Posts tagged as:

ripoff

More ripoffs: Matrimoney Clothing like to Make Believe

by Andy on June 26, 2011

in News

makle believe's original design

188269 10150153110460948 174849890947 7976710 4027005 n 480x387 More ripoffs: Matrimoney Clothing like to Make Believe
Make Believe have got some really beautiful stuff in their store, and by the looks of things Matrimoney Clothing liked it so much that they decided to use a very similar style on some of their shirt!

Regan Smith Clarke (who we know has a lovely line of his own) brought this issue to my attention and I then found a bit more discussion going on at Mintees. Matrimoney are no startup, they’ve been going for a while and I am of the understanding that the M-over-M symbol has been used by them for a few years (they have the trademark for it as of a few months ago), but I am practically convinced that everything else happening in that black t-shirt has been inspired/ripped/stolen by Matrimoney Clothing from Make Believe and YASLY (who produced the design for them). I haven’t got the timelines worked out properly because it’s hard to work this stuff without having 3rd parties write about every item to provide a source date for releases, but I am fairly sure that Make Believe had their shirt (or were using the same image) before Matrimoney started printing the image way too big on tank tops.

Why do I have to keep writing these posts? Can’t people just play fair and stop stealing from each other?

{ 6 comments }

Looks like Thirtee were a bunch of ripoff scammers, sorry.

by Andy on June 21, 2011

in News

thirtee are probably assholes

When I first wrote about Thirtee back in March I said this about their model of spotlighting one designer a month and just selling their shirts, kind of like a virtual pop-up shop for artists:

I can’t really see anything wrong with [this] equation: cool designers + quality t-shirt blank + low prices = goodness

Apparently there was something wrong with the equation, they weren’t paying their designers, they weren’t posting out t-shirts, and if/when the shirts arrived the printing was of poor quality. Wotto (who was on Thirtee for their second month, after Greg Abbott was their first artist) has posted a thread on Mintees explaining how he has not been paid for the sale of his design on Thirtee, and that he has received e-mails from Thirtee customers asking where there shirts are and what the situation is. Thirtee are not responding to e-mails from anyone by the looks of it, and their domain currently resolves to a generic placeholder that you get when you install Apache software on your webserver.

There is a rumour going around that Thirtee was created by the people that used to run Teextile (a design competition that scammed artists by not paying for designs and not fulfilling orders, and not being at all forthcoming about clearing the air on the situation). I took a look at the WHOIS records for Thirtee and Teextile and there is nothing concrete, but there are a couple of similarities. Thirtee.com is registered to someone called Mike Philpott, with an address in San Diego with the domain pointing at Media Temple nameservers. Teextile.com is registered to Franco Galvez, who also has an address in San Diego (6 miles drive from Mike), and also points the domain to Media Temple nameservers. As I said, there is nothing concrete there, Media Temple is a large webhost, and San Diego is a large city. I don’t know where those rumours have come from of a connection between the two sites, but it’s entirely possible that it’s more than just coincidence they’re in the same city using the same web host.

I feel I must apologise to any readers of Hide Your Arms that purchased a shirt after seeing an article about Thirtee here. I post a lot of new brands, always in good faith that they’re legit. When I first saw Thirtee’s site I did say “their site is a bit bare bones at the moment (too much so really, if a ‘name’ artist like Abbott wasn’t attached I would probably have some concerns)” and I guess that those concerns turned out to be legitimate. Clearly Wotto and Greg bear no responsibility in this situation, if it turns out it was a scam they’ve missed out more than most people that bought shirts since they licensed their designs to these people for a month, and I would suspect that Thirtee picked Wotto and Greg because they’re respected names and that would lend their startup a lot of credit and some good exposure (Thirtee was written about by a lot of tee blogs). I am sorry that there are some people in the t-shirt world that don’t keep to their word, but please remember that most people in this industry are honest and selling t-shirts because they love it, so please don’t turn your back on indie companies just because of a couple of bad apples.

{ 5 comments }

Did Original Music Shirt rip Threadless for their website redesign?

by Andy on May 16, 2011

in News

original music shirt

Earlier today Original Music Shirt (aka OMS) sent out an e-mail saying that they had redesigned their website. I checked it out and as the page loaded I thought everything looked good very clean and easy to navigate. After a few seconds I realised why I liked it, they appeared to have taken a lot of design cues from Threadless.

Threadless graphic t shirt designs cool funny t shirts weekly Tees designed by the community. 1305554467547 480x419 Did Original Music Shirt rip Threadless for their website redesign?
I’m no fool and I’m not looking to create drama where it doesn’t exist, but there is no denying that there are some similar aspects to both sites, and as the Threadless design is much older, it all points to OMS being inspired by Threadless at a few turns. The thing that annoys me about it is that you expect an established business like OMS to be above these kind of shenanigans. It is of course possible that OMS used an outside developer for their new website that borrowed a few ideas from Threadless and OMS aren’t aware of this at all but that does seem to be a fairly unlikely. Here’s a few side-by side shots:

searcharea Did Original Music Shirt rip Threadless for their website redesign?
navbar Did Original Music Shirt rip Threadless for their website redesign?
footer1 480x480 Did Original Music Shirt rip Threadless for their website redesign?

