Genuine product.
Wrong channel.
Grey-market diversion and parallel imports move your genuine products into markets, channels and price tiers you never authorised - undercutting your partners and your pricing. authentic.network gives every unit a traceable identity, so you can see where it surfaces and trace it back to where it leaked.
The product is real.
The channel isn't.
Grey-market goods are genuine - so nothing about them looks wrong. They pass every authenticity check, because they are authentic. The damage stays invisible until your authorised distributors start asking why they're being undercut by stock they never received.
- An authorised partner losing deals to your own product, sold cheaper.
- Regional pricing you set, quietly collapsing across borders.
- Warranty and support claims for units you can't account for.
Same product.
Two very different journeys.
Nothing about the product changes. Only its route does - and that is exactly what makes diversion so hard to see without a unit-level record.
- Factory
- Distributor Germany
- Authorised retailer
- Customer scan in market
- Factory
- Distributor Germany
- Marketplace France
- Scan outside its allocation
- Anomaly flagged - traced back to the distributor it left from
Diversion has
a price.
Grey-market damage rarely arrives as a single big event. It's a slow erosion - a distributor who stops trusting your pricing, a market that learns to wait for the cheaper parallel stock. By the time it shows up in the numbers, the discounting has already reset what people expect to pay.
Undercut partners
Authorised distributors lose deals to cheaper parallel stock - and start questioning whether your channel is worth defending.
Eroded pricing power
Once a lower price exists in the open, it quietly resets what the whole market expects to pay - everywhere.
Broken regional strategy
Launch timing, price tiers and exclusivity deals only hold if stock stays in the market you put it in.
Blame without visibility
Without unit-level data you can't prove where a diverted batch came from - so the leak stays open, quarter after quarter.
Every unit, traceable
to its source.
Each product carries a unique authentic.network identity, and every scan tells you where that unit is. When stock allocated to one market surfaces in another, anomaly intelligence flags the pattern - and item-level data traces the batch back to where it left your authorised channel.
- Unique at item level. Every unit is individually identifiable - not just the SKU, the exact unit.
- Visible wherever it's scanned. Each scan adds a location signal, so diversion shows up as a pattern, not a rumour.
- Traceable to the leak. Item-level history points back to the distributor allocation a diverted batch came from.
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From rumour to
real-time evidence.
See diversion as it happens
Watch where units actually surface and catch parallel trade while you can still act on it - not a quarter later from a partner complaint.
Trace it to the source
Follow a diverted batch back through item-level data to the allocation it leaked from, instead of guessing.
Hold the channel accountable
Use the evidence to enforce distributor agreements, renegotiate terms, or close off the channels that keep leaking.
Built for brands with
borders to defend.
Grey-market control on authentic.network runs across categories sold through layered, cross-border distribution - where genuine stock can travel far beyond the market it was meant for.
Every method
forces a trade-off.
Channel visibility only works if every unit can be checked cheaply, anywhere, by anyone. This is where each method lands.
| Approach | Hard to clone | Smartphone | No hardware | Low cost at scale | DPP-ready |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard QR code | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| NFC | ✓ | ~ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ |
| RFID | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ |
| Hologram | ~ | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Blockchain-only | ~ | ~ | ~ | ✗ | ~ |
| authentic.network | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Common questions
Counterfeits are fake; grey-market goods are genuine products in the wrong channel. Both rely on the same unique identity, but grey-market control is about where a real unit travels - not whether it's real.
Every unit carries a unique identity, and each scan adds a location signal. When stock allocated to one market is scanned in another, anomaly intelligence flags the pattern across the network.
Item-level history links each unit to the allocation it shipped in, so a diverted batch can be traced back to the point in your authorised channel where it left.
No. The identity is added at production as part of your existing print and packaging, and your distribution stays the same - you simply gain visibility into where each unit goes.
Grey market is genuine product sold outside the distribution channel its maker intended - the right goods in the wrong place. It is not counterfeiting: nothing about the item is fake, only its route is unauthorised.
Usually not. Within the EEA, once a product has been placed on the market with the rights holder's consent, trademark rights are generally exhausted and it can be resold freely. That is exactly why diversion is a commercial problem rather than a legal one - you rarely stop it with lawyers, you stop it by seeing it and acting on the distributor who leaked it. Specific cases depend on jurisdiction and contract terms.
Yes - that is the defining feature. The unit is real, made by you, and will pass any authenticity check. What is wrong is where it ended up, which is why authentication alone does not solve diversion.
They largely describe the same thing from different angles. Parallel import describes the trade route - genuine goods imported outside official channels. Grey market describes the result for the brand: product selling in a market, channel or price tier it was never allocated to.
By giving each unit an identity and watching where it is actually scanned. When a unit registered for one market surfaces in another, or appears far from its allocated route, that gap between planned and actual distribution is the signal.
Find the distributors
you didn't know you had.
A 20-minute call is enough to show how grey-market control would work across your markets, your distributors and your volumes.