Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Can you take words from one website and use them on your own?

We've all seen the anti-piracy advert at the start of DVDs - all edgy music and grainy images with shouty captions: YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR... Ed Byrne does a good bit about it.
The message is, it's not ok to download films, because it's stealing.

We probably all agree. But then we've probably all downloaded something illegally at least once in our life - an mp3, a film, some software - it goes on.
What also goes on is the theft - yeah, I'm going to call it theft - of images and words online.
I've already blogged about the photos thing, but this week I've been driven over the edge by the words.

I'm a journalist by trade (not that you'd know from reading this blog, right gang?) so I'm a bit more precious about my words than most. I accept this. I also accept that not everyone has had to sit through libel and copyright training many, many times, so I think I try to be quite forgiving when I see some of our original content being used by someone else.

It has happened five or six times since we launched the current incarnation of our website: I've found words, written by me for relovedvintageinteriors.co.uk, lifted wholesale and used to sell someone else's painted furniture on another website. Sure, sometimes they've changed the odd word here and there, but not enough to make the words their own.

"So what?" you might ask. It's only words. To that, I say: "Who are you? Cat Stevens?" (one for the kids, there).

Those words were crafted in my mid-range brain specifically with the intention of promoting and selling Reloved Vintage. They are personal to me and the business. If you just copy and paste them into your website, it says two things about you:

1. You're a bit lazy
2. You don't have anything original to say about your business.

Going back to illegal downloads for a second, if you illegally downloaded a film, and then you got caught bang to rights when the owner of that film showed you proof. You'd admit it and apologise, right? If they then simply asked you to delete that film from your hard drive, you'd probably do it straight away.

Yeah, me too. And I'd consider myself lucky that they didn't sue me or tell my mum.

Most people I've contacted do just that. They apologise and remove the offending words immediately. Some blame whoever built the site for them, which may be a cheap excuse or, more likely, it reveals there are a number of unscrupulous website builders out there.

These people, by and large, are just like us. They run a small business. Some do it full time, some do it in their spare time, but none seem to be vindictive. They've gone about their word-pinching with innocence and act quickly to put things right. They're alright as far as I'm concerned. Decent people doing the right thing.

Which is why it's very strange when something like this happens.

Extract from the Commissions page of another website

Extract from the Commissions page of relovedvintageinteriors.co.uk

I was doing my roughly quarterly check to see if our copy was being used by anyone else (my highly technical system? Pasting phrases into Google) when I found this website.

A lot of the wording has been changed, but key phrases, written especially to reflect the stye and approach of Reloved Vintage were there, word for word.

This was also the case on the About page:

 

From the other site's About page

Extracts from our About page

I sent messages via social media to the owner of the other site, expressing my concern. They replied to say they had never even seen my site and that, most definitely, nothing was plagiarised. I pointed out the similarities. They replied. No apology, just a note that they were off to work and would have a look later. Then nothing. I chased them up a few days later. A full week later, after another nudge from me, they said they were too busy to look at it. I said that wasn't good enough. I've given them a deadline.

The owner of the site has a full-time job on top of the furniture side of things. So do I. So did Laura until a month and half ago. We get it. It's hard. You're always busy, but it doesn't take much time or effort to delete some words from your site.

While all this was going on, I Googled again. I found another website using our words. Seriously! You should try this yourself.

It wasn't word-for-word, but it had definitely been copied and altered slightly. I sent off an email and got a reply the next day. They apologised and said their site had been created for them by an external website builder. It seems there really are lots of lazy website builders out there.

If you're reading this and you have a website you paid someone to create for you - words and all - perhaps you should do a quick check on where those words came from...

I worried that I was being too precious and whingey, but everyone I spoke to about this was outraged - perhaps more than I was. They had no idea this kind of thing went on. Colleagues, fellow small business owners, friends - they were all "Call your solicitor!" "Some people have no shame" "That's unbelievable".

I get it though, not everyone is confident with words. It's easier to 'borrow' someone else's than write your own which might not be very good, or pay someone to do it for you. It's certainly cheaper, and for a lot of people, the furniture's just a hobby, or it's their livelihood and times are tight.

Doesn't make it right, though. Just like that downloaded film.

