Publishers rally as Chinese platform Temu lists hundreds of blatant card copies
Publishers are being urged to band together to fight the current onslaught of card copying with a huge number of greetings publishers discovering their designs being sold on Chinese-owned Temu online marketplace without permission.
“This is a scourge of our time. Our designs are our property and they are being stolen with no thought to the blood, sweat and tears that goes into their original creation,” said Bold & Bright founder Thea Musselwhite who, together with Dandelion Stationery’s Jo Wilson, is leading the charge to stop this pernicious practice.
“The UK leads the world in greeting card design, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong that this creative pre-eminence is being preyed on by unscrupulous thieves.
“I was alerted to it by Frankie Nichols, of You’ve Got Pen On Your Face, who told me some of my designs were on Temu. However, when I started searching on the platform, I was appalled at just how many fellow publishers’ designs featured too.”
Among the other publishers’ designs Thea spotted were Dandelion Stationery, Rosie Made A Thing, Bewilderbeest, Dean Morris Cards, Studio Boketto, Redback Cards, Klara Hawkins, Mungo And Shoddy, Modern Toss, Brainbox Candy, Off The Leash, Sarah Ray and Paper Shed, but there are most likely many more.
“It really needs everyone affected to firstly be aware of this widespread copying,” Jo told PG Buzz, “but also to take steps to report the copying and stand against Temu – maybe if we are a big enough pain by constantly reporting the issue it will help. I have just spent the last two days on the site and have reported over 50 of our designs to Temu that have been directly copied.”
Anyone who finds their designs on Temu can follow Thea and Jo’s example and report it themselves via this link.
Thea told PG Buzz today, 15 October: “I actually had an email back from Temu this morning to say that all of the links I had reported had been removed, but more are already popping up! I clicked on the site today and I feature in Halloween banner at the top, with a Christmas card!”
Jo said she is “quite astounded” at the number of items on Temu where no attempt has been made to change the designs: “It looks to us like images have been grabbed from various sources and those images have just been imposed on to cards by Chinese companies selling via Temu.
“There is a process for getting items removed but it’s time consuming and tedious – two of us here spent pretty much the whole of Thursday and Friday trawling Temu and reporting copies. We got an email on Sunday telling us items had been removed, but then on Monday they reappeared under a different seller. It’s just so frustrating but also soul destroying.”
The Temu discount marketplace is operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, which is registered in the Cayman Islands with Dublin listed as its principal office address. In the US the business is under the ownership of PDD Holdings subsidiary Whaleco which is registered in the states of Delaware and Massachusetts.
The platform first went live in the States in September 2023, then launched in Australia and New Zealand in March 2023, before opening in the UK, France, Germany Italy, Netherlands and Spain the following month, and has since expanded into the Latin American market, followed by South Africa in January this year meaning it now operates in 49 countries.
While copying is not new, it has become more of an issue with the rise of the internet allowing foreign companies to easily see and rip-off UK designers’ work, Bug Art discovered a widespread theft of greetings designs on Facebook in 2020, Berni Parker Designs took on the GearPassio website in 2018, and only last summer, July 2023, Thortful took action against Central23.
