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Welcome to the Alliance for Gray Market
and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA)
As an umbrella organization, whose members' combined
annual revenues exceed $280 billion, our mission is
to ensure the highest product quality standards, uphold
customer satisfaction, protect brand integrity, improve
standards for intellectual property enforcement, mitigate
the counterfeiting of our products, and stem the unauthorized
flow of goods into the gray market.
At AGMA we have two top line goals: First, we strive
to educate the industry and our customers about the
gray market, and its impact on the industry. We
are recognized leaders on the best mitigation practices
the industry can implement to reduce the unauthorized
flow of products into the gray market and provide valuable
resources to our membership for addressing the issues
they face in their own distribution model. Second,
we develop and are proponents for best practices to
mitigate the counterfeiting of branded technology products
with the goal to reduce the potential harm they cause
to customers, authorized distribution partners, and
the high tech industry.
We are excited about our progress and have been busy
expanding our regional councils in Europe and Asia Pacific.
This development is essential for AGMA’s
global effort to uphold our commitment to protect brand
integrity, product quality and ensure the highest levels
of customer satisfaction.
Since our formation in 2001 by 3Com, Cisco Systems,
Hewlett-Packard, Nortel and Xerox, AGMA has participated
at various industry conferences to raise awareness and
educate the industry on the serious issue of gray market
and counterfeit technology and its impact to consumers
and the high-tech industry as a whole. We have
submitted testimony for a Congressional hearing on the
economic impact of gray marketing and counterfeiting
and have increased our membership by 300%.
AGMA has collaborated with KPMG on studies of the
counterfeit market and the impact on the IT industry.
These whitepapers present better practices for
identifying and controlling counterfeit activity and
address areas of fraud that drive gray market behavior.
Today, AGMA continues to focus on the development
of tools that provide awareness on related issues by
sharing our study on recommended global channel practices
as it relates to gray market fraud and counterfeit prevention.
We extend a personal invitation to high technology
companies such as information technology, electronic
components, semi-conductor manufacturing and telecommunications
companies to join the AGMA members in our efforts as
we build one of the leading technology industry alliances.
We have made great progress and as always, we
look forward to hearing your suggestions and comments.
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