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Comment by cracell | Hacker News Reader

Trader Joe's is a privately held company and doesn't franchise (http://www.traderjoes.com/about/general-faq.asp#Franchise).

Seems like starting to franchise would not necessarily fit with their long term growth goals.

I'd assume this is mostly just about brand control. A store selling their products that they don't control will not necessarily have the experience they want for their brand. Even if they can't shut it down, just harassing them can prevent the store from growing very large and causing issues with their brand perception.

That said more media coverage around this could paint Trader Joe's as a bully and be more damaging to their brand than an unauthorized seller.

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> That said more media coverage around this could paint Trader Joe's as a bully and be more damaging to their brand than an unauthorized seller.

It's certainly damaged their brand in my eyes, and it's not painting them as bullies: they're being bullies.

This is a person who's buying a product fairly, taking it to a place where that product doesn't exist, adding a minor markup, and selling it. There's absolutely nothing grey about this practice, it's 100% honest and legal. For Trader Joe's to sue him for doing something that's completely within his rights is beyond loathsome. He's a customer who's buying a huge amount of their products at retail price, they should be sending him thank you letters.

I think I might actually stop shopping at Trader Joes over this, as much as it pains me. It's just utterly repugnant behavior on their part.

He calls it "Pirate Joes" and resells their products. If nothing else your legally required to defend your trademark or you lose it. They also lose out on quality control issues which could be a major issue.

Now their unlikely to win, but by suing and losing they gain some protection. If nothing else if someone get's sick they can say look we tried to stop him but we don't have a choice. On the other hand if they say it's ok that's going to open them to liability.

"Right to Parody"

from wikipedia (USA law but fuck it let's go for it): n Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc[22] the Supreme Court recognized parody as a potential fair use, even when done for profit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_and_parody

Technically, you could probably do it in the states in a location that trader joe's isn't. Although I'd definitely have a very good lawyer on retainer if I was thinking of that :/

Parody requires that it be a work of art.

Are you implying that his buying their products, transporting them, and reselling them is some kind of performance art which is criticizing Trader Joes in some fashion?

And that this guy is going to stand in front of a judge and claim he's not in the business of selling merchandise, he's a performer?

I'm pretty certain fair use doesn't apply when you're making money off the trademark you're using in "fair use".

From the link posted above: In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc, the Supreme Court recognized parody as a potential fair use, even when done for profit.

> They also lose out on quality control issues which could be a major issue.

I don't feel that this is an issue in this case. Hallat only buys pre-packaged foods and I'm sure that Canada's food regulatory bodies don't allow the sale of expired food.

"Pretty much anything I can buy in the U.S., I can legally import into Canada. There are permits required for meat, seafood and dairy. We stick to vegetarian packaged nonperishable items."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/30/217210915/bag....

>I'm sure that Canada's food regulatory bodies don't allow the sale of expired food.

I don't think they sell anything that needs an expiration date. Best before dates are not expiration dates: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/information-for-consumers/f...

So 'Trader Joes' owns 'Joes' as well. I'd better tell the local bar up the road called 'Jumping Joes' that they are infringing on copyright.

Trademark.

No, but courts generally do consider a thing called "context" in these cases.

Repugnant? That's pretty severe language coming from someone who is being as...(how to put this politely?)...as economical with the facts as you are

Seriously, why not save the outrage for cases where you can restate the case without having to gloss over the bits that make your outrage seem ridiculous?

What makes Trader Joes Trader Joes is that they carefully curate the entire experience and having a loss of control over how they are presented to the customer is a big deal.

What if, one of the buyers transporting food improperly chills some steaks and 15 people come down with food poisoning. Then, you have the media blaring out "OVER A DOZEN PEOPLE SICKENED BY TAINTED MEAT FROM TRADER JOES"?. It doesn't matter that the media report is inaccurate, all of a sudden, you have people associating Trader Joes with unsafe food handling practices and the PR damage from one incident alone is more than any possible profit they derive from this tiny store.

So, while I understand how the practice is entirely legal, I can also see how it's a nightmare from Trader Joes perspective and how they'd rather it all go away.

Trader Joe's has had quite a few food recalls lately.

The meat example is a good reason, but it doesn't apply in this case.

> "Pretty much anything I can buy in the U.S., I can legally import into Canada. There are permits required for meat, seafood and dairy. We stick to vegetarian packaged nonperishable items."

> "I would prefer Trader Joe's accept my long-standing offer to follow guidance on how they would like me to operate," Hallatt says in an email."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/30/217210915/bag...

It's really difficult to change the quality of unopened, non-expired, pre-packaged food. The more I read about this, the less reasonable the company behind Trader Joe's seems. Even companies like Apple allow other channels to sell their products.

> Even companies like Apple allow other channels to sell their products.

Not really. Well, Only channels that Apple allows will are allowed to resell their products. Apple does not take too kindly to the 'gray market' products and unauthorised resellers.

Here in the UAE there are a tonne of unauthorised resellers. Mostly importing products as they are cheaper and don't come with local restrictions (FaceTime is blocked on iPhones bought in most of the Middle East). Apple has authorised resellers, an online presence, and next year are opening a retail store, so you'd think they would try and do something about it...

> Well, Only channels that Apple allows will are allowed to resell their products.

That's not true. There's a huge grey market for Apple products. Just look at Ebay. When you go international it's much bigger.

> Apple does not take too kindly to the 'gray market' products and unauthorised resellers.