The search areas & footers are similar, but in web design the position and style of search areas is often similar, so you could almost let them get away with that, but the navigation bar really gives the game away as far as I’m concerned. Again, there are items on navigation bars that have to be there and are there on every shop, but this redesign just happens to pick the same font as Threadless and put those items in the same order (considering the ‘club’ and ‘community’ can be used interchangeably in this context, and the OMS doesn’t have a design competition so they have no need for a ‘participate’ page)? That doesn’t seem particularly likely to me.

Another little ‘similarity’ is that OMS now have ‘shop guys’ & ‘shop girly’ rather than mens/womens, and Threadless also use guys/girly. It’s possible that OMS were using that before the redesign, but it’s worth noting.

I feel a bit like Glenn Beck as I write this post, being the guy that just happens to notice a few things between a couple of websites, and hopefully I haven’t made any mistakes in my comparisons and suppositions because I have no reason to be negative towards Original Music Shirt, I like their designs and like their style, but I saw their new site and couldn’t help but notice the similarities. I realise that Threadless do not own many of the things I have pointed out, such as the font they use in the navigation bar, the colour blue, rounded corners on buttons, and the style of their footer, but just because they don’t own those things exclusively doesn’t mean it is okay for that design to be copied by other people.

As you might expect, I’d really appreciate your comments on this post, and I will update you if I hear anything from either Threadless or Original Music Shirt.

{ 12 comments }

Eio Clothing got ripped, big time

by Andy on June 3, 2008

in News

spot the difference1 Eio Clothing got ripped, big time

Straight from their post on You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice:

Hi, We are EIO Clothing, a small streetwear brand from the uk that has built up a cult status for individuality and creativity. We just wanted to bring to your attention one of our designs that has been blatantly ripped of by the Just Jeans Company (Australia). As you can see from the images the only difference is they have changed our logo for theirs (even the models show an uncanny resemblance)! Unfortunately i can’t link directly to the tee on their site since it is no longer up there.

The Dice tee has been a classic for us. We released it 2 seasons before Just Jeans. They are a huge company with about 300 stores across Oz. We don’t know if they knew about this directly or if it was just some low life on their design team. Anyway glad a blog like yours exists to at least have some come back.

As the first commenter says, “ouch,” ouch indeed.

{ 3 comments }

All Saints rips off 4 Color Rebellion?

by Andy on February 18, 2008

in News,T-shirts

zoundstetris All Saints rips off 4 Color Rebellion?

Do you really need much more information than that pic at the top?All Saints, a popular retailer in the UK (mostly in the South, I think), appear to have literally copied the Valentine’s Day artwork/card from 4 Color Rebellion, a popular website about all-things-Nintendo, and put it onto a t-shirt.

All Saints are not a small operation, I saw multiple outlets of theirs in trendy and pricey areas of London on my recent trip there, and 4CR? Well, they were giving this image away for free back in 2006 for Valentines Day. I don’t think that giving away something for free includes taking that image and turning it into a faux-vintage. The strange thing for me is that this design doesn’t really fit with the aesthetic that I thought AS put out there, they had some really cool black and grey jackets in their windows, I didn’t think they even did stuff with graphics.

I don’t think that there’s any question that these are the same two images, the tetris pieces are in the same order and with the patterns on each picture, so these aren’t similar in concept, they’re just the same.

Here’s the tee @ All Saints (Costiness=£40)
And 4CRs post all about it [via You Thought We Wouldn't Notice]

{ 1 comment }

Closure! A Resolution to that Seibei vs. Goodie Two Sleeves business

05.02.2008

Isn’t it nice when things turn out well? From the Seibei blog: So, it is with a happy heart that I tell you this: Hot Topic will not be reordering the shirt. They’re going to sell off the remaining units (it was in “test markets”, so there are probably more Sandwich Dinosaurs in the world [...]

3 comments Read the full article →

Seibei vs Goodie Two Sleeves

30.01.2008

*PANIC OVER, ALL PARTIES WORKED THINGS OUT AMICABLY, EVERYONE’S HAPPY, SEE* Let’s get this clear from the outset: I like David (Mr. Seibei). He’s a good guy, we bounce e-mails back and forth on a variety of issues, and he’s sent me stuff in the mail before. For that reason I feel as if I’d [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

The pain! The pain!

10.08.2006

I had to write the title twice for two reasons: 1. I’ve got a migraine so I’m going to skip the usual recommendation for the day, and give you a link so that your visit wasn’t a waste (my pain, your gain!). 2. The pain suffered by small independent designers all around thw world when [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Get smart with the Thesis WordPress Theme from DIYthemes.