
A Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before fundraising has finished - sergeant3
http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/
======
stuaxo
> Yet Sherman estimates that he has lost “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in
> potential revenue due to copycats.

OK, but how much real money has he lost.

I lose millions of pounds of potential money every time I play the lottery.

~~~
intoverflow2
Idea guys in a nutshell

~~~
nathancahill
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q)

------
sharemywin
I think alibaba is missing a huge opportunity. They need to create a
kickstarter type site where 1-3% of the sales go to your design and anyone can
copy it and sell it on his site(s) and you get the design fee.

~~~
mdorazio
While I like this idea, it still runs into the same issue as patents with
respect to enforcement. It would be very difficult to get all the copycats to
actually fork over the 1-3% of sales on their knockoff product.

~~~
mortenjorck
The solution to that seems easy: Preferred placement. Alibaba can simply
promote the vendors who have signed on to the design royalties system,
possibly penalizing those who have not.

The 1-3% IP overhead then becomes effectively a marketing overhead.

~~~
lotyrin
Why pay the idea guy then? Just have traditional promoted listings and
seller/market pocket the money regardless of the origin or design of the
items.

~~~
mortenjorck
I don't really see the point of this comment: Above is a proposal to use a
tool to accomplish a goal. It presumes the goal is desired by the actor. If it
is not, they are free to use the tool for other purposes.

~~~
lotyrin
Because there are multiple actors required to make the proposal work as
stated. How are all the actor's purposes aligned by the proposal such that you
get a positive sum for all of the required parties?

------
lhnz
Whether or not we see the value in selfie-sticks, we surely must find at least
a little value in people that design solutions at least being able to recoup
the costs of development?

It's quite likely, that there are solutions that exist that will take a large
amount of investment, but yet once created will have little economic moat to
protect themselves from duplication.

Not all of these solutions will be as frivolous as a retractable selfie-stick,
and with a financial disincentive to investing in designing them, we create a
very low likelihood that these solutions will be created.

That said, I guess unless someone can come up with a cheap system to ensure
originators get paid, there's very little that we can do other than express
outrage.

~~~
jasonkostempski
No risk, no reward. Copying, I think, should be planned for, especially in a
global market. If a single video is enough to copy it, then maybe don't
release a video before you're done making it. What I hate seeing is when an
idea gets copied and then the laws made to guard against copying get used
against the creator preventing them from even competing on other fronts like
quality, marketing, etc.

~~~
Cpoll
If it gets too bad, though, you have the opposite, "no reward, no risk". Then
things don't get created.

If I know that my idea will get sniped, I'm not going to put the time and
effort into the design and the Kickstarter.

------
dogma1138
I've also seen things in reverse where silly ideas "inspired" by cheap Chinese
gadgets would appear on crowdfunding sites.

There is no point to compete with China on cheap accessories, anything that is
not service based or is prohibitory expensive or complicated to make will be
copied before you get even the initial samples back for evaluation.

------
Leszek
> Lindtner compares the culture of Shenzhen’s manufacturing ecosystem to the
> open-source movement among software developers.

This is actually an interesting comparison. There are plenty of open-source
"clones" or (more kindly) alternatives to closed-source software, and this is
seen as a good thing. What's the real difference between this and these sorts
of clean-room hardware clones?

~~~
ddispaltro
In my opinion there are two big reasons. Most open source software are
building blocks, versus an end product, so it's seen as helping the ecosystem
forward. Secondly, atoms are more costly than electrons to copy.

------
api
So create a Kickstarter and then just watch Alibaba for the product to appear.
Now no need to worry about design, fab, production, or delivery! It's like a
magic AI that makes your product for you.

