Clawing at

“It’s a thin line between love and hate” goes the old Persuaders song. Similarly, there is a thin line between inspiration and copying, believes Cardsharp. Arguments about where this line is pre-date the greeting card industry and are as old as art itself.

The Renaissance masters were all heavily influenced by each other. The pre-Raphaelites of Victorian times all aped each other with both their style and subject matter. And who came first with the Cubist movement? Was it Picasso, Matisse or George Braque? Was Picasso really square or was George just ‘Bric-a-Braque’?!

There are no easy answers, but it does seem that copying or at the very least plagiarism remains a real fear for modern day card publishers.

Every artist or publisher of art is influenced by what has gone before and what is around them. Sometimes two almost identical looks can appear simultaneously just by chance, including in greeting card ranges. Cardsharp remembers back in the late 1990s two great innovators in the greeting card trade who were indeed great friends - the late David Hicks of the Really Good Card Company and Alan Hawkes, the then owner of Paper Rose - both released ranges of naïve bright colourful art cards that were considered revolutionary at the time. They were indeed virtually identical in their design approach and feel, but both agreed they had each picked up something in the ether so to speak at exactly the same moment. In this case, the Really Good range, Happy Hefalumps went on to become an enormous commercial success while Calypso put Paper Rose firmly on the greeting card map.

But there is the ether, influencing, pure plagiarism and direct copying. And often Cardsharp reflects it is hard to know which is which. Organisations like Briffa and ACID offer advice, but no legal guarantees, and some would say the law itself is too slow to recognise the rights of the artist who has been deliberately copied. And while there have been victories, case history tends to favour the copyist when it comes to the law.

Leave aside, the downright theft of designs and intellectual rights that still takes place in the Far East with many greeting card designs being translated onto other products with no permissions (more of that later), arguably more disturbing are the violations that are closer to home - copying ‘with a few tweaks’ that ensures that the perpetrators stay just on the right side of legal. The uncertainty of the result of any case brought against copiers, plus the huge legal costs involved, means that many publishers who feel properly justifiably they have been copied do not take it further.

Cardsharp knows of one particular publisher whose insurance against this has been to build a special fund that it dipped into to hurl vitriolic legal letters at publishers, who they feel had stepped too closely on their patch. They knew that they would have little chance of winning any case that went to court, but were throwing down the gauntlet and letting their adversary know that any battle would be long and costly and not worth the effort. It invariably worked.

Cardsharp does feel though in the last couple of years, the problem of copying is getting worse. The ubiquity of the internet and social media, Instagram especially, means that so many designs and styles are in the public domain very quickly.

One of the worst offenders is the Chinese fast fashion giant Shein, who seems to shamelessly steal online images from artists for its online sales business. Full marks to illustrator and publisher Angela Chick, who had her designs stolen recently and launched a social media campaign entitled Copycats Stink which forced them to remove the offending product from its website, and Cardsharp recalls Berni Parker and Bug Art taking similar action a few years ago when they suffered at the hands of an equally pernicious practice. But sometimes, (and perhaps Cardsharp is being overly naive) when the issue of copying raises its ugly head, the accused may be acting in all innocence. A studio artist may take an easy route and ape a popular line by another publisher. The creative director or managing director that gives the go ahead to publish a design/range may not realise that it is a copy of someone else’s work. Cardsharp has heard of this scenario on several occasions and normally a reputable publisher will admit the mistake and withdraw the said design or range.

But there have been more egregious incidents recently where a brokerage publisher, unable to secure a deal for a successful range from a publisher who refused to supply them, has shamelessly ripped off that publisher’s range. This practice totally demeans this company, as both a broker and a publisher.

In fact, the last thing you want to get, as a broker or a publisher, is the reputation of being a copycat.

Increasingly retailers who have had to become more discerning and knowledgeable, are putting black marks against publishers cutting very close to the bone when it comes to copying. Publishers be warned! Being ‘overly influenced’ could actually be bad long term for your financial health for your company, concludes Cardsharp, stay the right side of that thin line!

Cardsharp read recently that the Moonpig flotation of 2020 is now known in City circles as the ‘Flying Porker’, having seen its initial launch price of £3.50 drop down to £1.50.

You would have thought a period of humility might come in the wake of this terrible performance, but no, after launching a shameful advertising attack on traditional bricks and mortar card retailing last year, the print on demand market leader is now setting its sights on Card Factory (who’s share price more than quadrupled in the period that Moonpig’s has more than halved).

A Moonpig social media marketing campaign for Father’s Day included a poster, featured the Moonpig logo, photoshopped onto a telephone box outside a Card Factory outlet, with the inane caption: “His card should come from the heart not a card factory”.

The Moonpig geeks who no doubt devised this so called marketing strategy have not only broken the first rule of advertising, namely don’t knock and name a competitor as it only elevates and promotes them, but launched it on the Friday before Father’s Day on the Sunday, when it would be almost too late for anyone ordering a card that day from Moonpig for their dad to receive it in time for the big day, even using its £3.99 tracked delivery service. So, all it did was to highlight Card Factory’s - open all day Friday, Saturday and indeed Father’s Day - advantage over Moonpig.

In fact, the whole thing backfired as Card Factory re-used the image with the words, “We are over the Moon(pig) that other brands want to feature our stores on their feeds. Thanks for sharing the love. P.S. We are also open Sunday for those last minute Father’s Day’s cards and gifts.” Game, set and match, Cardsharp thinks to CF.

But seriously, reflected Cardsharp, Moonpig does need to grow up. Perhaps this latest ploy is desperation on its part given its poor share price performance or borne out of frustration of that this ‘Disrupter’ is not being able to disrupt the way it anticipated. Perhaps they think they are being clever, but to Cardsharp’s mind, these techies need to learn that the greeting card industry works because it engenders good feelings in human beings, and all of us in the industry need to be on the same side to promote greeting card buying and giving. By all means promote Father’s Day but not at the expense of others in the industry. Play the game boys, or you may end up as sausage meat!