Tegan Ingoe runs the online business Beach Bandit from Gisborne. She’s trying to make her mark and supply quality, original beach towels, yet keeps coming up against stumbling blocks in the murky world of intellectual property and design.
Soon after she launched Beach Bandit, Cotton On and Kmart released their lines of cheaper round towels, and her business took a hit.
“We’ve had to think about what are the best prices for the company,” she says.
Ingoe found a beautiful yellow designed round towel, and then Kmart released a similar line.
Yet the bigggest shock came in her dealings with her Chinese factory, who knew that she wanted her next design to be green palms.
The factory came back with a banana palm design. They sent the sample to Ingoe and she loved it, and began to take pre-orders.
Then she received an email from a company based in California, saying it was their design (and they had the original drawings for proof). The company threatened legal action if she didn’t remove the towels from her website.
“I was quite upset. I had done a search to ensure this print was not already available and came up with nothing,” she says.
The Chinese company admitted to Ingoe that they had made the towels for the company in California, but the design wasn’t 100 percent the same as they one they provided Ingoe.
Ingoe was forced to remove all pictures affiliated with the design, and all her pre-orders have been refunded or offered her true designs in exchange.
Now, Ingoe thinks she will move in to selling kids’ poncho towels, and is undecided about whether she will continue to deal with companies in China.
She has seen her towels on the Chinese website AliExpress, and doesn’t know how they get away with it.
