Quote Originally Posted by Canuck View Post
Using my ebay account I asked the seller a question. I asked if the kilt pictured is the one I would get. He replied yes...

Yes I have the design registered in Canada as for the U.S. that's a different ballgame and different laws....

Yes I should take up the many offers from the offshore companies and have them make my design of kilt and sell them. What am I thinking! I'm crazy spending hours sewing a tailored garment when I could get some other person to do it for pennies. Heck wouldn't have to spend time with a customer, show them how their kilt is going to be made. Wouldn't have to hand pick the hides myself. I could use the nappa leather that has been refinished a number of times....

So why is it my nose is out of joint? I just wonder why they can't take a picture of their own product and post it? It's what I do. It's what most of the merchants you value here do....
Thanks Ron.

I do see where you are coming from. It certainly seems unbelievably odd to go to the trouble of visiting you, photographing the kilt, presumably copying the design, commissioning products, etc, only to THEN use the original photograph rather than taking one of his own product.

In your original post, I didn't see the bit that he had said this was THE item that you were going to win if you bid for it. eBay is a bit odd for this - i've often seen kiltie bits that are described as "this is the one you'll get" and then seen that they have multiple items for sale! Given that he has said that, I TOTALLY agree that he is breaking eBay's rules.

I'm glad that you have the design registered. In my work we deal only in ideas and I have to smile when I see the antics folks get up to 'protecting' something quite trivial. I have become quite blase about it - I realise that the same isn't true in manufacturing.

I don't know who the North American equivalents would be, but in the UK at some stage, Messrs Marks, Spencer, Burton, and a host of others had to decide whether to continue to measure men for suits and to maintain a room of tailors and seamstresses or to 'outsource' production. I don't hold it against a company for doing so, provided that certain human rights are maintained. In some cases, I'm afraid, I've come across bespoke hand tailored suits that have been poorer quality than those made somewhere in the developing nations. I don't think you can even say that "what you get is what you pay for".

For some reason, the kilt industry seems to do an enormous amount of photographic copying. I mentioned it a couple of says ago in a post. I even saw the same photo being used to ilustrate one of the c.r.a.p. kilts and one of the "Our kilts are far superior than the c.r.a.p. ones" kilts. Sadly, the latter was on the website of one of the XMarks members sites!

As you say, there's bigger issues. I wonder what you could take from this experience that would help your own business step into another league (if you felt inclined to do so)?

All the best, Graham.