Product fakery isn't limited to brand name goods. Its impact on an AON client that makes a little-known but critical consumer appliance control shows how counterfeiting can harm a solid business and how a creative risk management partner can help.

STRIX Ltd, the largest employer on Britain's Isle of Man, manufactures the controls inside the electric kettles that boil water for tea in homes and offices from Beppu to Birmingham. Holding some 70 per cent of the market, STRIX dominates its universe, a testament to the company's craft and care, according to Gordon Barker, engineering manager of STRIX. "Our product is small but far from simple. It has 1500 dimensions that are critical for safety. You might not expect this complexity in a teakettle. But when you mix plastic, water and electricity and produce 2-3 kilowatts of high powered heating you need precision control or you have an interesting bomb in your kitchen."

STRIX goes to great lengths to make a safety-assured product, subscribing to international testing standards for electrical appliances. This kind of care costs time and money, but to STRIX, customer protection is worth it.

Over the past two years, however, STRIX has faced a flood of fakes that look - but don't operate - like products with STRIX controls. Without controls, these products can cause - and reportedly have caused - devastating fires. So many fakes have poured into STRIX' markets that the company's 30 per cent a year growth rate has slowed to a snail's pace.

So STRIX, supported by AON Risk Services, has decided to fight back. The companies have created their own flood - a flood of information about fake kettles that they are sending to governments and consumer and retail organisations worldwide.

ARS felt it necessary to go the extra mile for this client. "We are obviously concerned that STRIX show a strong risk control profile," says Mike Henthorn, managing director of AON Risk Services on the Isle of Man, "but it was more than that. We didn't want to see a good company's reputation get hurt."