How TikTok-viral gum Underbrush fights knockoffs

The viral video catapulted the brand into a hard launch in January 2024, and soon after, Mal said he began seeing a surge of counterfeit and copycat brands across TikTok and Meta platforms. Mal estimates that more than 800 knock-off Underbrush brands have popped up over the last two years. 

Mal, who operates Underbrush under parent company Nathan & Sons, said the startup has since created a multi-pronged approach to combating counterfeit products. “It has become a huge problem for us because it’s diluting the product and brand,” Mal told Modern Retail. The biggest differentiator for Underbrush’s gum is that it contains nano-hydroxyapatite and xylitol, which are said to remineralize the tooth’s enamel and fight bacteria.

The parent company has U.S. trademark registrations that protect its name and logo, including the imagery of five black trees over the words “Nathan & Sons Underbrush Remineralizing Gum” in white, on a green background. According to Mal, counterfeit sellers are stealing the brand’s packaging, imagery and advertising campaigns, while selling customers counterfeit versions of its gum.

Fake copycats are a growing problem for brands and their customers alike, as emerging AI tools have made cloning packaging, websites and ads easier than ever. According to a 2025 Michigan State University study, 70% of consumers say they have been deceived into purchasing counterfeit products online.

A multi-faceted approach to fighting counterfeits 

Beyond working with the social platforms, Nate & Sons also partnered with three brand protection agencies to test before deciding which one was the most effective in fighting copycats. 

“We’ve spent over a million dollars excluding the ads and registration fees,” Mal said. He estimates that the brand’s trademark fees, registrations and replacement products have totaled $200,000-$300,000 to date.

Some of those dollars go to paying brand-protection agencies, which help fight copycat brand pages on behalf of Underbrush. One of them is MarqVision, which Mal said has been successful in taking down almost 800 fake brand pages, including listings on Walmart Marketplace, eBay and Amazon’s brand registry. The strategy also takes time and human resources. Mal now spends a few hours per week working on applying and contesting trademarks in other countries. 

When the brand eventually hit a certain revenue threshold, it was assigned a dedicated TikTok rep to help shut down the knockoff accounts. As such, a major effort was pushed through TikTok Shop’s IPPC (Intellectual Property Protection Centre) program. “We were able to finally take down about 350-400 knockoff accounts,” Mal said. 

With the issue being mostly under control on TikTok, the scams have moved outside of TikTok, which makes it harder to track and report. 

For example, before Underbrush was on Instagram, Mal said, “They [copycat sellers] would take my viral videos from TikTok and run ads with them on Instagram.” Some of these accounts have over 50,000 followers and have been able to build relatively large businesses since. Mal is also still trying to enroll in Facebook’s protection program, which would make it easier to protect the brand from copycat advertisers and sellers. “That’s why Meta is currently our biggest problem, as far as the knockoffs go,” he said.

Marketing is also a big piece of the puzzle. The brand has a video warning customers about potential knockoffs pinned at the top of its social media profiles, and has also run these videos as paid ads on TikTok and Instagram. In one video, Mal uses plywood to smash counterfeit gum, which eventually shatters into many pieces. “We’ve had people sending photos of pieces of metal or wood they found in it,” he added. On the paid ad side, Underbrush is also relying on affiliate partners to educate and warn customers about these lookalike gums.

A hefty investment 

As part of the counterfeit-fighting strategy, Underbrush’s customer service staff grew from one to five members to manage customers’ inquiries and requests. This team also helps support a dedicated dupe flagging and trade-in program for customers. 

At the beginning, Mal said the company started replacing customers’ counterfeit gum with free Underbrush products. The program has since evolved, and these days, if a customer makes a complaint about the taste or texture of the gum, the Nathan & Sons CX team flags it as a potential scam issue and requests order numbers to confirm authenticity. 

“If you’ve been scammed, customers can fill out this questionnaire on our website that’s a one-for-one FTC survey to report knockoffs and scams,” he said. The company then asks for the customer’s permission to submit to the FTC on their behalf. In turn, the customer receives $5 to use on an Underbrush order.

The company also recently began sending some of these knockoff gums to a lab for testing and documentation. “Some of the stuff they were shipping to people were these hard rocks,” he added. Through this strategy, Mal was also able to trace back some of the knockoff gums to a factory in China that was supplying U.S. sellers. 

The multi-phase strategy is slowly but surely working.

At the problem’s peak last year, Mal said the company was receiving about 20 DMs and comments a day on Instagram from customers asking about fake products they received. “Today, it’s probably down to three to five,” he said. “A lot of that I attribute to these brands switching their branding, so now people just assume it’s a competitor of ours.”

Mal doesn’t see the investment as a total loss for sales. In fact, Mal said the investment in brand protection probably should have begun even earlier.

“We could have taken more of them on, and there wouldn’t be this handful of brands that have built multi-million dollar companies knocking off our brand,” he said. Now, these copycats have switched to using their own branding and packaging. “Even our ads about the knockoffs do help convert to sales,” Mal said. 

According to a TikTok Shop spokesperson, the platform has implemented measures for IPR (Intellectual Property Policy) protection by “utilizing algorithms and machine learning technologies based on information provided by brand owners and customers to identify potential infringements and reduce their occurrence.” 

TikTok says that between July 2024 and December 2024, more than 7.5 million products were rejected from being listed on TikTok Shop due to IPR violations. Moreover, over 450,000 products were detected by TikTok Shop and taken down for IPR violations after being listed during that period.

As TikTok Shop’s affiliate program grows, the platform is also proactively stopping creators who violate IPR policies. For instance, the company spokesperson said last year, “More than 16,000 creators had their permission to sell on TikTok Shop permanently revoked, where IPR violations contributed to penalties.”

Online brands have been combating fake products and dupes for years on channels like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

David Iglesias, head of regional sales at BrandVerity, an ad fraud and trademark infringement provider, previously told Modern Retail that to actually take down stolen or fake ads, brands often have to work with each individual platform through its own brand protection program, which can be a lengthy and cumbersome process. “It’s important to have a robust monitoring process to be able to identify scams across different channels,” Iglesias explained. 

But Mal said the problem has just been exacerbated by the use of generative AI in digital ads, and many of the knockoff brands can quickly take Mal’s scripted content for their own ads. “They’ll take my video and my script and have an AI [voice] talk instead of me,” Mal said.

It speaks to how quickly the landscape can change, even for brands that feel like they have a good handle on fighting counterfeits.

“About 10 years ago, these sellers were mostly drop-shipping junk from China,” Mal said. “Now AI has made it so easy for people to just create fake brands.”