:)

~~~
dublinben
Exactly. It seems to me like the audience on Alibaba crowdsourced the
manufacturing of his product. Now he has multiple manufacturers to choose from
(something he admits he didn't even figure out yet) and can purchase at a
wholesale price ($10). He will still be able to make plenty of profit selling
these at the original price of $40.

------
baybal2
loooool

Ever seen an action cam called SJ Cam? It looks like an exact copy of gopro
camera. Why do you think they don't sue the manufacturer?

The answer is that they are their original OEM from whom they were buying
rebranded products and sold them as hero cameras 1 and 2. They never signed
any kind of agreement securing exclusive rights to the design. At the time
they wanted to build their next generation cam from scratch, they were unnable
to do anything with the fact that SJCam continued selling the original design.

Not only small companies buy off-the shelf designs. Not even biggest brands
shy of from banal rebranding: probably more than a half of all notebook
designs are off-the-shelf design house products.

Who sold Apple the reference design for the first ifone? It was Taiwanese ODM
"First International Computer," and they are trying hard to conceal that fact
as it will set their "designed by Apple in california" line in bad light.

If somebody had access to the repair manual for the first iphone, they
could've seen many references to the ODM and individual factories making sub-
assemblies.

------
coldcode
You could do a kickstarter that was impossible and see what the copycats comes
up with.

~~~
awqrre
Good idea, but don't you need a working prototype nowadays with Kickstarter?

------
lordnacho
What's the big deal? The discovery in this case is not how to build a selfie
stick box, it's the realisation that people want to have such a thing. That
shouldn't be patentable, it should in fact be the free-for-all that it is.

It's no different than putting up a picture of a burger with 4 patties made of
different meats, with a soft-ice on top and a waffle on the bottom. It's not a
mystery how to make it, it's a mystery why anyone wants it. But if loads of
people express admiration for it, why on earth should there be any protection
for the guy who came up with it? He's not taking the risk on buying the meats,
setting up a shop, marketing, and so forth.

~~~
DanBC
> why on earth should there be any protection for the guy who came up with it?
> He's not taking the risk on buying the meats, setting up a shop, marketing,
> and so forth.

In theory the person inventing it is investing time and effort into the
invention itself, and the manufacturing company is risking money on a new
idea.

Some protection seems reasonable. The current levels of protections - many
years, is weird.

------
kyaghmour
Just checked Alibaba for "Fidget Cube". Several offerings already available
even though Kickstarter campaign is yet to close. Several listings even use
marketing from the campaign.

Serious food for thought.

------
taude
Maybe they could copy the ZPM espresso machine[0]?

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso-
and-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso-and-the-rage-
of-the-jilted-crowdfunder.html)

------
aaron695
The Chinese copy because they have a billion people to get out of poverty.

And years of catch-up.

Makes 100% sense, no need for innovation yet.

Just sucks if you are in a rich country.

~~~
GrinningFool
Add to that the massive manufacturing infrastructure they've built out to meet
global manufacturing demand, and it's a recipe for exactly this.

------
jlebrech
come up with an idea that is predominantly software then you can mod the
knockoffs into the finished products.

~~~
diego_moita
That was my first tought when I read this.

But you might bump into the oposite problem: patent trolls taking advantage of
excess of protection for ideas.

------
tocotun1
Did he actually think this idea would make him rich? Was he that naive? I mean
it's a damn retractile stick, there's no actual value to it, of course it
would be copied to oblivion...

~~~
crispyambulance
I was going to say that I doubt the original inventor thought it would "make
him rich", that it was just an idea that he wanted to realize and perhaps make
some money off it. That would be the reasonable way to look at it.

Unfortunately, the guy seems to have gotten busy "enforcing" the IP on
copycats in China. The only people who will get any enjoyment out of that is
lawyers. Sounds like he's embarking on a miserable never-ending game of wack-
a-mole. And for what? A forgettable bauble-store item for impulse buyers on
vacation?

~~~
DarkLinkXXXX
Umm, couldn't he just see which manufacturer made the best quality product,
and work with them, and make a good profit margin? It may even be in that
manufacturers interest to stop the other copycats.

------
fbreduc
i don't see the problem here really

------
0xmohit
I am really amazed looking at how popular selfie-sticks continue to be despite
causing injuries and deaths [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-
related_injurie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-
related_injuries_and_deaths)

