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Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse (cnbc.com)
A report on CNBC, citing sellers, says that counterfeit problem on the platform has gotten worse after it made it easier for Chinese manufacturers to sell goods to U.S. consumers. The report gives an example of a seller Jamie Whaley who started a bedding business on Amazon that reached $700,000 in annual sales within three years. Her patented product called BedBand consists of a set of shock cords, clamps and locks designed to keep fitted bed sheets in place. Whaley found quite an audience, selling up to 200 units a day for $13.99 a set. BedBand climbed into the top 200 selling products in the home and kitchen category. That was 2013. By mid-2015, the business was in a tailspin. Revenue plummeted by half and Whaley was forced to lay off eight employees. Her sheet fastener had been copied by a legion of mostly Chinese knockoffs that undercut BedBand on price and jumped the seller ranks by obtaining scores of reviews that watchdog site Fakespot.com determined were inauthentic and "harmful for real consumers." The report adds:Spend any time surveying Amazon sellers and Whaley's narrative will start sounding like the norm. In Amazon's quest to be the low-cost provider of everything on the planet, the website has morphed into the world's largest flea market -- a chaotic, somewhat lawless, bazaar with unlimited inventory. Always a problem, the counterfeiting issue has exploded this year, sellers say, following Amazon's effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers, weaving them intimately into the company's expansive logistics operation. Merchants are perpetually unsure of who or what may kill their sales on any given day and how much time they'll have to spend hunting down fakers.
Chinese knock-offs, both legal and illegal, are widely acknowledged as being a reality.
Yet the article doesn't give a single example of that. The main focus is on legitimate competition, that is somehow illegitimate because they are "Chinese".
You mean Weber grills, who were sued for putting Chinese parts in a made-in-USA grill?
Don't kid yourself. I just bought a barbecue recently, and after some research discovered pretty much all bbq manufacturers use China to manufacture, even the $1k+ grilles (I looked at Jackson, Weber, and Broil King grilles.) So I said screw it, if I'm going to get one from China anyway I'm not spending $1000 on one, and found a Char-Broil one for $400.
TFA states her product is patented, in which case it really is about counterfeiting.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Of course that prediction completely failed to note that housing and healthcare wouldn't go down any leaving most of us less well off than before.
TFA states her product is patented, in which case it really is about counterfeiting.
She has a patent on a specific aspect of her product, not on the basic concept of an elastic sheet tightener (which have been available for many decades). TFA does NOT claim that her patent is being infringed, nor are her competitors using her brand name. This is just good old-fashioned competition, and she doesn't like it.
There is no such thing as a "race to the bottom". What is the 'bottom' exactly? Lower prices? What's wrong with that? At the end of the day that means people who make less money can be wealthier. Wealth after all is material goods, not money.
And if you want to argue that quality is decreasing, you're wrong there. There's often this mentality that "the older things lasted longer" but that's not actually true. Ever since manufacturing has been a thing, there have always been both good and bad quality products. You tend to notice the ones that were good quality because you still have them around for a long time, and when you see these older items still lasting you just assume that everything made "back then" was built to last, but that's just not the case, because what you don't have and don't see from "back then" are the things that didn't last.
You can file this in the same drawer as "the old days were better" or "we're living in the worst of times" that backwards people like to use.
If patents did not exist, then why would they ever be illegal (outside of safety violations)?
Counterfeiting is not about patents, it is about trademarked brands. Brands are an indicator of quality, and it is, and should be, illegal for one manufacturer to impersonate another.
Note: TFA does not claim that either trademarks or patents are being infringed. Just that competitors are making similar products and selling them for less. But (and this is the important part) they are Chinese, so therefore we should be outraged.
Nonsense. TFA doesn't refer to a single case of "counterfeiting".
Okay, now you're just being a dick. The article mentions "fakes" and counterfeiting 20 times from the headline to the last paragraph. For example,
"Always a problem, the counterfeiting issue has exploded this year, sellers say, following Amazon's effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers..."
"The designers described it as a game of whack-a-mole, where fakes pop up more quickly than they're taken down."
"To unsuspecting consumers, fake products can appear legitimate because of the Fulfillment by Amazon program..."
""Amazon is making money hand over fist from counterfeiters, and they've done about as little as possible for as long as possible to address the issue," said Chris Johnson, an attorney at Johnson & Pham LLP..."
""Word is out in the counterfeit community that it's open season on Amazon."
Seriously, did you even read the article? Because it sounds as though you didn't.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If there are only 5 or 10 reviews of a product on Amazon, and they're all "5 star" with the review followed by "I received this product at a discount in return for giving an honest review"... don't trust any of them.
Amazon, and unfortunately NewEgg, are both cutting their own throat in this regard. They forget that one of the services a store provides is selection. In both directions. Variety of available wares and culling of worthless duplicates. Amazon and NewEgg are absolutely buried under thousands of copies of the exact same product using literally the exact same photograph but somehow with unique listings that differ by one or two or zero cents. All of which have bullshit tags and bullshit categories.
This is not valuable to me. This is absolutely stupid for me, as a customer. It wastes my time, totally pollutes search results, and annoys the shit out of me. Enough that I will choose another store, even a brick and mortar store, just because the signal to noise ratio has become so horrendous I literally can't find what I'm looking for.
NewEgg are you listening? I know Amazon is not. But NewEgg, I expected better. NewEgg had useful, reliable, helpful category- and specification-based search for more than a decade, long before Amazon's half-assed attempt. Now it's been overrun by asshole third-worlders hawking $2 useless plastic shit I don't want, don't need, and REALLY don't want to see when I'm searching for a goddamned video card. A vinyl sticker designed for a Macbook cover is not a video card! Curate your collections! It matters!
</rant>
Because it's a band for a fucking bed.
That's not really a trademark, it's a generic term that's likely to be challenged as a trademark even in the territories that have (stupidly) allowed it.
It's like complaining that if you go searching for "sticky tape" that you get things that aren't your genuine, registered trademark "StickyTape®" sticky tapes.
If you'd called your company "Joe's Shitty Products®" and someone sniped all your "Joe's Shitty Product® Sheet Fastener's", yeah, sure you have a case. But "bed band" is a description of exactly what the product is, using two generic and common English words related to that product. That's NOT what you should be trademarking.
If you want to protect a trademark you combine it with a company name that's pretty unique and which you own the trademarks in your territories and industry sectors for.
But trademarking TennisBall tennis balls is a) likely to not be allowed in the first place, b) likely to be struck down for genericity at any time and c) stupid because I don't have to be specifically sniping your trademark to have a website that scores high for searches of tennis balls that aren't TennisBall tennis balls.
BedBands is, quite honestly, one of the worst product names that I've seen. And one of the worst products that I've seen. I could make it myself, make something better, I've bought better things that do the same job, copy it in about ten minutes, and I could market it as the "best bed band product" without infringing on BedBands trademarks unfairly. Because it's a fucking band for a fucking bed.
And, to be honest, that "sit on the corner of the sheet" shite will last two seconds until I rip it off when I roll over. Most of the bed bands that actually work do so by tying the left of the sheet to the right of the sheet under the mattress, not just the corners.
I hope their blatant and unnecessary slashvertisement just waters down their trademarks even more.
This rant is trademarked by me. Nobody else can have an InternetRant internet rant but me, now.