16-17_Cardsharp.qxp_Layout 1 01/11/2024 12:03 Page 2
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The Evil Claws Of Copying Who first uttered the immortal phrase ‘The unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism’, Cardsharp asks? Well, believe it or not, it was coined in 1973 by a Conservative Prime Minister, Ted Heath, (he of the first major national miners’ strike) to describe the corrupt practices of a rogue corporation called Lonrho. This phrase came to mind when Cardsharp examined the activities of the Temu online platform, which is jabbing its poisonous, evil claws into our greeting card industry. A bit of research by Cardsharp indicates that online platform Temu makes the Sicilian Mafia and Mexican drug cartels look like the Women’s Institute. And at present Temu is threatening to do as much damage to our greeting card industry as the aforementioned organisations have done to Sicily and Mexico. Temu has recently been responsible for blatantly copying hundreds of greeting card designs, not even bothering to even slightly change the image! When challenged to remove the images, in many cases the Chinese online platform blatantly ignores the plea, or if it does take these designs down, they just add more copies from the same publisher invariably under a different seller on the platform. Getting the designs taken down is both time consuming and tedious, but Temu knows this. Its reach is broad as testified by the myriads of design-led publishers have been copied in some shape or form, so it is spread betting that not every publisher will take action. Temu is a direct-to-consumer platform that is gaining traction by extensive online advertising. Unfortunately, adding insult to injury, the public will think that these designs are actually originals and the ridiculously low 16 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
prices of around £1 for a greeting card tarnishes our sector’s legitimate economy. So, who is Temu and how does the organisation get away with it? Having done some delving Cardsharp’s discovered that Temu was only founded in 2022 by a certain Geoffrey Wong, and is in fact owned by PDD holdings, a Chinese e-commerce company. While its principal office is in Dublin, it is registered in the Cayman Islands (the archetypal ‘sunny place for shady people’) and now operates in 49 countries, but ships direct from China. From the outset it has been marred in controversy. For most of its existence it has been in a series of legal battles with another unsavoury Chinese company, Shein. Cardsharp thoroughly recommends viewing the Channel 4 TV documentary, ‘Inside the
Above: Temu has got its claws into the greeting card industry with its widespread copying. Below middle: Ted Heath first coined the phrase ‘the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism’ which Cardsharp borrows to describe Temu’s copying. Bottom: Shop at Temu, you risk buying an illegal copy.
Shein Machine: Untold’ which is still available on catch up. The spat saw Shein, certainly no paragon of virtue, claiming that it had identified thousands of instances where Temu sellers had copied its listing photos. And as recently as this August, both Shien and Temu were both citing copyright infringement lawsuits in the US courts. In addition to this, Temu has had multiple adverts banned for making false statements. There has also been a huge volume of complaints against the company regarding product discrepancies, mysterious surcharges and unresponsive customer service. Even more worryingly there have been many recalls of products with numerous products not meeting EU safety standards. Highly toxic kids’ clothes and toys would you believe? Add to that there have been myriad complaints about its handling of private data. Temu has also been criticised for having products on the platform that have been manufactured using Uyghur forced labour from Western China. And it has been accused of operating the now supposedly outlawed 996 working hours system. This means workers are made to work 9.00am to 9.00pm, six