Lighter Side of Counterfeiting Puts Zippo in a Fix

By Subhan Toba On Friday, March 25, 2011 · Leave a Comment

(Wall Street Journal) – “Always works — or we fix it” has, with minor tinkering, been a Zippo lighter slogan since 1937 and means the company needs to fix a lot of lighters, but fulfilling the forever guarantee would pose little challenge if a huge number of Zippos did not happen to be “rippos,” The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The task of fixing the lighters falls to three “clinics” — one in Zippo’s hometown of Bradford, Pa., and two outside the US, which fix more than 100,000 a year. Quite a few Zippos get mangled when they slip out of pockets into the mechanism of recliners. Usually, a new screw or spring will put it back in working order.

Factories in China, the company estimated, make 12 million fake Zippos a year. Zippo’s only plant makes 12 million real ones. Rippos, as Zippo fans call them, used to be junk that sold for about two dollars, while Zippo’s average was $20.

But like a lot of other things in China, rippo workmanship keeps improving. Now a high-class rippo goes for $10. If China can replicate hard disks, it can certainly fake an object with 22 parts based on a 1936 patent.

Now, even Zippo itself must look twice to tell the difference between counterfeits and its own product.

“What’s concerning is the quality,” Zippo CEO Greg Booth said. “Ten years ago, fakes were a cinch to spot. They’re getting better because our consumers want genuine Zippos. They aren’t so easy to hoodwink.”

And when a counterfeit plague and free repair merge in a single product, the result is a repair shop merged with a crime lab. Zippo is not about to fix rippos, so someone has to decide which is which.

“It can take a minute to decipher some counterfeits, which is scary,” said Zippo worker Connie Woods.

Examples of giveaways include: The 12 letters “A” through “L” stand for the months on a Zippo date stamp and other letters flag a fake. True chimneys have 16 holes. Zippo rivets are steel, not brass; the flint eyelet is brass, not steel. Strike wheels are cut in a houndstooth pattern, and the edge of the flint screw’s head must be knurled.

Publicizing such giveaways, of course, lets counterfeiters in on them, too. In the ensuing game, Zippo tickles its designs — and then the fakers tickle theirs. Zippo patented a new rib for its insert not long ago and cut new teeth on its strike wheel. “We make an improvement,” said Booth. “They catch up.”

But now, Zippo’s president whispered, “we’re putting something in among the parts that we know they can’t find.”