How To Deal With People Stealing Ideas & Products

[Thomas]

So I wonder how an entrepreneur, being also the creative power should deal with people in the same industry that copy his own products and ideas in order to sell them for a lower price, even at the cost of no profit at all.

I'll be more concrete:

My mother manages a small/medium sized company selling formal clothes for women for about 21 years now, she's taking care of the whole process - from creating a concept of a model, producing it and selling.
What I've observed over the past years is that she seems to reach a pletau that does not allow her to invest time and energy into improving / growing the company, investing into marketing, more employees, etc.

Not only it is detrimental to her psychological and physical health to take care of almost every single task, she doesn't trust people - she thinks she'll do everything better - the less employees to control is less risk of getting f@cked by them later on, even though the company can easily afford expansion.

She's obsessed with the competition that steals her ideas, her "babies" and ruins economy by underpricing products.
She's afraid of making her products more popular (by delivering to more sellers across the country and abroad) due to high risk of someone copying it (some ppl sell it even for the lower price than production cost), the copyright is really easy to formally avoid in our country in this industry.

Any concepts and ideas You would like to share that would relate to this situation and how to deal with it?
From a entrepreneurial and self-actualization standpoints - How can I help her?

I hate watching passively how she destroys herself mentally and not knowing what I can do about it.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Thomas

[Cookiesliyr]

well, in programming world, lets say 20 years ago and more, programmers had same issues, and their code was the most expensive and techniques that they used to build codes and it was secretive, but not anymore.

the thing is about programming and code it developed rapidly, both how codes work in computer, and the design of the code (software engineer) teaching, and they are very young technologies compared to others.

nowadays, after decompilers came out (which allow other programmers in the long run to easily steal your code tricks and design, even reuse the thing), and other tools to read the memory and such.

the thing about programming, the code can be copied from anywhere and reused without any physically cost, but thanks for the advancement of frames and how computers works and networks and cross-platforms ... things became ... kinda different, the code in itself doesn't weight as much as the project anymore, projects now required a lot of hard work to build a connected code despite if the  how to put that, people don't have enough time or reason or money to put to steal the code, it would be too much work (Speically there are some new security measurements against those new tools i mentioned earlier), so instead of trying to steal the complex it would be easier for them if they start working on their own in short, and even if they stole it and try to resell it, they will just add more awareness of who you are, the creator, which work almost like an AD.

yes i am not a business guy, and yes your case is different, making cloth cost more than a place in memory like code, it required a labor and hand skills and materials, so here are few questions for you:

1- does your mom care about the traditions and the secrete of making those cloths and the originality of the work? like, she feel she is getting offended by cheap clones and people making money of the her design and doing the job poorly that damaging the image. or does she only worry about losing the business by people who can afford more workers?

2- does people reallllly care about clothing that would copy anything get a bit famous? and would your mom work be that noticeable? if that's the case won't that means that she already made a good amount of money out of it? and even if they start selling more of similar for lower, won't that give her more chance in the long run to get future customers because people start to see this as a trend, which means more money for everyone her and them at the end.

3- do people in cloth designs care about who made that model or design? i don't know, u should know more, but in accessory and jewelry craft it seems people do, and any respect artiest\designer won't copy other people work, so only cheap factory do those things, so once again if that's the case whoever clone your mom ideas because they are soo good to clone would only give her more power and better name in the market, and in return will bring more costumers to her.

once again, i am not a business guy, so all what i said might be totally from my ass, sorry about that if that's the case, but that's what i believe, i use my own logic to attempt to solve all my problems, it is working so far in this side ....

 

[Thomas]

@Cookiesliyr

1. She is profoundly disgusted by the copies and perceives it as an insult to what she believes these clothes are for her - quality, character, personality. She is angry at people who don't see the depth behind what she creates and want quick-fix.
She worked years for connections she has now, but what she believes to be a problem is
She's constantly digging for information, new concepts, making 60+ calls a day just to be up to date on what's going on in the industry.
Exempli gratia: She discovered a source of new, very good material to make a hit, she bought everything from the producer - they made an unofficial agreement that she'll be the only one to get it. After 2 weeks she dig up and observed a nearby company having same material bought from the same producer on the side.

