Scrapdiva 29 Counterfeit Issues

Fair point. And while it can't be said of an all-new open-stock release every.single.month, my understanding of the purpose of subscriptions and clubs is inventory forecasting. That's why Club Scrap, for instance, keeps you as a "subscriber" for two skipped months in a row, but considers you unsubscribed after a third. Or at least that's what they say. It certainly works better with prepaid, no skipping subscriptions like the ones TE and SCT do.

The stamp/die set I'm lusting after was available to order (as opposed to preorder) from SSS yesterday. It was available to ship from AE yesterday as well. It's on its way to me from China. It's not that Papalia store someone recommended; I couldn't find it there yet.

I won’t buy from either place for that very reason.

I would be extremely surprised to find any stamps coming from China that are photopolymer. The dies however seem circumspect!

Yeah it’s been mentioned before, the stamps at AE are acrylic and subpar quality. I only buy dies and stencils from AE.

Stamps have been hit or miss from AliEx - more miss than dies. They're definitely not photopolymer, and I've had at least one set that was not properly cured and oily/stinky. For size they're all over the place, even if you get the same design from different batches, they may not be the same size. I don't much like stamps to begin with so I don't buy them. They've also gone up quite a bit in price from pre-Covid times where you could get a set (stamps/dies) for <5$ CAN if you shopped around.

The quality is definitely not great with stamps. I have Kelly Purkey (Hero Crafts) and Heidi Swapp stamp sets that are the same quality as the ones I have purchased from AE. The Dollar Tree stamp sets I've purchased are better quality than all of those I've mentioned.

I get that, teacherlisa. I also try not to purchase products with overinflated prices based on false claims.

Thank you. The next time I find myself to be you, I'll make sure to keep that in mind.

My apologies. The conversation has drifted since it began and I had utterly lost sight of the original question.

I saw this on Facebook this evening. It was reposted by someone on the Facebook Group Scrapbook Addicts, but was originally posted by Gina Aurelio Krupsky. I thought I had not heard of her, then it hit me that she must be Gina K., a well known craft designer. Her comments apply to this discussion, and she explains some of the reasons why places like Temu and AE are so cheap, and why the American paper craft companies charge what they do. This certainly made me re-think what I want to do going forward:

Good Monday morning friends! I would like to address something that deeply concerns me. This is a long post, but I'd like to talk a little bit about the Chinese knock-off sites like Temu, AliExpress and others. It pains me to even type those names, however, if I don't, there will be people who will believe that these sites are legitimate.

First of all, ANY product you see on one of those sites that looks like one of my products is NOT MY PRODUCT. These are KNOCK-OFFS, plain and simple. This is stolen intellectual property. These designs have been stolen from me, from my daughters, from Melanie, Lisa, Beth, Debbie, Dina and Arjita. And the reach is further than that as we pay hefty licensing fees to other artists to use their art in the production of paper crafting products, so they are affected too. You might see cards on those sites by Mindy, Jennifer or Cathy Z. These and other designers are NOT promoting those sites. Their card photos have also been stolen to promote their knock offs.

How Temu and other sites like this operate.

Temu sells nothing. They are like a Amazon, just the face of a company that sells nothing but makes a commission on every sale. They have registered their Chinese company in Boston and Delware to make you believe they are here. But they are in China. Like Amazon, they rent space (virtual stores) to small manufacturing businesses from China. The Chinese factories that sell on these sites operate sweat shops and employ adults and children to manufacture knock-off products for very little pay, horrid working conditions, long hours with no breaks, no time off and, they work in very dangerous environments.

Temu and AliExpress make the bulk of their money in a different way. They mine your information and then they sell it. There is a LOT of money in selling YOU. And that's what they do. They also place malware on your phone and computer so they can track your habits. Isn't that comforting? Get those apps off your phone as soon as you can. To read more about this from Tech Guru Kim Komando, click here: www.komando.com/security/temu-data-risks/887048/

These Chinese companies are NOT our manufacturers.

