Birkenstock IPO filing warns of knock-offs on Facebook

Birkenstock, the enduring sandal maker based in 1774, filed its paperwork for an IPO on Tuesday, and warned buyers of the dangers posed by counterfeit manufacturers who use social media to advertise their merchandise.

The footwear firm, which was began in Germany and is now based mostly in London, plans to go public on the New York Inventory Change, below ticker image “BIRK.”

Birkenstock has lengthy struggled to guard its mental property, as copycats have taken benefit of the model’s recognition and premium costs to try to undercut the corporate with cheaper options. In its prospectus, Birkenstock says that a few of the competitors comes from “personal label choices” from retailers, however there are additionally “knock-off merchandise” which are stealing its IP and attempting to persuade folks on Fb and elsewhere on the net that the gadgets are genuine.

“Up to now, third events have established web sites to focus on customers on Fb or different social media platforms with ‘look alike’ web sites meant to trick customers into believing that they had been buying Birkenstock merchandise at a steep low cost,” the submitting stated. “Ought to counterfeit merchandise be efficiently offered on e-commerce platforms managed by third events, our manufacturers and status may very well be broken.”

Birkenstock would not identify Amazon wherever within the 206-page (plus footnotes) submitting, but it surely does say that it has “refrained, and we might sooner or later chorus, from utilizing sure third-party web sites to distribute our merchandise because of the promoting of counterfeit merchandise on such platforms.”

Seven years in the past, Birkenstock publicly stop Amazon within the U.S. attributable to an eruption of counterfeit and unauthorized gross sales on the positioning. The corporate additionally stated on the time that it could now not permit approved Birkenstock retailers to promote on Amazon.

“The Amazon market, which operates as an ‘open market,’ creates an setting the place we expertise unacceptable enterprise practices which we consider jeopardize our model,” then-Birkenstock USA CEO David Kahan wrote in a memo on July 5, 2016, addressed to “our valued Birkenstock companions.”

Kahan, whose title is now President Americas, went onto say that “policing this exercise internally and in partnership with Amazon.com has confirmed not possible.”

Previous to its departure from Amazon, legions of Chinese language sellers had been selling Birkenstock’s flagship Arizona sandal for $79.99, or $20 under the retail value, in response to CNBC’s reporting on the time.

Since 2016, in response to the prospectus, Birkenstock has “considerably expanded” its direct-to-consumer efforts in e-commerce within the U.S. For the fiscal 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2022, that channel represented 38% of income, the corporate stated, including that “certainly one of our methods is to proceed to extend the proportion of our revenues from e-commerce.”

Subsequent to the Amazon conflict, Birkenstock offered a majority stake within the firm to LVMH-backed personal fairness agency L Catterton in February 2021. After the IPO, L Catterton will proceed to personal a majority of Birkenstock, in response to the submitting.

“We see ourselves because the oldest start-up on earth,” the corporate stated within the submitting. “We’re a model backed by a household custom of 1 / 4 of a millennium with the resilience, timeless relevance, and credibility of a multigenerational enterprise.”

Fb mum or dad Meta is properly conscious of the efforts taken by counterfeiters on its platform. In 2021, Fb and luxurious model Gucci filed a joint lawsuit in California, alleging {that a} consumer of Fb’s U.S. websites was utilizing the platform to promote pretend Gucci merchandise.

The businesses stated in an announcement that over 1,000,000 “items of content material had been faraway from Fb and Instagram within the first half of 2020, based mostly on 1000’s of experiences of counterfeit content material from model house owners, together with Gucci.”

Within the six months ended March 31, Birkenstock’s income climbed 19% to 644.2 million euros ($693.2 million). Internet earnings over that stretched dropped 45%, largely attributable to a international trade loss.

WATCH: Birkenstock recordsdata for U.S. IPO on NYSE