Gray Market and Counterfeit Products

Your production safety, security, reliability and regulatory compliance all depend on the technologies that power your operations every day. Purchasing industrial automation products from gray market sources can expose you and your customers to serious risks. Rockwell Automation branded products purchased from these sources often fall short of customer expectations and are always inferior to a product purchased from an authorized source.

Help protect yourself and your customers by securing your supply chain to avoid these risks.

Make Sure It’s Genuine

Learn the Importance of Purchasing from an Authorized Source

Customers are being tempted more than ever to purchase from alternative gray market sources such as online resellers, parallel importers and peer-to-peer marketplaces. Unfortunately, this has resulted in customers unknowingly acquiring substandard and even counterfeit Rockwell Automation products. Products purchased from unauthorized sources present significant risks to safety and security. Watch how to avoid the dangers of gray market and counterfeit products in this video.

Important Definitions

What is the Gray Market?

Rockwell Automation has a longstanding and respected limited distribution model. We sell our products either directly to customers or via our global authorized distributor network, and our authorized distributors are prohibited from selling to unauthorized resellers – sometimes also referred to as parallel importers. Unauthorized resellers generally acquire surplus, old, used and counterfeit products and often advertise them as “new” or using equivalent terms to unsuspecting customers. They may also acquire products from our authorized channels via deception. Some products enter the gray market as the result of theft or embezzlement. This trade of Rockwell Automation products advertised as “new” outside of our authorized channels is referred to as the gray market.

What Do We Mean by Counterfeit Products?

Counterfeit products are any Rockwell Automation trademarked products that contain any non-factory original elements advertised as “new”. Some examples of what we are seeing in the gray market include:

• Old, used, modified and repaired products being repackaged with fake boxes, fake factory seals and fake labels to misrepresent them as “new”
• Products that consist of or contain physically counterfeit elements such as plastics, displays, electronic components and circuit boards

How Can You Help Protect Yourself?

The best line of defense against these risks remains with our customers to make smart sourcing decisions and include:

• Keeping your supply chain as short and transparent as possible - source Rockwell Automation products only from authorized sources. Use our partner locator to find your local Rockwell Automation Authorized Distributor
• Being skeptical of companies claiming to be “authorized”. Always validate your source independently using our partner locators or by contacting your local Rockwell Automation office
• Mandating that your supplier is sourcing either from a Rockwell Automation Authorized Distributor or from Rockwell Automation directly and verify this requirement if you are purchasing a machine or solution incorporating Rockwell Automation products
• Avoiding buying Rockwell Automation products from online peer-to-peer marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, etc. All “new” Rockwell Automation products offered on these platforms are gray market and possibly counterfeit products
• Familiarizing yourself with our security & anti-counterfeit label technologies and require that all new products purchased are registered via our Product Registration platform

If you have questions about whether your Rockwell Automation products are authentic and/or whether they have been acquired from an authorized source, contact your local Authorized Distributor or Rockwell Automation sales office – they can engage our Brand Protection team if necessary.

Buy Authorized. Buy Genuine.