Destroy Your Counterfeit Pins and Get A Free One From Me!

Counterfeit pins are a very big problem in our community. Every day, independant pin and patch designers are having their designs and pin art stolen and reproduced into cheap, crappy, counterfeit pins that are sold on places like AliExpress, Wish, DHGate, Ebay and so on. These overseas counterfeiting factories aggressively scour the internet and places like Etsy, Kickstarter and Instagram for easily traceable pin art that they through tracing programs to create replica molds from and counterfeit pins from. All of the enamel pins you will find on AliExpress and Wish are fake, and are stolen art. To make things even more difficult, there is a fast growing number of Shopify/e-commerce entrepreneurs who have hopes of making big bucks selling goods online and buy these cheap knockoffs for very little money with the expectation of selling them for 6x what they paid for them. Every day you will find these fakes sold on sites like Etsy, Mercari, Depop, Facebook, Instagram, Poshmark, eBay and even Amazon. 

Most independent artists do NOT have the resources or money necessary for legal assistance to combat these thousands of infringement cases that pop up on a daily basis. It takes a lot of community-watch advocacy within the community to keep an eye out for these infringing sellers, and report to one another when we see it occuring. We can only do so much and rely on conscientious consumers to help combat this ongoing problem. 

Ways that you can help: 

1. If you are a looking online and see a really cute enamel pin that you would like, make sure that the pin you are buying is coming from the original designer who created it and not a counterfeit reseller. Many times the counterfeit sellers will even be using the original artists own product photos (because those get stolen from online, also). Many pins that are commonly stolen you will likely see in a multitude of different places. If you do a google search for that pin and you see it being sold 50 different places online, all from different sellers? Its most likely being sold en masse as a fake pin. The original artist would LOVE YOUR BUSINESS. If you really love the design and you are wanting to identify the artist that created it so you can directly buy it from them, send me an email and I will do my absolute best to find out that information for you and to direct you to buy from the original creator instead. 

2. If you are an enamel pin/patch collector and you see a brick and mortar store or an online store selling a bunch of fake ass pins, say something! Alert the store owner that they are selling fakes (many times they may not even know they are), and if you know who the artists are, let them know who is selling counterfeits of their pins so they can take action to have them removed. 

3. Educate yourself about pin theft! A great place to start is www.pintheft.com!

4. If you are an attorney or legal professional who specializes in IP Law and are willing to lend a hand with your services, the art community in general would appreciate your help in any way! Many artists do not have thousands of dollars necessary to combat large scale infringement of their work and the aid of professionals in that field is always appreciated!

5. By now you're reading this and thinking "hey man, you promised me a free pin, I'm just here for the free pin". While I personally have yet to have any of my pins counterfeited, I am passionate about this and want to help in whatever way I am able to. For my contribution, I am offering any person who has bought a counterfeit pin online, I will personally send you FOR FREE (US buyers only please) an awesome pin from my brand if you can provide me with legit video/photos of you destroying the shit out of your counterfeit pin you purchased. Be creative! Take a blowtorch to it, run it over with a cement truck, throw it into a steaming hot pile of cow shit, douse it in acetone, drop it in sulfuric acid, throw it off of a very tall cliff, something! Just don't throw it in a lake/body of water please, because of the fishes and water fowl that swallow things floating in the water. If you destroy your counterfeit pin and show me evidence of doing so in a glorious way, as a thank you, I will personally, out of my own pocket, send you a pin from my line of my choosing. Its probably going to be seconds pin, but a seconds pin is still a free pin and a slightly imperfect pin from an artist is 1000% better than a shitty counterfeit from a counterfeit seller. 

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

I'll even UP the anty on this. If you not only destroy your counterfeit pin and send me evidence but ALSO provide proof of purchasing a new one from the original designer (send me a photo with their sales invoice or pin with the backing card on it), I will give you a one time use 15% off coupon code to use on any pin of your choice from my store, which will never expire, and you can use it whenever you want for any pin in my store, including limited editions and new releases. 

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

If you happen to be one of these counterfeit SELLERS who perhaps bought a bunch of enamel pins on AliExpress for the purposes of reselling and didn't know you were buying fakes, if you SEND ME YOUR INVENTORY OF FAKES so that they can be redirected to the artists who were infringed upon and destroyed, as a THANK YOU for doing the right thing, I will personally offer my design services and expertise to help you DESIGN YOUR OWN ORIGINAL PIN. You will still have to pay for the associated production costs to get said pin made, but I will help you design your pin idea and work with my own established manufacturer to get it done for you. If you were looking to get a pin design made on your own for the first time, you might need to turn to using a middle man to help you through that process, who in turn would charge you for that service. But in exchange for you handing over your cheap as hell and ugly ass counterfeit pins, I will provide this service to you, at NO COST, which is equal in monetary value as a hundred dollars or so of fake counterfeit pins. That is how much you doing the right thing is worth to me. 

 

So what are you waiting for? Are you ready to help us fight pin theft? Join the fight! Together we can do it!