Hologram Manufacturers Association of India

Many people are today involved in Propaganda against Holograms due to vested interests in technologies which more often than not are in no way better or a replacement for Holographic security against duplication, since, Holograms provide a direct means to the end buyer of the product to visually differentiate between Genuine & Fake goods or Papers. Manufacturers of RFIDs, Colour Changing Inks or such other security inks etc.

RFIDs are actually a means for anti-shoplifting use. Inks are OK, but literally any one having a screen printing facility & a small amount of such inks can duplicate the products secured by such inks only. However, it may be noted that such technology can be used in addition to holograms to multiply the overall security levels depending upon the threat perception of effort & expense a duplicator would go to duplicate a particular product.

The users also need to understand that the Hologram manufacturers can provide additional security features within their Holograms at the designing and developing stage for somewhat additional mastering costs. Most of them can also additinal features like sequential numbering, use of specialized inks visible under specific conditions etc., use of specific colour films (The colours of films can be ordered to be changed by the buyer at reasonable intervals with prior notice to their vendors of Holograms) & use of special films that leave behind a specific pattern if effort is made to tamper with the Hologram for Holograms needing very high levels of security. Obviously each additional feature has an associated cost.

The level of assurance against counterfeiting of Holograms is more THAN 99.9%. In most such cases reported, after investigations it was established that there were leakages of the original Holograms / Hologram shims from either the users premises or the Hologram vendors premises, which were used by the duplications on fake products. In some cases some counterfeiters have tried to obtain look alike Holograms from some unscrupulous stamping units on generic labels such look alike labels can be very easily identified, only by visual inspection. If need be help of the hologram manufacturers / associations can be obtained.

Case studies show that, even with the simplest of Holograms the level of duplication of the products / documents of the Hologram users have come down to less than 5% of what it used to be. In almost all cases the duplicators of hologrammed products/ documents were caught because of the differences noticed in the look alike Holograms by the marketing personnel of the user, the people in their supply chain & in some cases even by the general public. Besides, because of the eye catching property of the holograms and the increased customer confidence in the products with them, the Hologram users on an average have reported more than 15% growth in their sales over and above the normal market average increment.