Dealing With Copycats
Have you ever been worried about a potential situation where another business copies your brand and business? There may even be cases where a fast fashion company takes your ideas and undermines the sustainable initiatives you have embraced within your business. In this blog post, we walk you through some steps you can take in this type of situation and how you can best prevent and mitigate it too.
How To Prevent It And Be Smart About It?
Unfortunately, copycats come with doing business. However, there are measures you can put in place to best prevent these issues.
Firstly, you want to make sure that you are doing thorough market and competitor research prior to starting your business. This will not only set you up in a space that will differentiate you from other brands but also ensure that you’re not copying anyone else and your ideas aren’t already out there. You definitely don’t want to infringe on anyone else and be mindful that your products or services will be unique and solve a problem for your ideal customer.
Secondly, be diligent when bringing on people to your team or anyone that comes into contact with your company from an internal standpoint. The best thing that you can do is have these individuals – whether they be an intern, consultant, production partners, accountants, or more — sign a confidentiality, non-compete and non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to protect your designs and ideas from those who have access to private and public information. You may be thinking, how about patents — would that work as well? The answer is yes, however they are quite expensive and for brands that are just starting out, it may not always be financially feasible and necessary. You don’t want to invest a portion of your budget on a patent right away until you have tested the product and know that it works, sells and is unique. In that case, if you want to continue to sell it and have the means to do so, definitely consider a patent.
How To Handle It If It Happens To You
Although this situation is heartbreaking and extremely upsetting, take a deep breath and try your best to not make it personal. You won’t be able to best handle the situation when you are engulfed in your emotions and feelings. Try to do some activities that help calm you down — this could look like yoga, meditation, even an intense kickboxing session, or anything that works for you.
Once you have regathered yourself, make sure to capture all the proof of their copycat behaviors. Before you do anything else, take screenshots and videos of the product or service on their website and all social media pages. This way you can avoid issues in the case that they delete or remove all of this content before you could capture the screenshots. You want to have this evidence for when you take legal action too. Furthermore, contact this business and ask them to take down their imitated work, present them with your proof and also ask for an explanation.
As there are legal implications with this situation, you will want to contact a lawyer and see what your legal options are. If you don’t already have one, do some consultations with lawyers in your area and find someone who you see fit to help you. They will be able to provide you with the best course of legal action going forward.
Lastly, you will have to think about how your online brand image and presence have been affected by this. In the past, we had a client who came across this exact issue where a fast fashion company had ripped off her designs– using unethical practices and selling her designs at a fraction of her prices. Although many of her customers were sympathetic towards her situation, there were a few who were confused and upset as to why her prices were so high compared to this fast fashion company. In this case, our team at Recloseted worked closely with her to remedy her online brand image. After many conversations with our client and her lawyer, we decided that it would be best to be transparent with her community and let them in behind the scenes. She reached out to her community, expressing her genuine emotions and devastation — and her loyal customers showed their love and support by reporting the account and brand. We marketed and elevated her distinct attributes which included eco-friendly fabrics, ethical production, and elaborated on why her prices are the way they are. This brought light to questions regarding what this copycat fast fashion brand was doing and why they were unethically stealing her designs. Fortunately, our client was able to retain her loyal fans and grew even more as people really sympathized with her situation. In the end, the fast fashion brand removed her designs and issued an apology.
How To Emotionally Deal With It
All of this to say, your mental and physical health is super important too! We understand that it can be discouraging when something you’ve been working on for months and even years gets discredited and copied by another brand. In these times, you want to be taking extra care of yourself and up the self-care because otherwise, you might find yourself going into a downward spiral. We don’t want someone else's unethical actions to affect you negatively — you have to protect your energy! Although easier said than done, try your very best not to take it personally or think that they are purposefully trying to hurt you because, at the end of the day, it is more about business and not you as a person.
It’s also important to keep your head up and remember your WHY. Remember why you started this entrepreneurial journey and use that as an anchor to keep you strong and level-headed. Even if it may feel like you are battling this alone, your loyal community of customers will be there for you and our team at Recloseted is always here to support you as well, and we have tons of resources to help you through it all!
We hope that these tips help you to prevent any future copycat-related situations and can prepare you in the case that it happens. These times can be extremely draining, so make sure to let us know how you’re doing and share any of your mental health, mindset tips or entrepreneurial struggles with us — we are here to support you and have so many services that can guide you through it too. And of course, our email and DMs are always open!