2 & 3. It's not entirely the money thing - Yes, she made her pile of gold from that back in the day. It's about next step, overcoming plateau that stops her from development, the same strategy that worked 10 years ago doesn't apply now and it seems she's stuck with it.
Honestly, I have no idea if it gives her more opportunity for more future clients, but what she claims is that clients are not loyal, they will just go for the lower price, because the sales are not as good as few years ago and they just want to make a living.
What Brian Tracy says - Consumers are very picky, their needs and standard requirements increase in a very rapid pace, so the companies should be constantly expanding & growing in order to keep up and I made an assumption that something stops my mother from deciding what steps to take in order to keep everything going.
She can afford new employees, the thing is she's very resistant to it (idk, some company secrets, spies, paranoia).

Even though she earned quite reputation, it doesn't seem to pay off - She is angry probably because she lost 1/3, maybe even more consumer base, because they went to those who have lower prices at the cost of quality.

So she made a casual, low-price line of clothes and.. they are getting copied too. People come with cameras in their pockets, it's like a conspiracy movie, lol.

I don't know, so far she's losing money off of that, maybe she should focus on some other ascpect since this one is pretty much uncontrollable.
The question is - which one? Different business? She loves her clothes, she feels like an artist and she CAN sell very efficiently.
 

[Cookiesliyr]

yes ... business ... let me be honest with, which actually disqualify me as a person who can help you in this case ... i genuinely hate business ... and i don't comprehend it.

what i meant by business, is the true art of business, to be good in business in a good way you need to be a real Psychopath.

that kind of art, most disgusting kind of art (no insult for honest businessmen\women in here), monopoloid, scary, ethicless kind of art, and i don't blame anyone with huge business to be afraid ,tired and stressful day and night because of the competition. i feared from what i understood from your first post that your mom is the type who appreciate her craft as an art, and those usually have their own followers , their own loyal fun costumers that would feel like cheated if they bought something with similar design and similar brand to your mom and would return what they bought to the store and argue with them.

once again it is up to her, but to see her good quality work not be butchered and cloned in the market is impossible i believe, and that's just will stress her up in the long run.

so i believe you should take the advice from someone else, and once again i believe u need to seek business advises for this, and guess what, no one gives those kind of info for free, after all those kind of info is what make tons of gold, even the fake ones, just take a look on how many millions books are there with the title "how to become a millionaire!" BS, business is filed where it legalize pure greed to exists, and without it we would have more criminals, so i shouldn't hate it actually ...

so, here my friend we might be looking in the wrong directions, and you might be not asking the right question, i learned that from programming actually, maybe, just maybe, you are asking the wrong question, and the question that you need to ask is: what is your mom real goal in here, if she is really happy about making his market as secretive as possible and keep her loyal fans loyal and keep the fake fans away then ... she is fine i guess, but in business you need to trade something, you can't just have everything you know, if your product get famous people will eventually clone it, period, a lot of people are "SUCCESSFUL" because they live as parasites, they just pirated or clone successful ideas, and sell commercials clones and bad qualities as Fast as possible when the trend hit, because that the best time to leach it.

if your mom want to be more successful in business, she might need to sacrifice some of her bride in her product, and that's the biggest hit any artiest can receive i believe. but if she want both maybe she need to change the prospective without losing the sight of the object, for example, she want money and quality success right? that's possible, by sacrificing her name, what i mean is (i will use a computer concept) is to decouple herself from her product, her self image, or her brand ... ok what does that mean you say? well, to focus on the quality of the product only, not worrying of her name will get muddied or stolen or clone or people who will clone it can make it better, if she is the originated of the design and it is that good she can do another one that's better who took it and adjusted it, why? because editing is much easier then making it from the scratch, if those cheap cloners can be more successful by making one clone better then your mom work then she shouldn't worry about it, because they can't make successful hit everytime, because they just can, they got lucky. this is all speaking as if your mom ofcourse is that good, no disrespect meant btw. with all of this, we got into the same results i believe, her rivals will just become part of her fame.

if i can end all of this with something is this, and i said it few hours ago in this forum somewhere, honest work never get lost, anyone who do honest work it never generate absolute zero revenue, in business i believe in long run benefits which required a strong start, but once again, i am not on the same caliber of those business suites, so my methods might be a little bit dusty for ya.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Cookiesliyr