Angry Competitor - Is it justified?

January 27, 2008

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Here is a discussion on what can happen if you have an e-commerce site and after you are being so successfull some “angry” competitor tries to make destroy your business. From all my years of experience I have encountered many problems like this but also never gave up, and that is what you should do. Never give up from barriers that you can encounter when you are doing an Online Business and making money online.

I have an excellent client who launched a new ecommerce website roughly three weeks ago. I was placed in charge of running the internet marketing / SEO / SEM aspects of this operation due to my experience within the particular market (and with ecommerce in general).

Sales have been doing very well, and made our very first sale on day one with a small advertising budget. Now that we’ve started ramping up the marketing campaign, the website has really started to take off - and it’s no surprise that competitors are taking notice.

About a week ago, a major clothing distributor in our market called and let us know that we’re no longer able to “sell their products online”. This seemed fishy, as they were extremely happy to have our business prior to this phone call. We certainly don’t need them. Whatever.

… But now, earlier this evening - my client received a *nasty* email from the #1 competitor claiming copyright infringement on a number of STOCK images and 3 product descriptions which held one sentence of text.

We opted to remove the text. Again, no big deal. I am beefing up every single product description on a daily basis as it is. When everything is finished - he will want to be copying us!

Here’s what bothers me:

Now everything is starting to come together. Our competitor has a huge deal with this clothing manufacturer who dropped us without so much as giving us a reason. I know for a fact he spends six figures on their product. Coincidence? I assumed so at first, but now I am not so sure.

I’ve also always vouched for this competitor as a “great guy”, even as a competitor. I’ve even purchased from him in the past. When I sold my previous business in this same exact market (the $$$ was too good to pass up), he emailed me to congratulate me.

The competitor certainly doesn’t know that I market this website. I am operating transparently. Is his anger justified, or do you think he is blowing smoke? Keep in mind that our website is pretty slick and picking up sales and credibility within our widget’s market very quickly. Is he just scared?

Curious to hear your thoughts!

Some thoughts in that discussion thread are interesting:

• Depending on where you live, it may be illegal for the clothing company to stop you selling online in order to favour another supplier. I’d advise you to speak to a lawyer or trading standards officer who can advise you further.

  For copyright infringements; a few words doesn’t cut the mustard. Calling something ‘large green box’ can’t be a copyright infringement when that is the obvious reasonable label. Of course, where you live comes into it.

  They may have skeletons in the attic, perhaps you should spend some time going through their website and alerting / encouraging anyone who might have a fair claim against them.

• In some sectors, some manufacturers truly do not want to have their products sold online because it causes such grief for their brick and mortar retailers who do the actual work of serving the customer.
• The Starter of the thread:
  They sent 3 product links each of which they were claiming text infringement though each had less than a sentence on them at the time.

  To my knowledge my client did not copy anything from their website - and these words could be found on nearly any product description on any website within our widget ’s market.

  The pictures are often given out or used on the actual clothing or sporting goods’ manufacturer sites and that is where they were pulled from, with permission, not our competitor’s website like he is claiming.

  Buckworks: Previous to the phone call we received, they had no problems with us selling their products online, and their products are being sold online in at least 10-15 other web stores.

• That explains it all. You must absolutely keep that text there. Those are key phrases he’s and noticed your client’s site beating his in the SERPs for those phrases.

  Do a search in Google (at least) and I believe you will find your client’s site above his site for those terms.

• …You could be on to something. This competitor is generally at the top of many SERP results, but I’ve noticed that our new website is ranking above his and this is just the beginning. What’s curious about this is that my previous website also ranked well above his for most products that we both sold and this didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, that old site still ranks above his for many such products and I know for a fact that the new owner hasn’t touched any SEO or product descriptions since I sold nearly 8 months ago…. Even though this supplier “dropped us”, we can purchase their same exact line through an associate of my client for an extra dollar per widget. At our profit margin, this is NO problem. You have a really good idea there, and I will certainly make good use of it in the future. Thanks for the advice!…
• We went thru a similar deal. One of our websites jumped up to #1/2 and knocked out a site that had been #1 for a long time. We received a lawyer letter (C&D) claiming copyright infringement but no specifics. Personally sent a reply rather then incurring attorney costs and basically told them to specify what was infringed. Been close to a month and no reply so take the copyright claim for what it’s worth. If you’re wrong, fix it. If not trash it.

This can happen to anyone that is also in Affiliate marketing with websites (SEO). I have some experience with a company specific Web hosting company, with their name keyword I have ranked above the main site. But guess what happened? They stopped to give us the commissions and we (etalk network) have contacted CJ (which that hosting company is affiliated with them) and told them that there is something fishy about that company. We were getting more than 500 unique visits from people that are interested in that hosting company. From 15,500 unique visitors per month just from that keyword there were no sales. But before we were ranked well their were 2-5 orders per day. You call this coincidence?

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