Textiles company moves to combat counterfeiting

The Managing Director of the Premium African Textiles (PAT), Mr Kofi Boateng, has said that his establishment is consciously coming out with innovative ways to overcome the challenges of counterfeiting and smuggling of the company’s registered designs.

According to Mr Boateng, it was against this background that the company, which marketed GTP and Woodin fabric, introduced the SMS-based value-added service called GTP Authentication Service in March this year.

This is a service that empowers a buyer of GTP product to easily verify if what he/she has purchased is genuine or not.” This service is powered by a Ghanaian company called mPedigree Goldkeys.

Mr Boateng said this when he launched a new consumer promotion, the “GTP ‘OGA’ Consumer Promotion” at a ceremony in Accra.

Verification promotion

According to Mr Boateng, the GTP OGA Promotion was to reward loyal consumers (not traders) as a way to express gratitude to all Ghanaians who buy GTP products.

The promotion is a scheme which seeks to encourage consumers to verify every time they buy GTP fabric to be sure that they have bought the real one.

Giving details of the promotion, the Marketing Director of the company, Rev Stephen Kofi Badu, said the acronym OGA is the initials of the three key brand campaign words: Original, Genuine and Authentic.

Rev Badu said the company would reward the highest buyers of GTP products every month for three months (July to September 2015).
According to the Marketing Director, a consumer who bought any of the GTP products, which comprised Nustyle, Adepa, Safoa and Nsroma had to scratch a silver sticker on the label to reveal the code and text it to a provided toll-free number to some identified telecommunication service providers.

The texter, according to Rev Badu would get a response to confirm the authenticity of the product.