Counterfeit loss calculator
Enter your annual revenue and pick what you sell. The calculator estimates how much of your sales copies and knockoffs could be taking each year, using published figures for your product category.
Verified August 23, 2026
Modeled annual exposure, EU sector estimates
$26,000 to $39,000
Apparel, footwear and accessories, on $500,000 of annual revenue
At $500,000 of annual revenue, the model puts $26,000 to $39,000 of sales a year within reach of copies. The low end is the newer study and the high end is the earlier one.
- Central estimate, a year
- $26,000
- Sector share
- 5.2% of sales
- Data years
- 2018 to 2021
- Second published estimate
- 7.8%, 2013 to 2017
- Units at your price
- 650 a year
This is a model using EU sector estimates, not a measurement of your store. We could not find a per-store or US per-sector figure, and this calculator cannot see your listings.
How the counterfeit loss estimate is calculated
The estimate is one multiplication: annual revenue times the share of sales EUIPO estimates a sector loses to counterfeiting. The work is not in the arithmetic, it is in where the share comes from and which year it describes.
exposure = annual revenue × sector share
500,000 × 0.052 = 26,000
500,000 × 0.078 = 39,000
The shares come from the EU Intellectual Property Office, the only body publishing sector-level estimates with the model inputs written down. Its 2020 Status Report covers eleven sectors on 2013 to 2017 data, and its January 2024 study re-estimates three of them on 2018 to 2021 data. Both are econometric estimates of direct lost sales as a percentage of sector sales in the EU. Neither is a survey of merchants and neither describes a single company.
3%
6%
9%
12%
- Jewelry and watches 2013 to 2017 11.5%
- Toys and games 2018 to 2021 8.7%
- Smartphones 2015 only 8.3%
- Sports goods 2013 to 2017 7.7%
- Handbags and luggage 2013 to 2017 6.4%
- Spirits and wine 2013 to 2017 5.3%
- Clothing and footwear 2018 to 2021 5.2%
- Cosmetics and personal care 2018 to 2021 4.8%
- Pesticides and agrochemicals 2013 to 2017 4.2%
- Pharmaceuticals 2013 to 2017, wholesale prices 2.4%
- Recorded music 2013 to 2017 1.6%
The dashed line is the all-sector average, 6.4%, across the eleven sectors EUIPO studied for 2013 to 2017.
Two rows carry a caveat. Pharmaceuticals at 2.4% is measured at wholesale prices, and EUIPO's price bases differ by sector across consumer, wholesale and producer prices, so the rows are not strictly comparable with each other. Smartphones at 8.3% rests on a single year, 2015. Sell something outside the eleven and the calculator uses the all-sector average of 6.4%, a wider net than your own sector would be.
Your average price does one job here. It divides the dollars into units, so the figure stops being an abstraction and starts being a number of parcels. It does not change the share, because no published estimate varies the rate by price point. To see what the same problem does to paid acquisition, what a diverted click does to your ROAS runs the arithmetic from the ad side.
Why the estimate is a range, not a number
The estimate is a range because EUIPO published two different figures for the same sector six years apart, and picking one and hiding the other would be our choice rather than a finding. EUIPO put cosmetics at 14.0% of sector sales on 2013 to 2017 data and at 4.8% on 2018 to 2021 data. Clothing and footwear moved from 7.8% to 5.2%, and toys moved the other way, from 7.8% to 8.7%. The calculator carries the newer figure as the central value and prints the older one beside it.
5%
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15%
Cosmetics and personal care carries two published estimates: 14.0% for 2013 to 2017 and 4.8% for 2018 to 2021. The band is the distance between them and the red tick is the newer figure.
Jewelry and watches carries one, 11.5% for 2013 to 2017. A single point, printed as a point.
The spread inside a single study is about as wide. In the 2024 sector work, toys ran from the EU average of 8.7% up to 16.2% in Malta and 14.2% in Croatia, and clothing hit 10.7% in Cyprus against a 5.2% average. A roughly two-fold spread between member states inside one year makes a sector average a starting point for a range, not a value to quote to three decimal places.
Underneath all of it sits an assumption nobody has measured well: how many copy sales would have been your sales. The OECD refuses to assert a single figure. Its 2024 UK study runs three substitution scenarios per category, from 39% down to 19% for clothing, accessories and leather goods, and it applies them only to buyers who knew what they were getting. A buyer who paid full price believing the item was real is counted one-for-one, which is the only defensible one-for-one case and is also exactly the buyer who lands on a listing wearing your photographs.
Those scenarios do not multiply into the card, and it is worth saying why. They belong to the OECD's own model, while the EUIPO figure is a separate econometric result carrying no substitution assumption to scale. Running one through the other would produce a tidier number and a meaningless one. The fuller account of which figures in this field survive checking is in what the counterfeiting numbers actually measure.
What the calculator cannot tell you
This calculator cannot tell you whether anybody is copying you. It takes a sector rate and your revenue and returns arithmetic, and that arithmetic is identical for a brand with forty copycat listings and a brand with none.
Four gaps sit behind that. A US store is reading EU figures. A $19 product and a $190 product get the same rate. We could not find a dataset covering stolen product photographs used by dropshippers, the version of this most small brands meet. Nothing here accounts for the copy that comes back a week later.
Your files
Everything the check read on your own store.
On both stores
The part the record counts. Named file by file.
Their files
Everything else on their pages. Not our business.
A file the check could not read lands in neither side. It is counted on its own, as a check we could not run.
