Gray Market Alert !

What are gray market and counterfeit products and how do they affect you and your patients?

Gray market products are items produced for a market outside Bangladesh and are manufactured for different specifications and usually with different labels. The product is sold at a significantly reduced price for sale in a lesser market, and is shipped for resale to that country’s dentists. To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value than the real thing. Counterfeit products are fakes or unauthorized replicas of the real product. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product.

The manufacturing of counterfeit, imitation products has long been a problem in the consumer goods sector—and is becoming increasingly troublesome in the dental industry. However what does it all mean for dentists? Every dental practice around the world has two principal objectives: to comply with the Hippocratic Oath and to operate profitably and efficiently. As such, it is only understandable that practices would seek to keep costs to a minimum when purchasing dental products. For this reason many practices are now turning to wholesale and discount platforms where they hope to find the same products at lower prices.

Unauthorized businesses will then redirect the product to Bangladesh for sale at a substantial savings and at great risk to the quality of care for the dental patient. By purchasing gray market products, dental professionals are exposing themselves to unnecessary risk and liability for defective items.