Target vs designers. shame-less 2.1!
Wow, 2 in less than 2 weeks? I guess if I try hard enough I will find plenty! same story as here and here. 10% the price of the original but it will end in the garbage in less than a year. Thank you China and Target!
-joel
(just in case you are wondering... fakes on the left)
many thanks to my friends at designaddict for the tip!
15 comments:
i am not sure how they are going to get away with this one.
i have an original eames aluminum group chair and i realize that not everyone has the money to put into a high quality chair. however, seeing a timeless design being clumsily copied with no regard for the copyrights of the design is disheartening.
i wonder how target would feel in i started a chain of discount stores that used a red and white target type logo and capitalized helvetica bold for our name? they'd probably sue me.
as i hope HM and the eames office do to them.
I guess my job will be to make people aware of the situation... amen on what you said!
joel
I think you guys are really wrong about this. I've purchased a copy of the Eames Executive chair and the quality is pretty good. It feels very solid, looks really great and it will definitely last more than a year. I wish I could spend the money on a real one but that's just not realistic for me and I'm sure I'm not alone. I see no problems with these knockoffs.
Hi Antonio!
It's a matter of integrity. They are stealing the design. period. regardless of quality, they are stealing the design.
antonio. regardless of the quality, it is still important to note that this is a design that is currently in production with the license of the estate of the designers.
this would be the equivalent to ford coming out with a car that looked nearly identical to the toyota prius except for different door handles of something.
actually, i'll put it into these terms (because i LOVE your blog) the target chairs are arial, at first glance you look and say... "hmmm, that's pretty close." then you start to dissect the subtle differences and you say, "man, they really did a bad rip-off of helvetica!"
wow! I'm really glad to see others concerned about this and spreading the word!
Keep up the good work!
I've also seen these knock offs. The quality is good.
I think the outrage is misplaced for several reasons.
1. The reason these knockoffs are able to exist is that furniture design is extremely difficult to copyright: small changes to an original design allow someone to market a visually similar product as their own design.
2. I doubt that a majority of people with the means to purchase the Eames chair would opt for the knockoff. The market for this is people with entirely different budgets. So this great design is being brought to a larger audience. This is very fitting with the Eames' idea of bringing design to all of America (which was the point of the aluminum group, you will remember). So it seems rather elitist to propose that people should always pay high prices for exclusively licensed design. In my world the knockoffs make the audience for design bigger, a net good to all designers.
3. By publishing this, you are giving google hits to a previously hard-to-find knockoff (clients have found this for themselves on a different online outlet), and so has the opposite effect than you might intend.
So, let's for an instant that you wrote a book. Very expensive and available to a few. I get the book. copy it, change the name of some characters and sell it to millions really cheap. is that ok then? according to some of you, yes?
The price of the aluminum group was $250 at the time. That equals to $1500 our time money. So there goes "to the masses" ; )
joel
to answer your question: yes, if you change the characters and make it palatable to millions, it's "Okay".
It's called pulp fiction, and has a literary following in its own right.
I'm not sure what your criteria are. Legally there are clearly defined boundaries for this sort of thing. So what is wrong here?
The original aluminum group came in naugahyde...not super nice leather.
http://www.eamesoffice.com/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/imagemanager/images/ESM_1959_EAG.PDF
ESM_1959_EAG.PDF
Steven, I'm glad ya dig the blog.
I do see your point but at the same time I agree with the Anonymous poster. If you slightly change the design then legally I think you can copy it. I'm not sure I would even call it steal. Many expensive products are reproduced into cheaper version. Sunglasses, shoes, handbags etc... It's nothing new. These great designs also reach a much larger audience because the people who can offered the originals are a very small group.
It's a tough thing cause I totally see your side. If I had an original I would probably feel the same exact same way.
perhaps my outrage is misplaced. however, what may be mis-construed as elitism is really just my desire to see the integrity of the original design.
for instance, saarinen's tulip table. you can go to ikea and buy an obvious knock off of it for 150 dollars. it has a clumsy transition from base to top and the dining surface edge isn't beveled. basically it looks terrible, is cheaply made, wobbles and loses everything that made the original so great.
i understand the intent of bringing design to the masses, but at the cost? when we use inferior materials and make these in sweatshop countries and have them shipped here via massive container ships haven't we strayed too far from the original intent? perhaps i am reading too much into it, but it bums me out nonetheless.
"Nelson's famous Mod Spice Clock has come back to the future" http://www.target.com/Retro-Natural-Woodburst-Wall-Clock/dp/B000JUTCA0/
Absolutely shameless. At least they are making it easy for Howard Miller to bring them to court.
I'm all for Target's "design for all" approach--just make the design your own. Target has a history of partnering with & bringing the work of very well known designers to the masses (Michael Graves, Thomas O'Brien, Zac Posen, Converse, Dwell Studio, Isaac Mizrahi--just to name a few) It's disheartening that a company that gets so many things "right" can sometimes ruin it by so horribly & blatantly infringing upon the work of others.
I don't really see a problem with this. I am assuming that they have changed some aspect of the design. Sure maybe it's tiny, and hardly noticeable, but they must have changed something so they won't be sued... ok that said..
I beleive that good design should be available for everyone, not just rich people. Also, most people walking around target who see this chair, aren't the tyoe of people who will even know that this is an eames knock off.... just like saarinen's tulip table knock off at Ikea that someone mentioned. Most people who see that won't even know it's a knock off. Those that do, and think it's horrendous/don't support the idea of knock off designer furniture won't buy it, and those who do buy it should be able to without feeling bad about it.
And again, lets face it... these are not the first knock offs in history.
I followed a link from apartment therapy, and now I'm curious. Designs have patents, right? So the designer is protected for a while from copying, and gets to make back all his money (plus a lot, no doubt), but then others are allowed to use the design?
Is this the way it works? Do you hold any design patents? Will you be mad when they expire and people start to copy you?
Isn't that just the way it works?
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