Even the smallest of brands need to pay close attention to what’s going on with their brand in the market place.
Case in point, Johnny Cupcakes out of Boston, the t-shirt company that you’ve seen me write about on the blog way to many times. Though J.C. is not a huge mega-brand by any means, that doesn’t keep him immune from people trying to hijack his brand, do what they want with it and make money off of it.
Sure, we’ve all seen bootleg Oakley sunglasses before among other things, there was a time in the 90′s when I lived in NYC that you couldn’t walk down the street without seeing knock offs being peddled everywhere. But that was Oakley, an expense, well known and well respected global brand. As in demand as they were at the time and as expense as their product was, it was almost kind of expected that someone would make fakes to sell.
Now, I wouldn’t have expected to have seen what was posted on Twitter and on the J.C. blog the other day about a Bangkok, Thailand based store being raided and the owner arrested for selling huge amounts of fake Johnny Cupcakes goods. From the looks of the photos, we are talking HUGE amounts of fake shirts.
As you can see from the photo below that was also posted on the Johnny Cupcakes blog, apparently there have been quite a few people trying to infringe upon the brand.
Its certainly interesting to me to see such a small brand having this happen to them, but it’s also a reminder of the importance of having a pulse on what others are up to with your brand.














