Alibaba’s wealth of counterfeit products a concern to some potential IPO investors

HONG KONG — At first glance, the Monster Tron T1 headphones sold on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Taobao site are a tempting offer for audiophiles looking for state-of-the-art hi-fi equipment.

 

But sellers omit one key detail: Monster never produced this model.

 

“There should be none in existence but our prototypes,” said Dave Tognotti, general manager of the Brisbane company best known for its audio-visual cables. He said Monster went so far as to announce a launch date but the design proved too complex to build to the company’s quality specifications, so it was abandoned.

 

“You can understand our surprise when we started to see counterfeit versions of this product appearing on websites like Alibaba.com, Aliexpress.com, 1688.com and Taobao.com,” he said. All four sites are part of Alibaba Group. Tognotti said that 99.5 percent of purported Monster products sold on Alibaba sites are fakes, based on thousands of listings the company’s investigators have examined over the years.

 

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