In fact, the manufacturer where my dies are made is supporting IACC, which stands for the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition. It is an organization that helps business get these countefeit listings pulled down from those sites. For more information about IACC, click here: www.iacc.org/online-initiatives/marketsafe The good Chinese manufacturers, who pay a decent wage, offer safe working environments and care about the quality of their products are also being hurt by this countefeiting.

These sweat shops are constantly getting shut down for intellectual property theft and they reopen under a different name almost the next day. It's truly a game of Whack-a-mole.

We employ someone in our company to spend a good portion of their day combing those sites for counterfeit Gina K. Designs products and filing theft reports. This is now what small craft companies have to do if they want any of those products to be taken down. It's expensive, time consuming and it feels like a never-ending effort, because it is.

But there is more than just the stealing that is concerning. These manufacturers use subpar and often dangerous materials to make their products. They may look and feel the same, however, you can be guaranteed that our dies do NOT contain lead. And our stamps are manufactured in the USA so they are made of Photopolymer, not silicone.

How do they get the designs?

In the past, they used to just do a screen shot from their computer, clean it up in Photoshop and make something that looked very close. But they also steal our online product photos, including the beautiful projects created by our designers to promote the product. So to the customer, they look the same.

They have recently gotten more sophisticated and now, they have addresses in the USA where they purchase products from our companies and have them shipped to their factories so they can make better copies when it comes to size. However, many of the smaller factories still use screen-grab technology so when your stamps or dies arrive, they are the wrong size, sometimes the print is backwards or words are misspelled because of the fuzzy image and more. Often people complain that they bought a stamp set from us and the dies from Temu, (because they were cheaper,) but they don't fit correctly.

The worst part of all of this:

Many US and other popular brands are sinking fast. People are buying from these knock-off sites and the small companies can't absorb the loss and the cost of producing anymore. Many of my friends who own companies have gone out of business or they are on the edge. And when customers justify by saying that we charge too much, they don't have any idea what they are talking about. Would it surprise you to know that these site sell stamps and dies for less than I pay for my products to be manufactured? I pay way more for my dies IN CHINA than for what they are selling them for. I have to be able to sell my products at a wholesale price to our partner stores like Simon, Scrapbook dot com, Scrapmania, Bumbleberrys and more. I have to pay my illustrators, affiliates, office staff, pickers, packers, assemblers and warehouse workers a decent wage, facility expenses like rent and utilities, insurance and workman’s comp, pay for free shipping and free incentive stamps, and still somehow take a little home to pay my own bills.

The sad truth.

The craft industry is struggling right now and many small companies are leaving. Brick and mortar stores are closing. Big box stores are getting rid of paper crafts.

That being said, we continue to stay strong because of you! And we are so grateful that you choose to support real artists, high quality products and our small business.

I know you have heard this type of misinformation from your friends or other crafters:
"Well that's where Gina K gets her stuff and marks it up a whole bunch." (That's not true)
"That's what they get for making things in China." (Certain things are unavailable or there isn't enough manufacturing space in the US)
"Well I can't afford to buy the real thing!" (I can't afford a BMW but I won't steal one)
Please remind them that eventually, we will all sink from that mentality.

Then, ask yourself, once these companies go out of business:

Who will the knock-off places have to steal from?

Who will provide innovative designs and tools?

Who will provide free education like YouTube videos and reels?

Who will be holding fun crafting events?

Who will be sharing beautiful inspiration?

Nobody.

We will be gone.

I do, too. It clarified the issue for me.

This is my first time replying to this post, but just wanted to thank scrapnnana for reposting this, as I knew some of it, but it is helpful to see the facts laid out in one place.  I think for me there are a couple of key points.  One is the reality of the expense of some of these products really is out of reach for so many people these days.  And two is that just because it is out of reach, we still need to be educated on the reality of these lower cost products and companies so that we can each be intentional about what we really are buying and exposing ourselves to.  Just the point around temp and aliexpresses business models makes me pause.  As well, the safety of the product and product materials also is concerning to me.

No simple answer here for crafters as things get more expensive some people can't just "pay more".