DOP certifications and online sales: control and success

The products with Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) represent more than 40% of Italy's excellent production. Not only wine but in recent years especially food products from all over Italy. The online sale of food products in our Country is gradually increasing and alongside global giants eBay and Amazon, other Italian structures are emerging that have in their repertoire 50-60%, sometimes even 80%, of certified DOP or IGP food products.

This inevitable trend is accompanied by a whole series of questions regarding the use of the appropriate nomenclature that complies with current regulations. The problem is that, in many cases, the online sale of DOP products is supported by web agencies that internally lack Quality Control structures and entrust all the “hopes” of correctness of product names to the suppliers' labels. This has led, in recent years, the Central Inspectorate for the protection of Quality and Fraud Repression (ICQRF), the Italian Association of Consortia for Geographical Indications (AICIG), and the National Confederation of voluntary Consortia for the protection of Italian wine denominations (Federdoc) to adopt specific attention and controls precisely towards these new sales systems.

At the end of 2015, a memorandum of understanding was renewed between one of the largest online sales giants internationally, eBay, and MIPAAF (the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies). Another two years of agreement to contain the phenomenon of the online sale of “italian sounding” products. In the first two years, the number of products removed from the platform was 368. Minister Maurizio Martina stated: “Our battle against italian sounding does not stop: we are determined to combat this phenomenon with all the means at our disposal, safeguarding our agri-food excellences, honest producers, and consumers.”

Established portals like Eataly and emerging ones like Spaghetti & Mandolino are internally structured with figures who check the products and labels offered for sale according to what is established by legislation. Nothing can ever be left to chance and, precisely because of the uniqueness of Italian excellences that come from all parts of the Country and are increasing in number, the work of updating must be constant. However, all the efforts made are rewarded by the fact that DOP products sold online are increasingly sought after and added to consumers' carts.

Those approaching the world of e-commerce to purchase typical Italian products tend to have a medium-high cultural background, good product knowledge, and a passionate curiosity for everything related to the territory from which it originates, the history, and the tradition that distinguish the product, along with a particular attention to the production philosophy of those who created it.

Selling DOP products online is a challenge that is particularly taking place between Millennials and Baby Boomers, those categories of young and digital consumers who are shaping food consumption internationally. A cultural attitude that accompanies the values of genuineness, territoriality, “trust”, organic, and biosustainable products.

E-commerce is a new sales channel for the agri-food sector that will supplant conventional systems, overcoming the skepticism that is still hard to crack in Italy. But the new generations are making radical transformations in the use of the internet. An unstoppable wave that will also sweep through the world of online sales of food excellences and, first and foremost, of Italian DOP and IGP products.

Bernardo Pasquali

S&M