Satchel maker turns to MarkMonitor to protect brand

The Cambridge Satchel Company has found 1,000 fake versions of its products online since it began using MarkMonitor a few months ago.

Online brand protection tool MarkMonitor has detected 29 e-commerce sites selling fake Cambridge Satchel Company products, as well as 76 websites using the brand in their domain name.

The company, which has grown rapidly since 2008 and now boasts sales figures of over £1m (around $1.6m) per month, noticed the issue when consumers complained.

“We have had letters and emails from customers, wanting to return a poor quality satchel, or to find out why their orders were not filled. When we check the order numbers, we find that they were not ordered from the official [website],” said Julie Deane, founder of the company.

Dean initially tried to tackle the counterfeiters by having lawyers apply to take the websites down. However, new websites simply popped up to replace the old ones, leading the company to consider a new approach.