I'd love to hear what you think. Am I over-reacting? Should we just accept that once you put something online it's going to get stolen? Or does more need to be done to protect our intellectual copyright? Let me know below...

Meet Paper Plane

We've been a bit quiet lately, furniture-wise (although tonight we're off to beautiful Harringworth to collect a wardrobe we've been asked to paint) and this is why... meet Paper Plane.

Paper Plane is our new business, specialising in prints and greetings cards, but with the aim of moving on to a more diverse product range as the business develops.

Laura had been itching to put her design skills to use, inspired by awesome people like Bread & Jam, Newton and the Apple and The Happy Pencil - and with my bordering-on-the-unbearable penchant for puns, we decided we could probably scrape enough ideas together...

Initially, we're selling via our new website and through the Reloved Vintage storefront on notonthehighstreet.com, but we've also got a small selection of products in two of our favourite shops - Vintage Betty and French Grey Tales.

We'll be adding more new designs to our range when we find a moment in between our full-time jobs, running Reloved Vintage and, y'know, managing to feed, bathe and dress ourselves.

If you'd like to give us a hand (and maybe even help us make the leap to doing this full-time, gulp) we'd love it if you shared any of the cards or prints you like on your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts. Or, if you have a shop and would like to stock any of our cards or prints, just drop us an email.

Red Lion - mission accomplished

Reloved Vintage helps with dining room redesign at The Red Lion pub in Stathern, Leicestershire

Last month, I told you about our exciting project with The Red Lion in Stathern, Leicestershire.

Now, after getting through many sheets of sandpaper, several tins of paint, a whole load of varnish and a lot of hard work, the job is complete and the pub looks great.

The Red Lion's dining room before...

 

...and after!

On top of stripping and repainting all the dining room’s tables and picture frames, we were asked to act as design consultants for the whole project.

The owners had already decided on the general colourscheme and flooring they wanted, and Laura was able to make suggestions on which paints would best compliment each other for the walls and wood paneling.

We also suggested a shelf of food and cookery related books – and provided a few vintage pieces to add a little more rustic charm to an already beautiful room.

We’re delighted with how the room looks – the decorators and flooring teams have done a superb job and the owners, Ben and Sean, brought their own ideas to the table and have come up with some really great, eye-catching talking points. Everyone at The Red Lion was a delight to work with and we wish them every success for the future.

It’s a great pub, with amazing food – we very highly recommend paying a visit.

We're going down the pub

Reloved Vintage helps with interior design of Red Lion in Stathern

We’re delighted to tell you all that we will be spending the next few weeks on an exciting new project with one of our absolute favourite local businesses. We’re helping The Red Lion, in Stathern, Leicestershire, with the makeover of its main dining room – which means we’re going to be stripping and painting a LOT of tables!

The dining room. Photo courtesy of greatfoodclub.co.uk

As well as reloving the furniture, we’ve been asked by bosses Ben and Sean to help with design aspects of the room – our first ever job as interior design consultants!We’re so utterly chuffed to have been asked to get involved. The Red Lion, in the beautiful Vale of Belvoir, has a Michelin Bib Gourmand and is the sister pub of the Michelin-starred Olive Branch, just up the road from us in Clipsham, Rutland.The whole project should be finished by mid August and we can’t wait to show you the finished results.

Getting to the final...

Reloved Vintage missed out on an award at the Stamford and Rutland Business awards last week, but I think we should be incredibly proud to have made the top three in the Marketing and Design category, beaten only by the brilliant and very popular Serenity Loves in Peterborough and the very well established international organisation that is the Institute of Credit Management.

Considering we're just me bashing away at a keyboard and lugging chests of drawers up and down stairs, and Laura spending her evenings and weekends painting and sourcing new furniture (not to mention meeting customers, undertaking commission work, replying to the many commission emails we get each day, photographing stock, listing products on the website and notonthehighstreet.com, organising deliveries, doing the accounts, I could go on...) I think we did amazingly well just to be finalists.

I think it's proof that Laura's hard work and skill is being noticed (particularly her amazing, totally self-designed, photographed and maintained website, relovedvintageinteriors.co.uk), and see it as a sign that we can take Reloved Vintage further, so that one day we're the established business picking up the prizes ahead of the plucky upstarts!