Customs seizure statistics do not fill the gap either. US Customs and Border Protection reported $1.65 billion of jewelry, $1.44 billion of watches and $1.09 billion of handbags and wallets seized in fiscal 2024, valued at the real article's suggested retail price and published as an enforcement workload rather than an economic loss. A seller shipping a generic item from a listing that uses your pictures appears in no seizure table anywhere.
The measurable version of this question is smaller and far more useful: how many live listings are using your product photos right now. That is a count, not a model. The copycat store checker compares your storefront against one you suspect and returns a dated record of what the two have in common, and a monitoring and enforcement plan you can run yourself covers the rest.
What counterfeit products cost a small brand beyond sales
A small or medium business whose intellectual property has been infringed has 34% lower odds of survival than one that has not, in the EUIPO and OECD study of small firms published in 2023. That is the number that should worry a founder, and it is not a percentage of revenue. That is an association across a population rather than a proven cause, and it is not something to multiply by anything. It still says that among small companies, getting copied and going under travel together. The same study found 40% of EU small firms do not monitor their markets at all.
Then there is the customer who never becomes yours. 17% of US adults say they bought something online that turned out to be counterfeit and were never refunded, in Pew Research Center polling of 9,397 adults fielded in April 2025 and published in November 2025. In a 17-country survey of 13,053 consumers run by Michigan State University's A-CAPP center in 2023, more than two-thirds had been deceived into buying a counterfeit and 38% of those kept it. That buyer now owns a bad version of your product with your name on it, and the review they leave lands wherever they think they bought it.
None of that is in the card above. There is no defensible way to put a dollar figure on it.
Common questions about counterfeit losses
How much revenue do brands lose to counterfeits?
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The per-sector figures we could find all come from the EU Intellectual Property Office, and they run from 1.6% to 11.5% of sector sales. Clothing and footwear loses 5.2% and toys 8.7% on 2018 to 2021 data, while jewelry and watches loses 11.5% and recorded music 1.6% on 2013 to 2017 data. These are EU sector-wide econometric estimates, not measurements of any one store.
What is a substitution rate?
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The share of copy sales that would have been sales of the real product. The OECD does not assert one. Its 2024 UK study runs three scenarios per category, from 39% down to 19% for clothing, accessories and leather, and from 49% down to 29% for perfumery and cosmetics, and applies them only to buyers who knew the item was fake. A buyer who paid full price believing the item was genuine is treated as a one-for-one displaced sale.
Does a higher price protect a brand from counterfeits?
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Not on the evidence. Yi Qian's study of a Chinese footwear panel in Management Science 60(10):2381-2400 (2014) found that copies raised sales of high-end authentic products through an advertising effect while cutting sales of low-end ones through substitution. A direct-to-consumer brand at $30 to $200 sits closer to the substitution case than the advertising one. The study gives direction, not a multiplier.
How do I find out how many copies of my product exist?
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Search your own product photographs rather than your brand name, because a copycat listing rarely uses your name and almost always uses your pictures. A reverse image search on your three best sellers finds the obvious ones. Knockoff runs the same check across Amazon, Temu, eBay, Etsy, AliExpress, Walmart and the open web and returns the listings using your photos.
The model gives you a range. The count is a different job: see which listings are using your product photos across the marketplaces and the open web.
Sources
- EUIPO, 2020 Status Report on IPR Infringement, published 2020, data years 2013 to 2017, Table 1, for the sector shares used by jewellery and watches (11.5%), handbags and luggage (6.4%), sports goods (7.7%), smartphones (8.3%, 2015 only), spirits and wine (5.3%), pharmaceuticals (2.4%, wholesale prices), pesticides (4.2%), recorded music (1.6%), the earlier clothing (7.8%), cosmetics (14.0%) and toys (7.8%) figures, and the 6.4% all-sector average
- EUIPO, economic impact of counterfeiting in clothing, cosmetics and toys, published 16 January 2024, data years 2018 to 2021, for clothing and footwear at 5.2%, cosmetics at 4.8%, toys at 8.7%, and the member-state spread of 16.2% in Malta and 14.2% in Croatia for toys and 10.7% in Cyprus for clothing
- OECD, Trade in Counterfeit Products and the UK Economy, 2024, Annex A.6 Table A A.3, for the three substitution scenarios per category (39/29/19% clothing, accessories and leather; 49/39/29% perfumery and cosmetics; 27/17/7% watches and jewellery; 32/22/12% all other), for the 2007 and 1998 consumer surveys behind those scenarios, and Annex A.2 Step 2 for the treatment of deceived full-price purchases as one-for-one displacement
- EUIPO and OECD, Risks of Illicit Trade in Counterfeits to Small and Medium-Sized Firms, 2023, for the 34% lower odds of survival and the 40% of EU small firms that do not monitor their markets
- Pew Research Center, published 19 November 2025, n=9,397, fielded 14 to 20 April 2025, for 17% of US adults who bought a counterfeit online and were not refunded
- Michigan State University A-CAPP, global anti-counterfeiting consumer survey, 2023, 17 countries, n=13,053, for more than two-thirds deceived and 38% of those keeping the product
- US Customs and Border Protection, intellectual property seizure statistics, fiscal year 2024, published January 2025, for the $1.65 billion of jewelry, $1.44 billion of watches and $1.09 billion of handbags and wallets seized, valued at the genuine article's suggested retail price as an enforcement workload metric
- Yi Qian, Management Science 60(10):2381-2400, 2014, for the direction of the substitution and advertising effects across price tiers, with no multiplier attached
Every share on this page was read from the documents above and verified August 23, 2026. All of them are EU estimates, and the calculator has no US series of the same kind to fall back on.
