Help!

[howcanueatthat.livejournal.com]

THIS IS NOT A SELLING POST, PLEASE READ


There's a seller I LOVE on Ebay that has awesome stuff. She's very creative and very inventive. Not too long ago, I saw a skirt that I fell in love with and it was in the style of the stuff that she makes. I didn't bid on the item, but later when I looked in the ebay store, I couldn't find it. I emailed her asking if she had more of the item and she informed me that the person who made that item was a gir that copies all of her stuff. After searching around, I ound the seller and looked through her items. They are EXACT copies of the seller I like's stuff. The same gloves, purses, shirts, etc with the same trademark paintsplatters and stenciling that the seller I like does. I didn't buy the item from the copycat seller and I felt sorry for the other seller, but didn't know what could be done about it, so I just didn't really think about it all that much.

Until today.

Someone infrmed me that they are "dirt poor" and would like to copy all of my items and sell them on ebay theirselves. Not copy as in redesign it and make it their own, but print out my pictures off of communities and ebay and directly copy it for the purpose of gaining profit on ebay. Because my main source of selling is Ebay, clearly this would put a dent in my business. When they asked about doing so, I said the following:

I wouln't mind if you made some for yoursef, but concerning making them and selling them on Ebay, I'd really rather you didn't. If you copy them directly and sell them on ebay it would end up putting a big dent in my sales. I'm doing this because I'm remarkably poor as well, so I understand your situation, but imagine it the other way around, that you have a project that you designed that other people are ripping off of, then selling at your expense. You can also see at the bottom of all of my auctions the text "ALL DESIGNS COPYRIGHT 2006 STEPHANIE WALLACE OF ELPHACTORY DESIGN", which is there to try to keep people from doing exactly what you asked. I'd really suggest coming up with your own product and design. It's so much more satisfying to see your own work come to fruition!

If the person pushes the issue and then does go ahead and start selling copycats of my stuff, what can I do about it? If I don't lose any profits, then I wouldn't push any kind of action, but if I do, is there any way to stop it? I hope that many people would end up doing the same thing I did, by not buying from the copycat, but who knows. Anyone have advice on the subject?


EDIT: I also just checked their userinfo to make sure they weren't in this community and in the past five minutes, they've joined almost every community I'm in except this one... how freaky.