which enables the occurrence of counterfeit products to be quantitatively visualized as the basis to formulate anti-counterfeiting measures by establishing a continuous framework to reduce counterfeit goods across the entire supply chain rather than by companies acting individually. The name Akliteia™ comes from “aletheia,” the Greek word for "truth" combined with the word "key" representing the platform's ability to discern genuine articles and exclude counterfeits.

The Akliteia™ platform consists of the three elements of an anti-counterfeit label, a scanning device, and a blockchain, to ensure both authenticity and originality. The transparent anti-counterfeit label is manufactured using proprietary material and technology of Asahi Kasei, with special patterns printed in submicron resolution. Asahi Kasei's success in forming such extremely fine patterns has been presented at several international scientific conferences.

With the anti-counterfeit label affixed to targeted products, it is possible to confirm the authenticity of a product at each point throughout the supply chain, such as manufacturing plants, logistics warehouses, retailers, and electronic commerce warehouses, by scanning it with the device provided by Asahi Kasei. This also allows the number of genuine products to be tracked, while eliminating from the supply chain any counterfeits which may be discovered.

Furthermore, the results of the scanning are recorded in the cloud service Akliteia™ Net which uses the Corda-based blockchain platform by TIS. With Akliteia™ Net, information regarding the occurrence of counterfeit products is shared across the supply chain, enabling quantification and visualization of contamination by counterfeit goods, including at what points they entered the supply chain. Commercial confidentiality is ensured by allowing the scope of information sharing to be flexibly changed in accordance with changes in the supply chain.

In the apparel industry, counterfeit goods are a threat to brands which have been nurtured through continuous investment by their owners. Trade in counterfeit and pirated products is said to be as much as 3.3% of world trade.² This causes economic harm to consumers who unknowingly purchase counterfeits, and may make them disappointed with a brand. Risks are not only in primary distribution, but also in the secondary distribution of used goods. For the brand owners, this leads to decreased sales and diminishes the value of a brand.

• ²Trends in Trade in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods issued by the OECD in 2016

Asahi Kasei and TIS have begun providing the Akliteia™ service to the apparel industry specifically dealing with leather goods, bags, etc. in Japan. Asahi Kasei provides a system that allows anti-counterfeit labels to be directly affixed to goods or to be attached to tags, etc. By sewing the anti-counterfeit labels into goods, assurance of authenticity may be maintained for a long period.

Moving forward, provision of the Akliteia™ service will be gradually expanded in the apparel industry dealing with leather goods, bags, etc. in Japan. An authenticity tracing service with RFID-enabled anti-counterfeit labels is scheduled to begin in fiscal 2023, enabling individual items to be traced through distribution. After the service gets on track in Japan, it will be expanded overseas in fiscal 2024.

Asahi Kasei and TIS are working to resolve issues of counterfeit goods together with related parties in the supply chain. Both companies hope to contribute to achieving a world where counterfeit goods are eliminated from distribution, and only authentic goods are delivered to consumers.

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