IN THE NEWS: The dateline was Wenzhou, China. In a true case of
international espionage, Zippo Manufacturing Co. Chief Executive
Gregory Booth and General Counsel Jeffrey Duke hired private
investigators to shadow a Chinese factory. Their mission? To break
up a counterfeiting ring suspected of producing fake Zippo
lighters.

In the old days, counterfeiters targeted just the pricey stuff,
like Coach bags and Rolex watches. Now lighters were the commodity
to copy.

After all, the counterfeiters knew that a fake lighter worth 50
cents could jump in price to $5 wholesale if adorned with a Zippo
logo. And a quantity of them could really sell in a country where
the market demand was huge.

But back to the espionage … the detectives eyeballed that
particular factory for weeks to no avail. Nothing came out of the
building – not one single lighter.

Where was the loot going? Underground tunnels, it turned out.
The owner had dug a tunnel leading to a next-door warehouse,
sneaking out the booty at night.

That’s only part of the tale of intrigue making up Zippo’s
aggressive plan to nab counterfeiters who are estimated to have
siphoned off a third of the company’s earnings. That fascinating
story with such resounding local impact – after all, fewer sales
mean more layoffs -is told under the title “Pirate’s Ball” in the
April 9 edition of Forbes magazine.

The article notes that counterfeiters often outsource their work
as a way of means of keeping the gumshoes off their trail. One
company may make the lighter’s “insides,” another can package them,
another assemble them and still another, ship them.

Zippo, the article notes, hadn’t always resorted to such
“cat-and-mouse games”:

“Zippo’s founder, George Blaisdell, committed to the factory in
Bradford when he started the company during the Great Depression.
But with fewer Americans lighting up, the family started exporting
20 years to countries where smoking was still in style. The
distinctive lighters that shut with a click are popular in Brazil,
Russia and especially China, where a third of the world’s smoking
tobacco gets lit. Zippo established distribution networks,
advertised its products and created a market overseas. Sales jumped
fivefold between 1985 and 1995.

“But the very changes that made it easier to send Zippo lighters
around the world also created openings for counterfeiters to slip
through easier trade financing, logistics contractors and the
Internet.”

More tomorrow … .