Creativity Is Dead

[Ron S]

I think the automotive aftermarket is even worse then other industries for piracy.I've even thought about designing and marketing some parts myself,but I know there are companies with way deeper pockets then mine,that can take your idea,manufacture it cheaper and advertise it better.It kind of leaves you holding the bag,I commend you for at least taking the risk Steve.Hows your daughters arm doing by the way.Ron

[LowBuckX]

The biggest competition to my employer had the never to come over to our booth with tape measures and cameras only to copy and market a design we deamed unsafe and would not market....

[BMF Machine]

Oh, I'm not surprised at the copies. I'm in the CNC business. It is by far the easiest and least expensive manufacturing segment to reverse engineer.
No, I'm surprised by the arrogance and the laziness of ASKING how to make my parts. The monkeys should have the decency to figure it out on their own or at least buy a sample for retail plus shipping.

Nice to hear you at a simmer; rather than a full blown boil,lolol

By next year I should be the size of a horse? You can take me with you and point them out! I will handle the rest.

[oestek]

The part that bothers me is imagining a group of individuals from a company looking at other products in the market place and recognizing them as being potentially successful and then all agreeing that they should go copy that product to try and make some money. I just can't imagine having a clear conscious and being able to interact with customers comfortably knowing we blatently ripped off someone elses part.
It would be different if we were able to bring an improvement or innovation but an exact knock off wouldn't fly.

[rickk]

well said gentlemen.
thank you rick k

[Mr.VENGEANCE]

did you just thank yourself?



lol.

[WS6]

Steve, care to share with us what part it was so we can keep and eye out for the copies and know who to give proper credit to?

[TA219]

Steve, care to share with us what part it was so we can keep and eye out for the copies and know who to give proper credit to?

Along with the exact details on how they can be made, where to source raw materials from, etc... kidding of course.

[WS6]

Just remembered PRI is in another month. No cameras allowed unless you're press for this exact reason. SEMA is a bigger maybe better show but PRI is where the real parts are at.

[Bigblue73]

Stevo - I just have one comment.....If these guys are machinists and they need to ask you how to make it, they are not good machinists. You should have told them that you have to use a bizwanger tool to rotate and flip the hogan bar to drill the holes - Oh and don't forget to use the nooneronmonday clamp to hold it concentric to the floor. Have a little fun with them and bite your lip, even if it seems impossible.

You've come up with some very creative designs and I especially like the bezels - total ingenious design. simple. How about some stuff for these lonely Mopars?

[Flash68]

Steve,

You nailed it. We all understand that competition is great for the consumer, but at least buy a sample or 10 from you and mess around with those to make your own!

Will your patents/trademarks/etc not hold up on some of these knock-offs that are either available or in the works from "competitors"?

Got my shifter and fender braces from you last week and the quality is superb!

[Jim Nilsen]

People who steal ideas only do it because they are desperate to keep themselves in a job and aren't smart enough to get out of the road because they will become the bump in the road. Only when we all start to prosecute them in ways that they don't feel protected anymore by the messed up laws of government will it ever change. The complacency to place blame that has slapped this economy in the face still hasn't gotten most people mad enough to wake up. It's our own faults for not supporting them on a gallows and still supporting them in their wallets. America needs to wake up and run them out of town. we need to put blame where blame is due and get over this , let's fix the crisis first and not place blame on anyone. Like I said earlier , if they don't want to blame anyone it kind of gives us quite a bit of rope to hang them with before some one will do anything ,doesn't it?

You can't blame a guy who is never going to learn from doing what is wrong and getting paid for it by the real thieves of his soul but you can let them know that stealing an idea is a bad idea by getting a hold of senators and congressmen and getting them to change the laws of protecting them and keeping copied products from being imported at all. Protect America with common sense and common laws. Competition doesn't make for a better market and a way of life if it is unfair competition that puts eveyone at risk.

You got me going Steevo and I need to calm down now. If trashing America is ok with politicians and corporations then it it time we use the other edge of the sword to cut them back. They made the rules so give up your morals America and fight the fight the way they do. There is more good people than bad bad ones, it just happens that good people are too forgiving to others when they need to do what is needed and forgive themselves not the bad guys.

[ironworks]

Steevo, I hear ya buddy. There are those that create the ground breaking products we use. Then there are the companies that like you said have no creativity. So they jig up the purchased parts and whore out the industry and want to know why the crap talk commences over their Theft and disregard for others originality. The part I like is that the copycats never seem to out do the originators. Because the originators can always come up with new ideas and the Theives have to steal and copy and pretty soon they sink their own ship. It is even funnier when the thieves are called out about their theft and the scream to high heaven and come up with excuses to justify.

Keep up the good work.