Many thanks to the judges and organisers for arranging everything - we wish we could have been there on the night.

Finally, well done Laura. You're so incredibly good at what you do. You should be so proud that the business you've built up from scratch, with no budget, no staff, no big workshop, no formal business training and only a set of self-taught skills and your own spare time around a demanding full-time job, has been officially recognised in this way.

Welcome to The Red Room

Reloved Vintage teams up with Strattons Hotel in Swaffham

Our dressing table and chair, in The Red Room

We're delighted to have once again teamed up with the brilliant Strattons Hotel in Swaffham, Norfolk - this time supplying them with a dressing table and chair for the popular Red Room.

Hannah from Strattons explained the style of the perfect piece for the room and we set out to find it!

We hope you'll agree that it looks terrific in its new home - and we're delighted to be involved in some small way with our favourite hotel.

Stay here! Call Strattons on 01760 723845

We've previously supplied a chest of drawers for another room, Edie, which we can personally recommend as a wonderful room for a weekend away in beautiful Norfolk.

If you'd like us to relove your hotel or B&B furniture, just drop us a line to tell us what you're after and we'll do our best to exceed your expectations.

As Hannah from Strattons told us: "The dressing table is beautiful and looks perfect in place; the detail is fab, especially inside the drawers... We are lucky to have two of your lovely pieces now. You certainly know how to deliver the perfect item."

Our chest in Edie

These paint shade names are getting ridiculous now...

Changing Rooms

Those of you who follow us on Twitter or receive our updates on Facebook will have picked up on the fact that our house is a little, let’s say, “busy”.

Laura paints at home and we store our unpainted stock at home. Recently, we realised that there were pieces of furniture in our store room (most people’s dining room) that we’d had for years and my argument was that if Laura had wanted to paint them, she’d have done it by now.

Her argument was that she hasn’t got the time to work through it all.

There’s a good argument to be made for both.

The upshot of it all was that we had a bit of a clear out over the course of a few weeks and reassessed the way we work, particularly regarding storage of stock.

 

Just add doors... My terrible attempt a barbecue is just visible

We have a fairly large outbuilding, which is full of old bikes, broken lawnmowers, unused skateboards – that sort of thing.

One of the largest storage areas outside has no door on it, so we hatched a plan.

An old schoolmate of mine is going to make us a door for the larger shed – this will then hold our unpainted stock. It’s a big space, but small enough to help us be more disciplined in our buying habits. From now on, if there’s no room in the shed, it’s not coming home with us.

An established, secure brick outbuilding will now house all our painted stock waiting to be sold or moved to a sales space.

This frees up our old store room, which will now become the design studio Laura has always wanted.

 

Fabrics and tools now live here

Planks, thanks

While the room will still be used for storage, it will only be the pretty stuff that stays.

• A huge French 44-drawer unit now takes up a large part of the wall space – this will hold brushes, scalpels, glue, paint trays, screwdrivers, hammers and so on.
• Paint will be displayed for ease of use on shelves made from six old scaffolding planks.
• Fabrics (for when Laura finally gets the hang of upholstery) are contained in crates on a cute formica table, including one given to us by Layla when we went to visit her at French Grey Tales.
• A huge antique pine farmhouse table will be home to a new project Laura is working on (more on that at a later date).
• At the other end of the room will be a desk (we’re still looking for it) to house Laura’s computer, printer and associated gubbins.

The first two shelves - they haven't fallen down yet

And that’s not to mention the epic wallpaper stripping that needs to happen to remove the horrible textured paper and border left by a previous tenant…

It’s early days yet, but we hope that by next weekend, we’ll be another step closer and Laura can unleash her creative mayhem in more organised manner

We'll show you the finished room as soon as it's completed.

Customer Service Win/Fail

 

The damaged drawer

See the photo above? That’s what our customer Kate discovered when she unwrapped Lars, a table we sent to her via Interparcel.

As you can see, the entire front of the drawer has been split in two and, as the photo below shows, the screw holding the knob in place has been bent in half. It must have taken some considerable whack.

 

The result of a 'small drop'?

