Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

My wife and I own and run an import busines, mostly beads, gemstones, jewelry components, but not only do we import from all over the world, we ( to be honest, my wife) create the pieces we buy at the factories in Europe and Hong Kong that we purchase from, so our product is unusual, new, different than our competitors. Because we spend a lot of money traveling overseas to go to factories, and invest in the molds and equipment needed to make our products, we have to charge more than our competitors who see what we have created and copy our lines for a less price because they don’t have that initial overhead. Sure, we bring it to market first, that’s one advantage, but our competitors don’t take long to bring the copies to market. And sometimes it’s all about price points. There isn’t much customer loyalty out there. The only advantage we have is setting trends first, being innovative, exciting, but it is annoying to come out with something new just to have someone else copy you at a cheaper price. Having the creativity to make something new is good, and only being a copycat is somewhat scary as a business model. When times get tough, you don’t know how to create, only imitate. If the creative people stop creating you won’t be able to bring something new to market. And not only is it irritating to have your creation copied, the copycat doesn’t mention that it’s your creation, but pass on the assumption to unknowing customers that it is their creations.

But although it is irritating it really doesn’t affect us, because there is enough business for all of us to go around. And besides, we know, and our really good customers know. And my wife has the skills to create something new, different, exciting to bring to market. And it doesn’t have be new. It could be old, antique, but she has the courage and the eye to know now is the time to reintroduce that item now. Or go in a completely different direction which blows away the completion at the beginning. Like when the market was really struggling a few years back we started leading trade mission tours to the countries that had factories we went to so that our customers could experience what we had been doing for years and see for themselves where those products came from and how they were made. So many of our competitors were shocked that we would do that, and said we were stupid to show our customers where we go and introduce them to our sources. We were cutting our throats. Well, besides paying for us to travel, and buy product with their money, our customers would see how hard it was, how creative my wife was and that they weren’t, and it actually made them more loyal to us in the long run. In fact, it was such a good idea within 3 years or so, some of our copycat competitors starting doing bead tours to the Czech Republic and Hong Kong as well. But again, they were copying us, so their tours weren’t as good as ours, and some made such a mess of their tours that they stopped doing them. And that’s ok, it showed people how good ours were by comparison. And they buy more beads and buttons from us than they ever used to. So sometimes copying us helps us in the long run. Today the bead industry is on the wane, but we are doing better than ever, while most of our competitors have stopped.