The copy reaches a shop, a buyer, a marketplace listing — and nothing comes back to you. Sakura Trace puts a unique code on every label you print, so a fake stops being a rumour and becomes something you can see, count and act on.
01 How it works
Nothing about your production line changes. The code is printed with the label you were buying anyway.
Every single label in the run carries a different code — never a repeat, never a pattern you could guess from the pack in your hand. It is printed here, on our own press, inside our own plant.
Until you do, a code is dead. Sign in, pick the purchase order, roll or batch, and activate. A label stolen off the floor before shipment will never verify as genuine.
The plain camera app on any phone reads the code and opens a page — on your own domain, with your name on it. There is no app to install and nothing to sign up for.
02 What your customer sees
The page tells the buyer what is actually known about that code — including when the answer is uncomfortable.
Thank you for choosing this product. Its code is registered and has not been checked before.
It has been checked 2 times before. First checked on 3 March 2026 in Cebu City.
Checked 14 times in 4 different areas. A genuine pack is usually checked by one buyer. Please tell us where you bought it.
A counterfeiter can photograph your QR code and reprint it on ten thousand fakes. They can also skip your code entirely, put their own QR on the fake, and point it at a page they built that says Genuine in your typeface. A page whose only job is to show a tick is the easiest thing in the world to copy.
What a counterfeiter cannot copy is the history. The same code checked fourteen times in four provinces is the signature of a photographed label, and the buyer holding the pack sees that directly. In March 2026 the BIR seized 4.8 million fake tax stamps carrying duplicate serial numbers — exactly the failure a database of scans catches and a hologram never can.
That is also why the verification page lives on your domain and says so at the top of every screen, so the address your buyer is looking at is one you can publish and defend.
03 What you get
Sign in from a laptop and see what has been happening to your product since it left your warehouse.
Where your product is really being opened, by province and city, by batch and by day.
You tell us which market each batch was shipped to. A scan from somewhere else, the same code scanned in too many places, or a code scanned before you activated it — each one raises an alert you can open, assign and close.
When something looks wrong, the buyer sends you the shop, the town, a photo of the pack and the code it came from. That is the evidence a takedown or a complaint actually needs.
Every purchase order, file and roll we printed, every batch with its expiry and its intended market, and what the label says in each language. If a batch has to be blocked or recalled, it is done from the same screen and every action is logged.
04 Why Sakura Labels and Packaging Inc.
Most brands who do this end up managing two suppliers: a software vendor who issues the codes and a printer who has to get them onto the label correctly. When a roll is short, a code will not scan, or a reprint is needed for the rejects, each one points at the other.
We generate the codes and we print them, on our own HP Indigo digital press and Weigang flexo line. One purchase order, one delivery, one number to call. And because the label is ours too, the security in the paper and ink can go well past a printed square.
| Layer | What it is | Who can check it |
|---|---|---|
| Serialized QR | A different code on every pack, plus the same code in plain digits so it can be read out over the phone. | Any buyer, with the camera they already have. |
| Microtext and micro QR | Text printed so small it reads as a hairline rule to the eye, and a second QR a few millimetres wide. No extra ink and no extra pass. | Your staff or a distributor with a cheap magnifier. |
| A hidden second code | A PIN under a scratch-off or peel layer, or a mark printed in ink that is invisible until it is under UV light. | The buyer scratches and types it; an inspector carries a UV torch. |
| Tamper-evident stock | Label material that destroys itself, or leaves VOID behind, if anyone tries to lift it off one pack and onto another. | Anyone looking at the pack. |
05 Why now
Under GS1's Sunrise 2027 programme, retail point-of-sale has to be able to read 2D barcodes by 31 December 2027. Packaging across the market is being redrawn for it.
The same 2D code on the pack can carry the product number, batch and expiry that the shop's scanner and the regulator want, and the serial that proves the pack is yours. If you are paying a designer to touch the artwork for Sunrise 2027, that is the cheapest moment you will ever get to add authentication — you are already buying the plate change.
06 See it work
There is a live code you can point a camera at right now. Scan it once and you get the first-scan page. Scan it again, or hand the phone to the person next to you, and watch the answer change as the history builds up.
That it works on the phone in your pocket, with no app; that the page loads on a bad connection; and that the second scan tells you something the first one did not. Those are the three things that decide whether consumers will actually use it.
You do not have to code your whole catalogue to find out whether this tells you anything. Take the SKU that gets copied, put codes on the next run, and watch the map for a quarter.
Prices are published — the monthly platform fee, what each tier includes, and the per-code rate. The labels and the one-off setup are quoted like the print job they are.