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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 $130 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 thought leaders on the best mitigation practices
the industry can employ to reduce the unauthorized flow
of products into the gray market provide valuable resources
to our membership for addressing the issues 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%. To
that end, we are pleased to welcome our newest members:
Dolby Laboratories, Kingston Technology, Microsoft,
NEC, QLogic and Sun Microsystems.
In 2005, AGMA collaborated with KPMG on a study on
the counterfeit market and its impact to the IT industry.
The whitepaper offers better practices to identify
and control counterfeit activity and addresses areas
of fraud that drive gray market behavior.
In 2006, 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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