blatant Fullbleed ripoff!
May 8th, 2008 by fakeplastictrees
While looking an a shop here in Durban, South africa, called E-Squared, i came across a whole bunch of t-shirts with fullbleeds designs on them, except they were being sold as a brand called ROCKY… they werent even vague ripoffs! they straight copies!
e-squared even have an image of the ripped of design on their flickr page,
unfortunately i wasnt in a position where i could take pictures of the other designs that were ripped off.
(44 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)
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yeah, ROCKY has been ripping off myself + others for awhile, not sure if there is much i can do, googling “rocky” doesn’t lead to much. if anyone has any ideas please feel free to email me, robdobi@gmail.com
Hi Guys
Eran here from eSquared.
Firstly, thanks for pointing this out – I am happy it was brought to my attention.
When we dealt with Rocky, Fan (Rocky) guaranteed that the designs were original. Now it is becoming obvious that this clearly isn’t the case.
We have sent Rocky a communique that our business relationship with them has come to an immediate end.
Unfortunately it is not possible for us to be completely aware of every ripoff and when we started buying from people like Rocky abroad, we were doing so under the genuine impression that these were 100% original designs and that we were bringing a supercool product into South Africa for fans of great tshirt design.
About 1 year ago the crew at eSquared decided to see how we can address this issue and be a part of the solution for artists who deserve recognition and remuneration. Our first step was to make a decision to stop all imports and go totally local.
In March we officially launched http://www.springleap.com – a site where people can submit designs for tshirts and the following month the public could vote on those creations. The designers stand to win huge cash, recurring revenue and massive exposure.
Every month we have 1 big winner and 19 runners up including 3 featured artists and 1 celebrity or blogger challenge.
Designers can download the tshirt template pack off the site and submit up to 5 designs a month using 7 colours and having 12 colours of tshirts to choose from.
All springleap tshirts are made right here in South Africa using South African 100% combed cotton and are packaged in a way never seen before.
The first month’s competition has already closed and the winners can be seen at http://www.springleap.com, whilst voting is ongoing for designs submitted in the month of April.
25 designers will be making their springleap at the end of this month when springleap tshirts hit the shelves throughout South Africa at Big Blue, Lover (V&A Waterfront, CT), eSquared Cape Town and Durban as well as at http://www.springleap.com
well, you are aware that that image (or variations of) is probably one of the top 3 illustration cliches of all time right? It would most notably be found in some form or another in every shitty annual report of most 1980’s corporations.
who cares if its a cliche or not, this is an obvious ripoff.
please look in your junk filter – Eran wrote a comment from eSquared about 12 hours ago, and it isn’t appearing yet
im not saying that E-squared is to blame for all of this because i cant prove that they knew about FULLBLEED, but Rocky def is
Yeah
We were really disappointed to see that they were rips, especially coming from an artist background myself.
People like Rocky suck – not only are they ripping the artist off and making cash off their ingenuity, they carelessly damage the reputation of stores like eSquared and my others who have been affected by this behaviour.
its a pity that Rocky i’snt the first/only/or even last brand that Esquared has sold and/or produced that blatantly copies other artists work/designs.
(theres only SO many times one can claim to not know)
in this industry is your responsibility/Job to know!!!!
very very sad, and disappointing, seeing as their stores have the potential to help local designers get a foothold.
Yeah totally, esquared sold ripped off threadless designs for a long time too.
as well as designs by jeremy fish and other artists
so their store mentality is rip-offs ftw
Hey, come on, at least the guys are reading this stuff and are trying to address the issue. A lot of stores don’t damn well bother, and not being pyschic they aren’t going to recognise all the designs that come their way as already having been done.
yeah, but have you thought about the fact that it might be that they are trying to cover their tracks? It’s easy to say “We didnt know”…
It just seems a bit suspect when they have repeatedly dealt with “designers” that have ripped off designs from international designers like FULLBLEED, JEREMY FISH, THREADLESS… and local designers here in SA such as TREVOR PAUL…
you guys are what we typically term “cunt muscles”. you know why? because you are out of touch with reality.
you see south africa has bigger problems than worrying about bullshit copyright infringements. with a neighbour to the north with 10000% inflation (zimbabwe) and a burgeoning population of criminals including the president of the country (zuma) do you honestly think that copyright infringement is even nearly relevant.
what is more important to prevent as a first step remedy – sexual assault and carjackings or your precious copyright?
just fucking typicaly of you artist types unable to comprehend geopolitical issues.
fuck you. final answer.
