Disclaimer: this is a private blog and nothing that I write here represents in any way the official position of the company I am working for.
When you develop what I consider one of the most innovative packages in the consumer goods industry in decades, you have to expect that copycats are not that far away. This is obvious, but I do admit I was quite surprised (and maybe a bit flattered for the team) seeing this:
This is from a packaging catalogue, arguably promoting products of Chinese (?) companies.
I have not received physical samples, but it’s likely that this is – at least to some extent – a pretty straight copy. Different from the cap, the bottle they show with the clumsy oversticker reading “Sun-Rain” does not look like a copy. It’s probably the original that’s in the market in Europe.
Now, I can imagine that the Reckitt’s and Unilever’s of this world are hard at work to catch up on the original. So, showing the picture of the bottle in the catalogue might entice these guys to at least ask a few samples of that crummy “301 series” cap to play with.
My favorite part is this, though:
Not that I want to go “thermonuclear” on these clowns … :) but that’s a good one.
Okay, seriously: in all fairness, they did make changes to the cap which actually justify a design patent. I can also see from the photos that they have modified the assembly of their knock-off. To really see how blatant the copy is, I would love to get actual pieces.
Be it as it might: I would not expect this thing to hurt our business and on some level it’s cute that we have groupies in Asia.
