Here's the scenario. A small company designs and creates a product and puts it up on Amazon. Things go well. People really like it. They post hundreds of positive reviews. Sales build -- and keep building. Everything is going great. And then, boom, things go south in a hurry. Another company has created a counterfeit version of the product and is selling it under the same name only it's selling it for less, stealing all the sales.

That's exactly what happened to Portland-based Elevation Lab, its founder Casey Hopkins said, accusing Amazon of being "complicit with counterfeiting" in a blog post. (We saw it highlighted on John Gruber's Daring Fireball.) 

Elevations's popular product The Anchor, an under-desk headphone mount, has been getting flooded with counterfeits, Hopkins said, noting the situation certainly isn't unique to his company.   

"The current counterfeit seller, Suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd (yeah they sound legit), has been on there for the past 5 days and taken all the sales," Hopkins wrote. Adding further insult to injury, he said Elevation has paid Amazon a "boatload of money" to advertise the product that it has "built, invested in, and shipped."

According to Hopkins, the product Suiningdonghanjiaju is selling is a poor facsimile:

They literally reverse engineered it, made steel compression molds, made the logo wrong, used fake 3M adhesive that's very thin and was diecut smaller than the top (measure once, cut twice), they use a lower durometer silicone so it flexes more, its has huge mold parting lines, and the packaging is literally photocopied then reprinted (you can tell by the lack of image contrast). And they had to apply a big sticker to cover our SKU with theirs. But to the untrained eye, it would pass. Can't wait for the negative reviews to come...

As of the time of this writing, it looks as if Amazon has purged the Suiningdonghanjiaju listing, which is now listed in our cart as "no longer available from the selected seller." It instead defaults to Anchor's own stock.

Amazon has previously recognized it has a counterfeiter problem and has taken steps to quash it. It has sued counterfeit sellers and recently created a Brand Registry for companies to list their logos and intellectual property.

Last year, Peter Faricy, Vice President of Amazon Marketplace, told Reuters that the registry would let Amazon remove listings and potentially cancel seller accounts if counterfeit products were spotted.

Hopkins claimed that Amazon could do something very simple to fight counterfeiters, but it isn't.

"If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale there could be one box to check for that," Hopkins wrote. "And anyone else would have to get approval or high vetting to sell the product, especially if they are sending large quantities to FBA [Fulfillment by Amazon]. I imagine there are some algorithmic solutions that could catch most of it too. And it wouldn't hurt to increase the size of the Brand Registry team so they can do their work faster."

Hopkins wanted it to be known he loves Amazon as a customer and is even shareholder, but he warned folks to take a minute to look at the seller before buying anything on Amazon before taking a final poke at its CEO Jeff Bezos.

"If you're reading this, come on," he jabbed, "this is Day 2 activity."

Last year in a letter to shareholders Bezos wrote: "Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1."

Amazon and Hopkins didn't immediately reply for our requests for comment.

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