By Helen Reid, Lily Forodi, and Mimosa Spencer
PARIS (Reuters) – At the tourist flea market in Saint-Ouen, not far from the Stade de France where athletes will compete at this summer’s Paris Olympics, police stormed in at dawn on April 3 and closed 11 shops selling counterfeit bags and shoes.
They seized 63,000 items of clothing, shoes and leather goods, including counterfeit Louis Vuitton products. Nike (NYSE:) products, and immediately dumped them in garbage trucks. Ten people were arrested.
Michel Lavoux, head of police security in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb that will host the 2024 Paris Olympics athletics and swimming events as well as the closing ceremony, described the operation as part of a pre-Olympics crackdown on counterfeit products.
Counterfeit fashion is a big business. The European Union Intellectual Property Office estimates that counterfeit branded clothing cost companies in France alone €1.7 billion ($1.83 billion) in lost sales on average per year between 2018 and 2021.
“We have been talking about the counterfeiting problem for the past two years,” Lavo said, adding that police were looking to step up their efforts. The raid in the world’s fashion capital bears some resemblance to clean-ups at previous Olympics such as Beijing in 2008, which had mixed results, as well as London in 2012 and Rio in 2016.
But a police crackdown on street vendors in the Seine-Saint-Denis area, where one in three people live in poverty according to French national statistics, has drawn criticism for pushing people already in tough economic circumstances further into hardship.
Axel Villemort, a researcher at the French social sciences institute LAVUE, said he had noticed a sharp increase in police presence and repression of vendors at informal markets in the Paris suburbs over the past three months, with frequent police patrols and the installation of metal barriers preventing vendors from setting up stalls.
“There is a will to erase all signs of insecurity, poverty and undesirable people,” he said, adding that law enforcement officers often fail to differentiate between fake sellers and sellers of legal second-hand goods.
Paris police did not respond to a request for comment.
Police raids on informal traders near Paris’s famous Montmartre hill have doubled since February, with 10 raids over four days in early June to dismantle a market of around 1,000 vendors, according to a letter seen by Reuters from the area’s mayor to the interior minister. Seventy tonnes of produce were destroyed in March alone, the letter said.
Last April, Reuters documented how street vendors were arrested in a large-scale police operation aimed at clearing Paris’s deprived suburbs of petty crime ahead of the Games.
profitable game
Some 15 million visitors are expected to attend the Olympic Games in Paris, a city that attracts buyers of luxury goods but is a tempting target for sellers of counterfeit designer goods.
Feeling the threat to branded products, the organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee joined forces with the French intellectual property protection association UNIFAB last year. The group works with brands to raise awareness of the risks associated with counterfeit products, which often violate safety rules and help fund illegal activities.
“We have worked hard to prepare for the Olympic Games,” said Delphine Sarfati Sobreira, FIFA CEO.
LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods conglomerate and an official sponsor of the 2024 Paris Olympics, is a prominent member of the committee. LVMH did not respond to a request for comment on the latest anti-counterfeiting measures. The company said it works closely with authorities and customs officials to enforce its intellectual property rights and defend consumers from counterfeiters.
France has already stepped up its efforts to combat counterfeit products. Last year, customs seized 20.5 million counterfeit products, a 78% increase compared to the 11.5 million products seized in 2022, according to data released in May.
This spring, UNIFAB helped train 1,200 customs officers to check the authenticity of Olympic Games merchandise, with the red Paris 2024 mascot and clothing the most likely target for illegal copies, officials said. French authorities also have 70 agents fighting counterfeit products online, looking to dismantle local and international criminal networks.
“Paris doesn’t want to be known as the counterfeit capital of Europe,” said John Coldham, an intellectual property lawyer and partner at London-based Jolling WLG who worked with brands during the “Fake Free London” campaign ahead of the 2012 Olympics. But perhaps the biggest concern for French fashion houses is that foreign shoppers will stay away from Paris during the Olympics, not the lost revenues due to counterfeit products.
Air France-KLM warned last week that it expected losses of up to €180 million this summer as some foreign tourists avoid the French capital. LVMH and its rivals have said they do not expect a boost in revenue from the sporting event and may shift their focus elsewhere.
“Luxury companies are signaling their readiness to welcome shoppers to places other than Paris: from the Cote d’Azur to Milan and beyond,” said Luca Solca, a luxury goods analyst at research and brokerage firm Bernstein.
