Business owner losing 'thousands' to copycats

A small business owner from Worcestershire has said she has lost "tens of thousands of pounds" due to online design theft.

Lauren Aston, from Hagley, has created knitted garments from her studio in Hagley for more than 10 years, and gained a following after Claudia Winkleman wore one of her designs on hit BBC TV show The Traitors.

She is now working with online retailer Not on the High Street to help fellow entrepreneurs to reclaim their ideas.

"It's tens of thousands of pounds and I'm learning to build up my resilience to it," Aston said.

"At first, it was such a huge loss to me in so many ways and we spent so many hours trying to send out cease and desists, and contacting people, asking them to remove it.

"Then, after a little while, I realised I was actually losing even more by trying to chase it up, because it's like trying to catch water in your hands."

Not on the High Street said intellectual property theft was putting off some small businesses from launching new products.

Pascal Schuster, CEO of Not On The High Street, said: "They don't want their products on Instagram or Facebook any more because as soon as a product is in a campaign it will be cloned and it will be recreated, and sold cheaper.

"We have created our own legal fund, where we help our partners to fight design theft where possible."

The government has also said it takes the issue seriously and that it has engaged with the major e-commerce stores in the UK and abroad.

A spokesperson for the Intellectual Property Office said: "We also provide detailed guidance to help both small business and the public spot and report infringing and counterfeit goods, as we work alongside our partners to protect legitimate traders and raise consumer awareness of the harms."

But Dids McDonald, a director at the organisation Anti Copying in Design, said the problem was still "rife".

"People take the fast track to markets and the quickest way is by copying designers work," she said.

"In fact, many within the creative industry suffer from copying by the goliaths of this world."

McDonald encouraged designers to be "more vigilant" by keeping a paper or digital trail behind their designs, as well as using watermarks over images.

Meanwhile for Aston, she said she would continue to be creative, but wanted people to be more aware of what they were buying.

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