Neil, an American Fake
He purchased our mount as soon as it launched, so he was the first to knock off of our PS5 mount. A complete counterfeit, he listed it on Amazon by duplicating our listing - our trademarked brand name was everywhere. He used our images but Photoshopped out Kelly's wedding ring out. He used a photocopy of our instructions in the package. He came in at half of our price, the typical strategy to steal market share. People thought his listing was HIDEit but from a reseller offering a great deal.
There was a FATAL FLAW with his product! He decreased the size of the top "hook" by just 1 mm. That 1 mm was enough to cause the PS5 panels to pop off! When we say we spend a lot of time and effort on R&D, we mean it. Down to the millimeter! We sued Neil and won. The guy is dirty so it felt really good to take his money, which all went to attorney's fees.
Sim, Mr. Management Consultant
He took the "find a niche and exploit it" strategy to get out of the corporate world, after his music and religious careers didn't pan out. He hired an engineering firm to buy our mounts... Yes, we are like Private Investigators around here. The engineering firm helped him duplicate most of our products, changing designs just enough to get around our patents. The firm used to list the company on their site but don't anymore... maybe they realized that they just helped create a knockoff shop? Who wants to be associated with that?! We weren't the first company they ripped off and duplicated and we're certainly not the last.
Eric, The Kickstarted Engineer
We have mad respect for him - he doesn't copy our product designs and doesn't even use steel. Everything was mostly friendly competition until he went into gaming then made some curious updates to his marketing... Instead of being honest that he started the company in grad school on Kickstarter with his IP attorney brother and IP attorney friend (explains their high number of patents), the story changed to being a couple, like Chuck and Rey. Product images and copy became suddenly similar to ours. They're big in the Amazon game where they are getting their own share of knockoffs. Pretty sure Eric sold to "the man" so it's not his problem anymore.
Jason, The Chinese Manufacturer
With his fake American name, he tried to offer us manufacturing services meanwhile he knocked off our products from mount design to every aspect of the packaging design - including customer images and reviews. What didn't he infringe on? We easily had him removed from Amazon and he either paid to ship the inventory back to China or paid Amazon to dispose it. He tried to sell it to us... no thanks, bro. And he still tried to offer us his manufacturing services after all of this.
Steph and Dan, Influencer Seconds
She has been copying our marketing playbook for years starting with our social media posts and stealing our influencers. She plagiarized a ton of our website but after talking with some attorneys in her country, it changed. Her mounts are inferior so we kinda just let her do her thing.
Dan also went after our influencers. His products are also inferior - they're just 3D prints so it wasn't that big of a deal at first. Then he decided to knock off our PS5 mount and even made it in steel. He learned that metal manufacturing is expensive - a lot more expensive than making cheap 3D printed products.
D and Q, Amazon UK Fakes
There's several in the UK that took advantage of our lack of IP protection there plus challenges with shipping into Europe post-Brexit. D started by selling vape products on Amazon then decided to copy our products. He's built a million pound plus store on Amazon thanks to our social media efforts in the UK.
Q is the guy that tried to get us to shut down the Vape Kid - Chuck even talked to him on a few web meetings. Then he to copied our products. We've helped a lot of other businesses grow, that's for sure. They should help pay for our advertising costs, at minimum!