I see what your saying and you are right, but if you came to this site to read about copyright issues what do you expect?
No Fuck you!!! dont give me shit because my country is having issues… you dont know where i stand on those issues… this isnt a site about political issues, this is a site about copyright issues…
so if you wanna fight about that stuff ten fuck off to another website.
fuck you. final answer.
Hi Guys
I think it is really easy to throw comments like these around, but you have done absolutely NOTHING to do anything substantial to fight the issue.
Quite frankly it’s easy to type your frustrations out on a blog, but what are you ACTUALLY doing about the issue?
At eSquared, we actually took the matter to heart and put our money where our mouths were. We screwed up for sure, but not intentionally.
We actually decided to do something about it and take a stand. My real question is – will you stand with us and fight the good fight or just type away till the early hours of the morning.
eSquared have committed to stopping the import of ALL FOREIGN GARMENTS and replace them with a really powerful empowerment strategy for artists, the South African cotton and garment manufacturing industry as well as the vendors and enterprise players.
I totally accept that it is important that someone is active in policing the exploitation of artists, but policing and actualy providing a solution are 2 TOTALLY different things. Do you actually think the average consumer cares about where the garment came from or whose design it was? They just want a cool t to wear. Our job is to EDUCATE them and provide a solution which educates them further that they can buy into. Something they can wear and be proud of in terms of where and who it came from.
1st of June, guys – springleap tshirts hit the shelves, and then we are really going to start seeing a market in South Africa that will care about what they wear and who it came from.
It would be very easy for me to come here and say “hey guys, we never knew” and just carry on doing the same thing – but we have actually DONE SOMETHING about it. We have stuck our necks out. Springleap is a privately owned company that was bankrolled by Eric and I and built off MONTHS of work 7 days a week and 18-21 hrs a day.
People involved include reputable artists and establishments like : Steve Mandy, Dion Chang, SA Fashion Week, Jarvi, Aidan Cornhill, TREVOR PAUL, Hylton Revel, Vega, and many more.
When we found out about the full bleed issues we contacted Rob and gave him all the details of the offending person, including contact details which he -despite HUGE effort – could not track down.
We are in this for sure, but what we want is for ALL of us to be in it together sincerely and intentionally.
Let’s make a serious difference.
Hi guys,
I completely agree with Eran here…
the major issue is that Rocky is the offender and not eSquared. By facing up to this the crew from eSquared deserve to be commended. they could have easily just accepted the fact and said sorry. that would be the end of it…
the launch of Springleap shows how commited they are to have something that is 100% original and promotes local designers.
I think those of you that are just throwing around omments here without any real justification need to think about what you are you doing.
Mark
yeah i get what you are saying, but based on my experience with E-squared, from what i’ve seen they have repeatedly stocked rip-off designs from many artists… and not just stuff from rocky… I bought a shirt from them a while back (that had an Esquared tag inside and not a Rocky tag) only to find that the design on it was ripped off from Rocky. as well as another shirt which i found out had a threadless design on it…
I just find it hard to trust them when this keeps happening… and it gets to the point where you start questioning whether they are just getting repeatedly scammed by local “designers” or if they are in on it too…
Hmm I find this a little strange; I picked up on the mention of the threadless fake merch being sold in esquared stores, but it was far more disturbing than that.
I was an esquared fan, perhaps might even have been a springleap fan had I not come to the conclusion that a)esquared knew full well that it was distributing fake threadless gear and b)didn’t do anything until it was publically labelled as such. The e in e-squared certainly doesn’t stand for ethical..
To put it into perspective; esquared sold merch with labels, for instance a threadless t would always be labelled with say a title like “make love not war” and such titles appeared on e-squared labels as if they were constructed at esquared H-Q. A simple google of the shirt titles would have revealed this to the owners of the store. Once asked “so where are you getting your merch from” Eran answered “I travel a lot and found these amazing designers in Thailand”..methinks the same place the fake band merchandise and threadless gear which is sold at the Rosebank Market emanates from too. Again this isn’t rocket science, the screen printing was shoddy and the shirts far too light a cotton to have been the real article.
Esquared may in fact have addressed this issue with the distribution of Springleap shirts but they will not have changed my mind; if you are able to infringe upon an artist’s sole right to claim his / her work as his / her own then how am I to trust that in future all of your shirts will be made for South Africans by South Africans?
“You thought we wouldn’t notice” perhaps has never been more apt than know.
know = now *before the internet grammar police get me.
[...] However, an anonymous source* tipped me off to the fact that eSquared has in the past sold t-shirts with stolen designs. [...]