They may not be happy about it but they don't sue anyone over it as long as the sellers aren't trying to pass counterfeit merchandise as Apple products, or fake Apple stores as official Apple stores.

> What makes Trader Joes Trader Joes is that they carefully curate the entire experience and having a loss of control over how they are presented to the customer is a big deal.

Ha! Every Trader Joe's I've ever shopped at has actually been a pretty miserable shopping experience. I keep going back because their stuff is so good, but it's not a carefully curated experience, unless the curators are sadistic. They're ruthlessly efficient, and have sales per square foot figures that are the envy of the grocery industry.

their food is just a more "Kraft food" version of hippie food you find in regular "organic" markets.

basically pump oils and sugar. instant tasty,

"If it tastes good, spit it out" may be an exaggeration, but there's a lot of truth to it...

I don't think there's any truth in it. We developed taste buds to guide us to what we should eat and what we should avoid. That evolution has been usurped by food science.

On the other hand, "if it has an ingredient list, it's not food" is much closer to a truism. It's obviously an exaggeration as well; nonetheless, I tred cautiously with ingredient lists.

And now the situation we use our taste buds in is so different from the situation they were trained in that our taste buds are behind the biggest health issue in the world after aging.

I have yet to find a hippie market that has their selection of beer, wine, and spirits (TJs started out as a wine shop).

>loss of control over how they are presented to the customer is a big deal.

As there people presumably wouldn't be customers of Trader Joe's products without this store, I'm still not sure I understand the issue.

I'm sure plenty of businesses would rather it all go away when it comes to things they can't control. But this guy isn't breaking any laws, and filling in an economic desire. Tough luck for Trader Joes, and I think they're behaving reprehensibly.

> What makes Trader Joes Trader Joes is that they carefully curate the entire experience and having a loss of control over how they are presented to the customer is a big deal.

Apparently not in Germany, where you can buy a small selection of Trader Joe's products at Aldi (they are owned by the same parent company / foundation).

> A store selling their products that they don't control will not necessarily have the experience they want for their brand.

Too bad. When you're in business you don't get to control everything about your product.

The problem I have with the article is that it is too sympathetic to Trader Joe's position. Even the term "gray market" is loaded. What Pirate is doing is not only legal, there's nothing improprietous about it.

I shudder imagining a capitalism where you need permission to resell things that you've bought.

> I'd assume this is mostly just about brand control. A store selling their products that they don't control will not necessarily have the experience they want for their brand. Even if they can't shut it down, just harassing them can prevent the store from growing very large and causing issues with their brand perception.

Can't they distance themselves from him and at the same time benefit from selling through him? They'd even have more influence over him if they had a cooperative agreement: ie: don't call himself "Pirate Joe's" and put up a big disclaimer. He wouldn't have to do that, but maybe he would do those things if they gave him a side channel to get goods.

he doesn't call himself pirate joe's that's just the popular nickname, the store's name is Transilvania Trading.

Except that it says "Pirate Joes" in the window and on signage.

Then he was very confused when he recorded his voice mail greeting: "Hi you've reached Pirate Joe's we're located at 2348 West 4th Street"

Read carefully. It was originally "Transylvania..." but after he moved locations he changed the name of the store to "Pirate Joe's" (a decision influenced by what WAS the nickname).

That's doubtful. If the Girl Scouts started cracking down on cookie resellers, I doubt people would side with the resellers.

With the reselling of groceries you run in to quality control issues, where Pirate Joe's can be selling expired Trader Joe's goods and making people sick, which can make Trader Joe's liable for harm.

> With the reselling of groceries you run in to quality control issues, where Pirate Joe's can be selling expired Trader Joe's goods and making people sick, which can make Trader Joe's liable for harm.

Are you sure? After all, if I buy expired Kellogg's cereal from a store and get sick, it's the store I sue, not Kellogg's. Right?...

Agreed, it would be unreasonable to hold a business responsible for what someone else does with their product. I mean, Windows has been crashing PCs for years and I don't see people suing Dell as a result. That would cause so many loophole issues. For example, why sue Dell in that scenario, why not sue IBM for creating the platform in the first place? Or Edison and Tesla's intellectual estates for making electrical devices possible.

>With the reselling of groceries you run in to quality control issues, where Pirate Joe's can be selling expired Trader Joe's goods and making people sick, which can make Trader Joe's liable for harm.

Is there any precedence for that? I would love to see a court that put the manufacturer of a product at fault for damage caused by an unauthorized reseller. That would be no different than someone suing a food manufacturer because a grocery store sold their product after it had expired.

If you notice in the article, he already needs to create new nutrition labels for all the food to comply with Canadian law. He is clearly already liable for what he's selling, I don't see how Trader Joe's would ever get implicated legally if there were any issues with expired food.

I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure the fact that Trader Joe's don't have a legal presence in Canada would make legal action against them a bit tricky.

I can see where by knowing of Pirate Joe's and not taking action against them, someone could argue that Trader Joe's was authorizing him to resale their products.

If there's a presumption of authorization by original manufacturers in the sale of all goods, capitalism is broken.

It's possible that someone might try to hold Trader Joe's liable for the actions of an unaffiliated reseller. I see no legal basis for considering that they would succeed in doing so - even under strict liability, demonstrating that modification of the product was the proximate cause of harm is usually a sufficient defense.

I imagine that spoilage in the hands of an unaffiliated reseller would be considered such a modification, but perhaps you're aware of some precedent that I am not?

No, the store would be liable, in Canada.

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