Miami, Florida, Coral Gables Stores at Merrick Park, Nordstrom Division Retailer retail show of Birkenstock sandals.
Jeff Greenberg | Common Pictures Team | Getty Pictures
Birkenstock, the enduring sandal maker based in 1774, filed its bureaucracy for an IPO on Tuesday, and warned traders of the hazards posed through counterfeit manufacturers who use social media to advertise their merchandise.
The shoes corporate, which was once began in Germany and is now based totally in London, plans to move public at the New York Inventory Trade, underneath ticker image “BIRK.”
Birkenstock has lengthy struggled to give protection to its highbrow assets, as copycats have taken good thing about the logo’s recognition and top rate costs to take a look at and undercut the corporate with inexpensive possible choices. In its prospectus, Birkenstock says that one of the most pageant comes from “non-public label choices” from shops, however there also are “knock-off merchandise” which are stealing its IP and seeking to persuade folks on Fb and in different places on the net that the pieces are unique.
“Prior to now, 1/3 events have established web sites to focus on customers on Fb or different social media platforms with ‘glance alike’ web sites supposed to trick customers into believing that they had been buying Birkenstock merchandise at a steep bargain,” the submitting stated. “Will have to counterfeit merchandise be effectively bought on e-commerce platforms controlled through 1/3 events, our manufacturers and popularity might be broken.”
Birkenstock does not title Amazon anyplace within the 206-page (plus footnotes) submitting, however it does say that it has “refrained, and we might sooner or later chorus, from the use of positive third-party web sites to distribute our merchandise because of the promoting of counterfeit merchandise on such platforms.”
Seven years in the past, Birkenstock publicly hand over Amazon within the U.S. because of an eruption of counterfeit and unauthorized gross sales at the website online. The corporate additionally stated on the time that it will not permit licensed Birkenstock traders to promote on Amazon.
“The Amazon market, which operates as an ‘open marketplace,’ creates an atmosphere the place we enjoy unacceptable trade practices which we imagine jeopardize our emblem,” then-Birkenstock USA CEO David Kahan wrote in a memo on July 5, 2016, addressed to “our valued Birkenstock companions.”
Kahan, whose name is now President Americas, went onto say that “policing this job internally and in partnership with Amazon.com has confirmed unattainable.”
Previous to its departure from Amazon, legions of Chinese language dealers were selling Birkenstock’s flagship Arizona sandal for $79.99, or $20 underneath the retail worth, in line with CNBC’s reporting on the time.
Since 2016, in line with the prospectus, Birkenstock has “considerably expanded” its direct-to-consumer efforts in e-commerce within the U.S. For the fiscal 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2022, that channel represented 38% of earnings, the corporate stated, including that “one in all our methods is to proceed to extend the percentage of our revenues from e-commerce.”
Next to the Amazon conflict, Birkenstock bought a majority stake within the corporate to LVMH-backed non-public fairness company L Catterton in February 2021. After the IPO, L Catterton will proceed to possess a majority of Birkenstock, in line with the submitting.
“We see ourselves because the oldest start-up on earth,” the corporate stated within the submitting. “We’re a emblem subsidized through a circle of relatives custom of 1 / 4 of a millennium with the resilience, undying relevance, and credibility of a multigenerational trade.”
Fb father or mother Meta is definitely conscious about the efforts taken through counterfeiters on its platform. In 2021, Fb and comfort emblem Gucci filed a joint lawsuit in California, alleging {that a} person of Fb’s U.S. websites was once the use of the platform to promote pretend Gucci merchandise.
The firms stated in a commentary that over 1,000,000 “items of content material had been got rid of from Fb and Instagram within the first part of 2020, according to 1000’s of stories of counterfeit content material from emblem homeowners, together with Gucci.”
Within the six months ended March 31, Birkenstock’s earnings climbed 19% to 644.2 million euros ($693.2 million). Internet source of revenue over that stretched dropped 45%, in large part because of a foreign currencies loss.
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