Getting to this point - Part Two

Ever had your stomach fall out? I have a few times, or so I thought. Earlier this year (in the Spring) my wife was surfing the internet. Every once and a while she’ll Google my company to see if there’s anything new and interesting out there. When she did this time a Google Ad came up with another company doing something exactly what I was doing.

This is not a complete surprise as I keep up to date on the competition. This was different. I went to the company’s website and started to read more about them. Hummm....they are based in the same country as my supplier...wow even the same city.....hummmm....some of this text on the site seems too familiar. I checked the Whois (www.whois.sc/domainname) and my eyes and stomach confirmed what my heart suspected. My supplier/manufacture completely ripped of my business model right down to some of the text.

That day I must have called my supplier about a dozen times (he’s half way across the world) and sent a couple of emails. When he finally got in back to me the next day his was scrambling for answers. First he told me that he didn’t know what I was talking about.

Then I quoted him his website and domain name.

Next he claimed that the business had not launched and that he was going to tell me about it.

I told him that his story was bullshit. He registered the domain name *many* months ago. Actually it was soon after I can back from a successful trade show and told him how well things were going especially with retailers.

Now he’s telling me that he’s not competing against me because he won’t be selling in Canada. Gee how nice of him to set-up an identical business and leave me with 2% of the world’s market.

More later.

RL