TMD Friction : Fighting the Fakes

Having counterfeits made of your products and brands is a strange kind of compliment, the cost to set up manufacturing and engineering to make a fake product only makes sense when the product has both premium quality and value, and a market leading brand identity.

Historically the premium products and brands of TMD Friction have been clear targets of copy cat producers, but today dealing with counterfeit has become an infrequent activity, as a direct result of the effective measures and

controls placed on all TMD Friction manufacturing and product lines. Every friction product supplied by TMD Friction is manufactured inside the company, from one of the 10 state of the art factories spread across the globe. Having operations on this scale, with a million individual pieces of brake friction rolling off the production lines every day, does not deter TMD Friction from operating strict common control processes and unique anti-counterfeit measures in all plants.

All TMD Friction products have unique part and manufacturing batch information, the packaging specification is almost impossible to replicate and TMD Friction employs anti-counterfeit security seals that include holographic technology. At Automechanika 2010 TMD revealed a new security seal which incorporates 5 different anti-counterfeit technologies, some of which have never been previously used in the automotive sector.

In the past occasional counterfeit activity in the Aftermarket involving a product packaged under one of the flagship TMD Brands has been rapidly identified and immediate actions taken. With worldwide trademark protection on all brands TMD Friction has always made a strong retaliation to any fake products, tracing these inferior products back to source and working with local governments and legal teams to shut down the operations and prevent further distribution.

However despite all this built in protection, and an aggressive stance on fake products, counterfeits do still occur, both of aftermarket and original equipment products. TMD Friction works hand in hand with it’s customers to protect against counterfeiting, supplying technical information and product test results to clearly illustrate the dangers in using inferior brake parts and components. At Automechanika 2010 TMD Friction also launched a new web platform, providing clear advice on how to identify fake products, presenting samples of previous counterfeit products compared to the original product and an open forum inviting customers and consumers worldwide to register any concerns over fake brake components.

TMD has some simple rules for end-users (both trade & retail) that apply to all levels of the market and to all product groups:

• If a product carries a brand name spelled differently or has the wrong style or different logos don’t buy it, look at the website for the brands and consult an authorised distributor
• If a product is priced significantly lower than usual and is out of line with comparative brands
• If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn't, check the product in detail
• If a branded product is presented in plain packaging, or packaging with a different brand check the box contents and the product carefully, without a clear explanation from the parts distributor don’t buy the product and demand only official packaging
• As a general rule when purchasing such safety critical items as brake friction, if you have any doubt contact the manufacturer directly or your local authorised distributor / main dealer.

For more information on TMD products please call them on 01274 854000