Copies reach the markets where the original matters most.

Because they are high-volume, visually simple and sold through long informal chains. A hoe, a machete or a blade can be imitated with basic forging and a printed label, and it is bought by people comparing price at a market rather than by a procurement department checking documents. The distance between manufacturer and buyer is large, often several importers and traders, and there is rarely anyone in that chain whose job it is to spot a fake. The consequence falls on the buyer: a tool that fails mid-season is not an inconvenience, it is lost work at the time of year when the work cannot wait.

authentic.network gives agricultural tools and inputs a copy-evident code. The buyer checks it at the market stall with their own smartphone, no app needed – and with the authentic app even with no signal; a copy fails. Every scan is counted, so the manufacturer sees where copies are sold. Chillington uses it for its tools.

Yes, and for agriculture that is the deciding property. Verification in the authentic app is performed on the device and does not require the phone to be online at the moment of the check. A buyer at a rural market gets an answer with no bars of signal. Every scan is counted with its time and place, with or without a connection, so the manufacturer still sees where products are being checked. A verification system that only works with good coverage does not work where agricultural counterfeits are actually sold.

No. The mark is read with the phone’s camera and the result opens as a page. There is nothing to download, no account to create and no data plan to spend on an install. This matters more here than in almost any other industry: the person with the strongest reason to check is a smallholder buying one tool, and any additional step removes them from the process entirely.

Yes. Every verification scan records where and when it happened, including failed checks. Failed checks concentrating around a particular market, region or trader show you where copies are circulating, without you needing anyone on the ground. Separately, each serial can carry the market it was made for, so genuine tools being sold outside their intended territory are raised as grey-market cases. The dashboard shows where a check happened, how often and whether it raised a case.

As a label on the product or its packaging, or integrated into existing printed artwork. authentic.network produces the marks, so nothing has to be printed or configured on your side beyond applying them. For tools that are sold loose the label goes on the product; for packed goods it can be part of the pack. The carrier is an ordinary code - what makes it copy-evident is the patented security layer inside it, which is destroyed by any attempt to reproduce it.

Yes. The same scan that confirms a tool is genuine can trigger a loyalty action - points, a reward, or entry into your existing programme - and can grow your following on social media. For agricultural markets this turns verification from something a buyer does for the manufacturer’s benefit into something they do for their own, which is what makes scan rates hold up over time.