U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 78.4 million counterfeit items in fiscal 2025, worth $7.4 billion at the price the real products sell for. Five years earlier the figure was $1.3 billion. The fakes did not get better at hiding. There are simply more of them, and they arrive in containers now.
$7.4 billion in one year
One detail in the 2025 report matters for anyone who ships by sea. After the duty-free exemption for small parcels was suspended in 2025, 62 percent of seizures shifted to commercial vessels. Counterfeits stopped arriving one envelope at a time and started arriving the way your goods do, in containers, with a shipping record.
Four brands, four courtrooms
- DEC 2024 · STANLEYStanley and Amazon sued two U.S. sellers who had passed off counterfeit Quencher tumblers for about six months. The sellers had used fake invoices to look like authorized supply.
- OCT 2024 · YETIYETI filed a 192-page complaint invoking more than 80 design patents against a single look-alike drinkware seller, and asked for a recall.
- 2021 TO 2026 · CROCSCrocs spent five years trying to get a general import ban on copycat clogs. It failed. The only relief was an order against four Chinese factories that never showed up to defend themselves.
- JUN 2025 · LULULEMONLululemon sued Costco over dupes of its Scuba hoodie and ABC pant, $118 against $8 and $128 against $10. The complaint alleges shoppers were led to believe the dupes "are in fact manufactured by the authentic supplier of the original products." That is an allegation, not a finding, but it is the fear in one sentence.
Different products, same shape. The copy is identical enough that only the logo separates them, and the brand is left arguing about who made it.
The market for dupes
The buyers are not fooled. Morning Consult found that 27 percent of American adults have intentionally bought a dupe, and Circana puts the share of shoppers who have bought one in apparel, beauty or footwear at 58 percent, with higher-income households rising fastest. Amazon says it seized more than 15 million counterfeit products in 2024 alone.
A copycat product is no longer a back-alley purchase. It is a category, with its own hashtags, and the customer knows exactly which original it is standing in for.
What the copycat needs
To copy a product you need three things: the factory that makes it, the product code that describes it, and the date it will hit the market. All three sit on the original's shipping record, in the open, before the product is on a shelf.
We put a federal confidentiality protection in place for every entity and name you ship under, and we keep watching the platforms after that. Your factory and your next product code stop appearing where the copycats look first.
Sources
- Intellectual property rights seizure statistics, fiscal year 2025 · U.S. Customs and Border Protection
- Mapping global trade in fakes 2025 · OECD and EUIPO, May 2025
- Maker of Stanley tumblers teams with Amazon to sue counterfeiters · PPAI, Dec 9, 2024
- YETI invokes dozens of design patents in new drinkware lawsuit · Bloomberg Law, Oct 18, 2024
- Crocs continues fight to block imports of copycat clogs · The Fashion Law
- Lululemon sues Costco over alleged dupes · CNN Business, Jun 30, 2025
- Dupe shoppers and brand strategy 2025 · Morning Consult, 2025
- Life imitates brands: how dupe demand is evolving · Circana, Aug 21, 2026
- Amazon Brand Protection Report 2024 · Amazon, Mar 2025
