Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: There Are No Shortcuts In Life!
Cheaters, thieves and liars….UGH! Over the last couple of years I have surprisingly come across people in and around this industry who are looking for short cuts. This is very sad, but a fact of life for a lot of businesses including mine. The thing is that cheaters, thieves and liars sometimes get caught. Fortunately for us, we have had luck busting these people in two cases, but who knows how many thieves got away with it. Allow me to elaborate.
Perhaps you recall the situation last year where a very disreputable company in Canada was copying and knocking off the A.E. Nathan (Studioe sister company) flannel prints. They were selling the prints to a chain store in Canada and taking the business from our legitimate Canadian partner. This was all good until a friend of our companies advised us to look in to this. Lo and behold, we found out they were copying our designs. Then we had to go through the expense of hiring a lawyer to deal with this. The fact that this was in Canada added an entirely other level of annoying to the situation and helped to increase our legal bill. However, in the end, I am happy to say that our lawyers were successful and the offending company wrote us a lovely check to pay for their stealing. Justice served! Hopefully that penalty was enough to get them to stop, but I doubt that is the case….because once a thief, always a thief in my book.
This next one is a real doosie. I can’t elaborate on this one too much because it is going on now, but I highly doubt any of the offenders are reading this blog. Recently, we were informed that there were some low end stores selling one of our fabric brands for under $3.00/yard. That is crazy because that isn’t a realistic selling price based on where we sell the fabric. One of our astute sales reps came across this extremely low priced fabric and had the brains to question it. 
I have a couple of points to make about this.
1. We take these matters very seriously and will sick our lawyers on any offenders….so beware.
2. If you are in a shop and the prices are too good to be true, they probably are. So, please question it and let us know because we don’t want slimy criminals damaging the value of our fabrics nor do we want them hurting our legitimate customers who we greatly value.
3. Stealing, lying and cheating doesn’t pay. There really are no shortcuts in life.
The last thing I wanted to mention is that I know that our valued quilt shop customers have to deal with cheating, stealing and lying too and I know it is a big problem. I have spoken about this issue with many shop owners and I can relate to how they feel. All that I can say is, you can’t underestimate the importance of good security, cameras, employees and a detailed inventory system. Nothing is sacred anymore and you need to protect yourself because no one is going to do it for you. Good luck!
What do you think about all this?
Sad Scott