Football T-shirts and merchandise

[oddsfellow]

Hi

Am new to the Dye-Sub game and have literally just ordered my kit. A great forum and a ton of useful advice i am wading through.

Using Terapeak to do market research on Ebay and see that the vast majority of high selling dye-sub goods are those that infringe copyright such as artists, movie characters, footballers etc. Having read various threads on here i understand those doing this are breaking the law and in time the authorities will catch up with them (although some have 30000+ feedback and have been getting away with it for a long time. Calveros appears to be the best seller yet all of his merchandise bears brand names etc).

However i have been to old trafford on numerous occassions and literally on every street corner there is non-official merchandise with players team names etc being sold. Cannot believe with the quality or content of these goods that this is licensed. So surely if Manchester United were interested in getting rid of this type of item they would target these guys on their doorstep. I am just left wondering how enforceable all this is and do these brands actually care.

[Andrew]

Some go down the borderline/ grey areas where you might find merch being traded on the streets and markets. Most of ebay would be total infringement on the copyrights. Many do get away with this but all will take the risk of being the one that gets caught and that could be very costly and damaging. You might have sellers with a lot of feedback but you wouldn't be seeing the one's who have been caught. Anyone can make money going down this route but all should accept that some day they might get a knock on the door or letter bearing some bad news.

[Dave271069]

i started selling on ebay last week,
in 2 days of running i had a infringement copyright warning for my t-shirts because they said "I LIKE FACEBOOK" I HATE FACEBOOK" ETC ETC, oh well found out that Facebook t-shirts are a big no no, thank god it was my only dodgy thing on there, soon took them off ebay and my site though..

[socialgiraffe]

The weird thing about ebay is that quite often my customers have asked me to sell garments on their to test the market on the design etc. I have never put licensed (even though I am) and give a full description naming the band/artist etc etc. And have never received any warning.

[NikGrey]

I dont think it's worth it, you go to all of that trouble setting up - probably sell a few and start to build a customer base and BOOM you get shut down overnight, if that doesn't happen you will always be looking over your shoulder.

the only thing limiting you with this kind of thing is your imagination, you can make so many things - unique things. Try to find yourself a niche and expand that.

if you want to be in this for the long term, build up useful contacts in the industry and make a good name for yourself do something legit.

I am new to this business but lets just say I have had a chequered past, I have know quite a few people doing knock offs of all sorts and have seen what can happen.. I will never forget one time my mate and I were all set to go on a trip to Amsterdam, just about to leave only to have a knock at his door - it was trading standards, wanting to ask him a few questions about his fake perfumes.. Funny now but at the time it was inconvenient to say the least..

[socialgiraffe]

Funny now but at the time it was inconvenient to say the least..

At least you were the nicest smelling "crooks" in Norwich LOL!!!!

[mrs maggot]

Dave you probably got picked up so quickly as you actually put the word Facebook in your listing if you had put "I hate F**ebook" maybe the software would not have picked it up automatically - just a thought