Do you ever wonder if the electronic components that you buy from brokers and independent distributors are legit? Where are they REALLY coming from? The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) just issued its assessment report on counterfeit electronics, which provides some interesting, albeit alarming, statistics on the degree to which counterfeit components have become integrated into the U.S. supply chain. Thankfully, the DoC also recommends best practices for protecting against counterfeit electronics. While obvious, the foremost recommendation is buying from trusted suppliers.

To help answer those nagging questions about counterfeit components that keep buyers up at night, we created the Verical marketplace: a factory outlet for electronic components that provides buyers traceable, branded goods at discount prices. Top manufacturers and franchised distributors publish slow-moving inventory to Verical to optimize prices and yields anonymously. Today, the online Verical factory outlet has more than 27,000 parts available; check it out at www.verical.com.