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How Not To Freak Out When Someone Copies Your Product

from the monkey-see,-monkii-do dept

One of the things we’ve talked about for decades at Techdirt is that companies need to not freak out so much when someone copies their product — whether physical or digital. There are some who believe you need to stop copying at any cost. That always seemed silly for multiple reasons. First, if you have something people want, it’s going to get copied. At some point you have to do something of a cost benefit analysis of whether or not it’s truly worth it to go crazy stopping every copy. Second, if you truly created the original, then you have a leg up on any copycat, in that you have a much better understanding of just about everything: you understand the customers better, you’ve built up brand loyalty and you understand the hidden reasons why people like your product. So you’ll almost certainly continue to innovate above and beyond any copycats. Third, many efforts to stop copycats end up punishing your actual customers, saddling them with a worse product because you’re so overly concerned about copying. This is a story of a company that has gone in the other direction.

For the last year or so, I’ve been telling a bunch of people about my exercise regime (my coworkers are sick of hearing about it). It began two years ago when I saw a Kickstarter project for Monkii Bars 2 — a suspension training system not unlike TRX (if you’re familiar with that), but a lot more portable. If you spend time on Kickstarter, there are a ton of exercise equipment products there, but nearly all of it looks like most late night infomercial crap (also, I noticed that most of them are based in LA, which perhaps isn’t too surprising). Most of them look snazzy, but also are likely to be the kinds of things that no one ever uses for more than a week. The Monkii bars didn’t look like that at all, though. First, it was from a Colorado company, and the team who made it seemed more like the kind of people I’d actually hang out with, rather than the folks who pitch most exercise equipment. More importantly, though, something about the way the Monkii Bars worked just seemed like a perfect way to get a workout. For whatever reason, I knew that they wouldn’t be a “use it for a week and forget about it” kind of thing (though, I did still at least worry a little bit they would turn out that way).

But what really pushed me over the edge in deciding to back the project was two things. First, they not only had a successful Kickstarter campaign under their belts, but you could see that many backers of the new campaign were returning customers who raved about the original. That’s always a good sign. Second, and more importantly, on their own website they had a page on how to make your own monkii bars, with the following:

Our number one goal here at monkii.co isn?t to sell monkii bars ? it?s to get people to be more active. So when we started hearing that a small number of people thought monkii bars were too expensive and that they could make them on their own, we decided to help them. We reached out to Cooper over at GarageGymReviews.com who has some experience making DIY versions of products. So whether you buy monkii bars from us, or make your own, it?s time to get wild.

To me, that showed tremendous confidence in what they were building. It made me trust them more, and even though they were showing how to make your own for much, much less than the cost of buying the full product from them, it made me much more willing to pay them for the product.

It seemed many others felt the same way, and the Monkii Bars 2 raised over a million dollars (much more than the ~$100k of their first product). There were some manufacturing delays (ah, Kickstarter…) but they were pretty upfront and transparent about the reasons for the delays, including making the product significantly better between product launch and delivery. I got mine over a year ago, and they were exactly what I hoped they would be. They were a perfect way to get a really good, thorough workout nearly anywhere. I’ve used them at home, at the office, in hotels, at parks, while camping and more. I take them basically everywhere I go and, somewhat incredibly, I always feel like I want to work out more when I use them (in contrast to other things, or going to the gym, where I tend to want to just get it over with).

And, of course, once the 2nd version was out, the monkii’s updated their DIY page, with details on how to make your own of the 2nd version as well. Last fall, the company’s founder, Dan Vinson, went on the CNBC show Adventure Capitalists, which is basically a “Shark Tank” for exercise equipment, and what amazed me was that just as one investor is getting really into investing, Dan mentions the DIY page… and the investor initially flips out. He actually threatened to pull the investment because he thought Dan was crazy to tell people how to make their own, and thought that would sink the entire company. Eventually that investor did come around, and you could see a light bulb go off in his head that building trust and a community means you can sell a product even when you’re teaching people how to make their own.

That brings us almost up to the present day. A few months back, Monkii launched its third product, called “Pocket Monkii,” which is an even smaller and more portable version. I will admit that I was backer number 38 out of over 8,000. Given my experience with the company and the Monkii Bars 2 it was a no brainer.

And then last week, in an update to the Kickstarter, they mentioned that others were knocking off the Pocket Monkii. The update was really notable. I’m so used to seeing companies flip out and freak out about copycats, and get angry and aggressive. But, the Monkii guys seem to find the whole thing fairly amusing. Even the subject line, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” gives you a suggestion of how they see this.

As many of you already know, we?ve been knocked off! What started as a blatant copy of our content (literally pictures of monkii Dan and pocket monkii with the logo removed), has now turned into their own brand and imitation of our product – a cheaply made and low quality one at best.

They do note that they’ve asked for versions using monkii’s own images to be taken down, with mixed levels of success, but they don’t seem too bothered by it and literally suggest that everyone have a good laugh about it:

So what now? Well, let?s take a moment to have a good laugh:

1. They keep switching the product name, and it just keeps getting worse and worse? From ?Fitness Pocket?, it has now morphed into ?Body Pocket? ? We don?t know about you, but that just doesn?t sound right to us.

2. For some reason, they think that their product looks better upside down.

But then, the real kicker. The update notes of the copycats: “They used our old design that doesn?t work very well.” Followed by:

Wait, what? An old design that doesn?t work very well? But that?s the design I see on your Kickstarter page and in the video.

Here?s the thing ? we always take beta-monkiis? feedback into account and improve the design up until the last possible moment.

The problem with the old design was that it was annoyingly difficult to close the case, and if you could actually manage to close it, it looked completely ?wonky.” Through beta-monkii feedback, we realized that we were stuck in our old ways ? trying to apply the existing kit design for MB2 to pocket monkii ? when the best path forward was to take a fresh look at our new product and design a case built from scratch specifically for it.

That?s exactly what we did ? we?re proud to say it?s a much better design and we know you?ll love it. Don?t worry ? it still has the same look, feel, and form-factor. We even stepped up the quality a notch. Oh, if you added the Outdoor Anchor Accessory, you’ll be pleased to know it features a sleek way to carry that in the case too.

This is another perfect example of what I discussed at the start. The original creators understand the market better, they understand the customers better and they understand the product better, which lets them innovate faster and better. And, rather than freak out about copycats, they just laugh at them and build a better product. And, really, if you want a “knockoff” I fully expect that the head Monkiis will end up putting up a DIY plan at some point for the new version as well. But it still won’t be as nice as getting the real, professionally made version.

Filed Under: competition, copiying, copycats, counterfeits, innovation, knockoffs, monkii bars
Companies: monkii