Rodger

[Hidro]

The difference beteen steevos parts and a copy is..

Community and customer support. (Wonder which one provides it lol)




The ultimate problem is the cheap consumer! Buying sheeit.

There it had to be said.

[seekins]

I have turned down many sales from overseas. I wont sell to someone that sounds like they will copy it. Patents only protect you as deep as your pockets allow and most that will steal wont care anyway because they know it.

Best thing to do is flood the market with your product, price it fairly and have the best customer service possible. Its a small world...

[novanutcase]

Steevo, I hear ya buddy. There are those that create the ground breaking products we use. Then there are the companies that like you said have no creativity. So they jig up the purchased parts and whore out the industry and want to know why the crap talk commences over their Theft and disregard for others originality. The part I like is that the copycats never seem to out do the originators. Because the originators can always come up with new ideas and the Theives have to steal and copy and pretty soon they sink their own ship. It is even funnier when the thieves are called out about their theft and the scream to high heaven and come up with excuses to justify.

Keep up the good work.

Rodger

THAT certainly narrowed down the culprits!!!!

Same crap happened in my industry 15 years ago. A judge decided that if you make the same exact garment and I mean EXACT but it doesn't have the orginal designers label then it's OK.
I had a shoe designer friend of mine, who had worked for months designing and lining up her supplychain and production lines in Italy, premier her line at a trade show. A group of chinese men came up and looked at her shoes and told her how great they were and that they wanted to write a big order. She was very happy and they had asked her if they could pose with her and the shoes that they liked. After they left she decided to take a break and go get a drink from the cafeteria. Guess what she saw? All those MFers huddled around a laptop emailing the pictures to China. They were sending them to the shoe factory they owned!
Can you imagine? She hadn't even produced one and she was already getting knocked off!

John

[trapin]

This is a good thread for anyone who aspires to get into the aftermarket parts business. Be prepared for it. It comes with the job, unfortunately.

[Jim Nilsen]

THAT certainly narrowed down the culprits!!!!

Same crap happened in my industry 15 years ago. A judge decided that if you make the same exact garment and I mean EXACT but it doesn't have the orginal designers label then it's OK.
I had a shoe designer friend of mine, who had worked for months designing and lining up her supplychain and production lines in Italy, premier her line at a trade show. A group of chinese men came up and looked at her shoes and told her how great they were and that they wanted to write a big order. She was very happy and they had asked her if they could pose with her and the shoes that they liked. After they left she decided to take a break and go get a drink from the cafeteria. Guess what she saw? All those MFers huddled around a laptop emailing the pictures to China. They were sending them to the shoe factory they owned!
Can you imagine? She hadn't even produced one and she was already getting knocked off!

John

The next time anyone sees this happening you have to remember the Pepsi Syndrome. Since they were in the cafeteria she should have made sure her drink was full and her intentions were totally helpfull and gone up to them and offered some suggestions as she clumbsily dumped her drink on the laptop. OOOOh I am so sorry Charlie ,did I do that . Accidents do happen !!!!

Then follow them to the airport and tell the international customs agent you could swear you heard them talking about drugs and how easy it is to ship them in shoes.

I'm telling ya , we gotta use every innocent way to get these people to think twice about messing with us!

Am I getting creative enough yet or are these the same tricks they use?

Have any of you ever heard of the mayor that came home one day to find the DEA tearing apart his whole house and had killed his dog looking for the drugs that someone said were there from an anonymous phone call to crimestoppers. There are ways to use the open book laws we have against them and we should stop playing nice. We just removed several judges in my county by voting them out because of crap like that.

If we all don't start doing things like this then creativity really is dead !

[BRIAN]

There is no way around it that just sucks!!! Next time show up with rigged products so they look like the actual part but all the dimensions are off a bit just to F them up.

The problem is that they sell them usually cheaper and get their advertising out there to reach more people. I remember a couple years ago I had thought someone else from LI had come up with the shifter idea until you set me straight.

Anybody can sell a product or service on the internet the way you kill them is with customer service, detailed instructions and related products to ease installation. They are interested in selling the part you are interested in repeat buyers. Way too many guys who do not realize the customer is always right.

[Damn True]

Two out of the last three companies I have worked for had/have significant problems with protection of intellectual property. It usually goes like this:

Sell product "x" to customer in China or Korea.
Discover service requests exceed the number of actual purchased units meaning they have reverse engineered and copied products, deployed them, then requested that we service the copied units.
Then discover identical products or significant feature sets being sold by overseas competitors.

Heck, just last month China had the gaul to publicly get their shorts in a wad about pirate copies of Windows failing:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...ksjILmn66gIjbg


At the end of the day, ripping off someone else's product is weak....very weak.