de romano :
'De plus, dans la fiche de chaques articles tu as les appréciations de consommateurs pour voir s'il s'agit d'une bonne qualité ou d'une babioles chinoise. Certaines d'entres-elles d'ailleurs ne sont pas forcément mauvaises, le 4x4 et le 5x5 par exemple ce rapprochent d'une qualité Meffert...'
de romano :
'Quant aux éventuels contrefaçon j'en doute fortement, sinon ils n'utiliseraient pas le vrai nom... Des copies de V7 sont prévu normalement pour une vingtaine d'euro, mais ne sont pas encore en vente.'
de romano :
'Tu te prend trop la tète.'
Y'en a un qui se prend la tête, c'est Ulrich Meffert! Et on le comprend : voici la '
copie'
d'un passage d'une de ces dernières newsletters (pour ceux qui veulent un résumé traduit, dites-le!) :
SPECIAL NOTICE: No one hates copy factories and copy puzzles more that Erno Rubik and me,
So the following may take most of you by surprise. When I started selling my Pyraminx back in 1981 over 300 factories from Korea and Taiwan where copying my Pyraminx and even more the cube which was one year ahead of me in the market place. I ended up spending over US$ 3.5 million in trying to protect my patents with little positive commercial effect. It took around 5 years for those Countries to improve their patent and copyright laws. I have given a lot of thought to the illegal copy issue ever since and like to share my strategy in combating the many puzzle copies now being produced in China, cheating inventors out of their rightly deserved royalties. I sincerely believe that this is the only effective way to beat the copy companies but I cannot do it on my own. China has 1.4 Billion people of whom 30% are middle class who like to buy brand name products if they are available. That is why all the major fashion houses have set up their own boutiques in Asia and in the last couple of years have strongly focused on China with astonishing results and are making progress in slowly but steadily beginning to force out the illegal copies. I have in the last 12 month established close relationships with small retails gift and puzzle shop owners who also provide wholesale to individual shops. This operation has now been extended to the major cities of China. Each of these licensed shops has an exclusive high class Mefferts Puzzles corner where my puzzles are being sold at similar prices to what the better quality illegal copies are now selling for. A Rubik’s cube knockoff could be bought a year ago for RMB 4.00 = then to US$0.50 cents, this year they are selling for RMB 30.00 to RMB 45.00 = to US$4.40 to $6.60. Most of my puzzles and of course the Rubik’s cube have been copied. My strategy of providing genuine puzzles for just 5% to 10% above the illegal copies with better quality and packing is proving to be very successful. My aim is to have all the original design puzzles sold legally with full royalties to the inventors through my company.
The common practice here in China is that someone with money will make the molds, and has the injection molding of the individual parts done by several small factories, the same applies to the metal parts, labels and packaging. Then in a cottage industry fashion these parts are delivered to small communities where the puzzles are assembled on a per piece compensation basis by large family groups in their homes. No factories such as we know them are being used. This model is an exact copy of what Taiwan and Korea did almost 30 years ago and is almost impossible to stop as I learned the hard way. I have now established a working relationship with several of the best copy companies who are keen to run a legal business and have entered into an agreement with me for the Mefferts Challenge brand, which is now also becoming popular in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.
It is my sincere desire to have as many original designs included in my range which will be sold with the inventors name in the Mefferts Challenge puzzle section. However we need to act fast whilst this concept is gaining momentum, in that way we can force the copy companies out of business within a relatively short time of say two to five years as in the end happened in Taiwan and Korea. FYI the Back to Square-1, Void cube, 6x6x6 and 7x7x7 V-cubes have all been successfully copied and the mold for the V-cube 9x9x9 is almost finished. It makes me very angry to see the local copy companies becoming millionaires over night whilst the poor original designers/inventors get nothing. As soon as the copy companies see a new puzzle that they think has potential on the Twisty Puzzle forum or U tube they will take out a Chinese local design patent which can be granted in China within 6 month at relative low cost.
I am very happy to enter into an immediate royalty agreement with the designers of any unique puzzles that have been knocked off and will try to make a deal with the company that made the copy mold to improve their quality and legalize their activities with them selling the then legal goods through my retail partners channels. Time is of the essence so anyone who wants to cooperate with me, receive the royalties that they deserve and help stamp out illegal copies needs to act quickly in this regard and hopefully will contact me via email at
News@mefferts.com.
Happy Puzzling
Ulrich and Uwe
