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Comment by jakespracher | Hacker News Reader

“More egregiously, a Chinese firm nicked Seymour’s design, mass-produced the product, and sold it under the “Bionic Boot” name on Amazon.”

This is the most important line to me. I’ve heard so many horror stories along these lines.

Yet, does anyone here know why companies like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx didn’t suffer the same fate? Spanx is now a billion dollar company that launched with an easily clonable product.

She talks about how she filed a patent on her idea on her own with no lawyer and that was the only explanation. I don’t think she had a lot of money to fight cases.

https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mos-ep...

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> does anyone here know why companies like Sarah Blakely’s Spanx didn’t suffer the same fate?

Spanx succeeded because they built a brand around convincing a wide swath of the population that their life would be better if they wore a fancy girdle. Their success was because of sales excellence and a smart customer engagement campaign, not proprietary tech.

Presumably you’re making the case that they grew quickly enough that by the time any competitors were aware of the potential of product they did have the money to fight infringement.

Even still, in the early days of their marketing campaign it would have been so easy for a foreign competitor to swoop in and make the same thing. I didn’t get the vibe that they grew that quickly, and I do get the vibe that there are foreign manufacturers on the hunt for ideas to copy.

I really don't think it's a question of proprietary IP, infringement risks, etc. It's not complicated technology. Spanx succeeded because they created a brand that massively expanded the market for slimming compression undergarments; they were especially effective in marketing to men.

I think the question is what prevented Amazon counterfeiters from selling their fake merchandise under the Spanx name on Amazon. But as said above, Spanx may have had the resources to fight this.

Yes absolutely this imo. I worked at Saks Fifth Avenue around the time Spanx we’re taking off. It was absolutely about the “lifestyle” and the brand. There might have been competitor and there might have been knockoffs, but they were just that: not Spanx. And that was very important.

I remember one of the top sales girls joking with her clients constantly after Christmas one year about how she’d had too much to drink at the Christmas party and she’d fallen and rolled or something and “next thing I knew my Spanx were hanging out”. And they’d all laugh uproariously as they held several pairs to buy.

It’s this magical sweet spot where they were just expensive enough to be special and “the real deal”. Competition didn’t matter. Price didn’t matter. Spanx mattered. I found it insanely interesting.

And a genius product name.

I think it also helps that when Spanx would go viral there was already a product available, so it would be less lucrative for a knockoff to enter a competitive market. When this guy's boots would go viral there was nothing to buy, so if a knockoff could get to market faster they'd get the sales.

And a product to cheap to bother pirating

I think things like [1], where YouTube electronics reverse engineering wizard Big Clive disassembles a fake "magnetic" shaker flashlight, shows that no pretty much no product is too cheap to bother pirating.

That people spend time to put parts together, including a fake circuit board with pretend-mounted components, to create a non-functional light, is just insane to me.

1: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Not sure, but my guess is because Spanx sells a brand as much as a product, and trademark enforcement is likely easier than patent enforcement.

Yeah, that must've hurt :(

I wish there were "ethical patent enforcers" (not patent trolls) who for a small fee/equity, go after these legitimate patent infringing cases and help people like Seymour.

Patent trolls market themselves as exactly this.

Greasy palms.

>This is the most important line to me. I’ve heard so many horror stories along these lines.

Well, sounds like truly free trade.

No patents, no copyright, no BS.

If you can make it and sell it cheaper than someone else, you win (and people get it without artificial restrictions on its production).

And it causes a tragedy of the commons that disincentivizes invention and slows progress in the Useful Arts as the US Constitution calls it.

Truly free trade would mean I could just take one from a store since the owner isn't using all the duplicates in stock.

>And it causes a tragedy of the commons that disincentivizes invention

Only when it comes to profit. There are other motives for invention...

>Truly free trade would mean I could just take one from a store since the owner isn't using all the duplicates in stock.

Only that wouldn't be trade -- because you don't pay (trade money for the product). So, no.

It's not free or fair trade, because the West does have copyright/patent enforcement. It's free-for-all on the Chinese side and self-defeating protectionism from the West. Now, if the West actively rolled back IP restrictions we'd get closer to a fair situation, and I'm confident that other mechanisms (prizes, research funding, targeted subsidies) would be expanded to restore the incentive towards innovation that IP used to provide.

Sounds like justification for exploitative labor practices.

Sounds like totally orthogonal to labor practices.

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