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Old 03-26-2010, 03:15 PM
Robin Carlton's Avatar
Robin Carlton Robin Carlton is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Charlotte, NC
Posts: 27,189
Exclamation PrettyScrappy.com: A Statement From Our Team of Designers

Dear friends,

This week our team of designers has been dealing with a very unfortunate situation with a designer at another store. We’ve attempted to rectify this situation privately behind the scenes, but the dishonesty involved in what is going on is something that we as a team feel needs to be brought to the community’s attention.

On Monday, March 22, I contacted Julie Frank, the store owner at Pretty Scrappy, in regards to a kit that one of their designers Robyn Greif aka ScrapperGirl Designs, had created that was in my opinion way too close to one of Libby’s original designs. I asked for the kit to be removed from the store as a courtesy to Libby due to the fact that the kit was essentially a knock off of her original work.

The owner replied to me and essentially dismissed my concern telling me the only thing she felt was really similar between the two kits was the word strips which she had asked the designer to remove from the kit. She then informed me that the designer was "purely inspired" by a commercial use package of medical elements, which she used for the kit and nothing more. Here are the kits so you can see and decide for yourself…





After doing this for 4 years, our entire team of designers is well aware of the fact that you can’t copyright themes or colors, but as professionals we strive to create our own original work week after week, and we know and appreciate that the majority of other designers out there do so as well, which is why a situation like this and the lack of a serious response was very disappointing.

At that time I shared the situation with our team of designers out of frustration at what had occurred. Had the above been the only thing that happened, we would have vented privately for a bit and that would have been that. These things happen - it isn’t the first time it has and it won’t be the last and at some point you come to realize that there is only so much you can do beyond asking for the removal of the kit when stuff like this is brought to your attention.

However, after the initial support of Libby had taken place and our designers started looking at ScrapperGirl’s collection of work more closely, many of our designers found their original elements taken directly from their kits and placed into her kits for sale at PrettyScrappy.com.

The kit below is just ONE example of what we discovered…



And here is a listing of the elements which were originally created by our designers. It should be noted that none of these products are available as CU items. These are elements scanned and extracted by our designers personally for use in their own kits. These are not knock-off items that LOOK like the designers' items, they ARE the Sweet Shoppe Designers' original elements with the name changed to scrappergirldesigns or sgd.



The items above can be found in the following kits available here at SSD. Feel free to click the images if you’d like to look for the items above as they appear in our kits.

Another Year Older (star paper by Christy Lyle made monochromatic by SGD)


Doodles & Damask (flower, bead spill, stitching & button by Penny Springmann)


Heart Whispers (paper tag by Melissa Bennett)


Frolic (wood frame by Shawna Clingerman)


While all of the above is infuriating when so much heart and work goes into our designs, it is even more shocking that we have no record of Robyn ever purchasing these products from us here at SSD or from ANY of our designer’s personal stores. As far as we are concerned, she is claiming elements as her own from stolen products, which is incredibly disheartening and infuriating to be honest. At this point we have not been told otherwise despite several of our designers asking for an explanation.

Once we had all of the above information, we asked for an apology and some action to be taken against this designer, and on Tuesday morning, I received what I thought was a sincere apology from Julie at Pretty Scrappy letting me know she was terribly sorry for what had happened and that Robyn was no longer a designer in their store. While the whole thing was incredibly frustrating, we took some measure of comfort in knowing that this designer was slowed down for at least some measure of time.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday morning we received information that Robyn had not been removed as a designer from PrettyScrappy at all, but had merely changed her design name to Big Apple Designs in an effort to shut us up and make us think we’d “won”. As you can see from the screenshot below, there is no doubt that Robyn who was originally ScrapperGirl had changed her name to Big Apple Designs in the forums and store at PrettyScrappy.



Since Wednesday morning, Big Apple Designs has disappeared from both the forums and store, and the user PlainJane has taken her place in the PrettyScrappy forums.

Again, I wrote to Julie at Pretty Scrappy with my disappointment in how this situation was handled and informed her that we would be making a public statement in regards to this matter so that our concerns would be addressed somewhere since she was unwilling to take the situation seriously. So here we are.

As someone who takes great pride in the professionalism and integrity of my team, it pains me to make a public spectacle like this as I prefer to handle these situations privately. However, due to the lack of action, our team felt that it is time to start standing up for ourselves as designers by making a statement to say that this kind of thing is NOT ok. Digital piracy has many ugly faces, and this is unfortunately a very sad and disturbing one.

We are not out to harass anyone or make life difficult for an up and coming store or designer. This is not a case of a big store bullying a little one, and we realize that there are likely very honest and good designers creating and selling at Pretty Scrappy, but this situation was handled very poorly and dishonestly by the store owner and designer, and ultimately we deserve to have our designs protected one way or another.

Please help us protect our work by keeping your eyes open and letting us know if you see thievery as blatant as this situation has been. We know that similar colors and themes come out throughout the digital community, and that is as it should be as each designer can always bring a fresh perspective to their projects, but when kits are a direct knock off of a designer’s work, or worse when people are claiming someone else’s work as their own, there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed as you deserve to spend your money on designers who put their heart into creating their own work each time they hit their computers. To expect anything less is a mockery of the business we love.

On behalf of the entire team of Sweet Shoppe Designers, thanks so much for your time and support,

Robin
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