Resale marketplace StockX has removed the “Verified Authentic” tag it offered for shoes.
“You may have noticed we updated the name of our verification process, but the work our team does every day to meet our elevated standard of excellence has not changed,” said the company via a post on Twitter.
The company acknowledged the rise in the quality of counterfeits made it challenging to identify fraudulent products and has ultimately led to the rejection of a higher volume of shoes over the last 12 months.
“Like it or not, counterfeits are a problem for current culture goods on the secondary market. The quality of fake items has increased, as has the quantity of unauthorized items (often made in the same factory as the real items),” the company said.
"StockX has always been committed to fighting counterfeits and fraud on our platform. We remain one of the few marketplaces committed to physically reviewing 100% of the items that pass through our platform. Our efforts have led to rejecting over 1.4 million items valued over $400 million."
According to StockX, the most common cause for rejection, which roughly equates to about 24% of rejected products, was manufacturing defects, while 16% were deemed as used products, and 14% were determined to be inauthentic/fake.
The removal of the authentication tag follows its rising legal challenges. Nike recently escalated its feud with the sneaker marketplace by adding counterfeiting and false advertising claims to its already existing trademark-infringement lawsuit against the company.
In its investigation, Nike found that the shoes its team had purchased from the platform between December and January 2022, including a counterfeit Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG, were fake.