Lars was a sturdy little chap and had been wrapped in corrugated cardboard prior to being picked up by Interparcel’s courier (we believe it was UPS). It was packaged to my satisfaction, and I’ve done my share of wrapping furniture for delivery. But somewhere between RVHQ and Kate’s house in Northamptonshire, the parcel must have been dropped/smashed/sat on by an elephant.

Naturally, we were horrified and offered Kate a full refund or a replacement item. She asked us to source a replacement, so we scoured the web for an identical table – eventually found one, bought it, collected it and repainted the drawer.

By way of an apology, we chucked in a bag of posh popcorn and a box of chocolates and posted the new drawer to Kate. Predictably, it couldn’t be that straightforward and the new drawer didn’t quite fit the old table! So Laura painted the new table to match the drawer (still with us?) and we delivered it in person to Kate and her family, who had been so patient throughout the entire process.

We were worried about the whole thing – especially as it was one of our first sales through notonthehighstreet.com, but Kate put us at ease by telling us it was the best customer service she had ever received from any company. 

Chocolates and popcorn for Kate

Meanwhile, at our end of the transaction…

We lodged an official compensation claim with Interparcel. We knew at the time of sending that we had just opted for the standard £50 cover, so knew we wouldn’t be able to cover our full costs, but every little helps…

Interparcel asked us to provide photos of the table, complete with wrapping, in our customer’s home. We weren’t going to hassle our already inconvenienced customer to do this, so instead we described the packaging, sent the photos at the top of this post and sent them the photos of the same packaging materials we used.

After several emails back and forth, during which we were repeatedly referred to as ‘Dear Sir/Madam’, despite writing our names at the end of every email and addressing Interparcel's staff by name, Interparcel’s claims manager sent us the following email:

It has been noted that your item was not flatpacked and also packaged in corrugated cardboard, this does not comply with our terms of use in which we advise that all items must be packaged in a double walled box with plenty of internal packaging and that items must be able to withstand a small drop.

We also advise that furniture unless flatpacked is not suitable for the transit system and if sent will be sent at the customers own risk. This is due to the fact that items of this nature are not suitable for the automated transit system as the majority of the parcels journey is via machinery (conveyor belts) with minimum human interaction.

Your claim has been entertained as goodwill only and therefore no further compensation will be raised.

Quelle surprise.

1.     I don’t remember seeing any warnings about Interparcel’s policy of not delivering furniture, or the double-walled box policy, but ok, fine. Perhaps I should have searched the small print.

2.     This item had been subjected to more than a ‘small drop’. At no point has Interparcel attempted to explain how the damage could have been caused

3.     “Entertained as goodwill only”? You rude buggers!

4.     From the cold, robotic response, I can only assumed the claims department is also staffed largely by machinery

Now, I should point out that during an earlier email exchange, Interparcel had offered us £10 off our next booking with them (though I suspect this offer n longer stands) – but that’s not really the spirit is it? I had asked them to explain if such damage was regarded by them as routine and if we were to expect our packages to be handled carelessly. They did not reply to these questions.

We treat our customers the way we would like to be treated. Interparcel apparently treats its customers as though they are no more than an inconvenience.

They could have responded to say: “You’ve obviously not seen our furniture policy, perhaps that means we should make it clearer on our website. Normally, we would choose not to compensate you, but as your item has clearly been on the end of a fair old whack, as a gesture of goodwill, we will honour the £50 compensation claim and look forward to receiving your custom in the future”

It would have cost them £50 and ensured our future custom. As it is, they’re never getting a penny from us in future and you can all read about what a shower of heartless, unfriendly wazzocks they are.

Compare our customer service to Kate and Interparcel’s customer service to us over the very same incident. Which would you rather receive?

Hugo helps hospice

A while ago, we did some work for a lovely lady named Gill, and her family, in Leicestershire. After we had delivered her painted furniture, Gill gave us a chest of drawers that used to belong to her mother-in-law, who had moved into a residential home and said she hoped Laura could find a new home for it.

On the way home, Laura and I chatted about Gill, her mother-in-law and the chest of drawers and decided we should sell the chest, once painted, and donate the proceeds to a charity of Gill’s choice. Gill agreed that it would be a great idea and chose LOROS, the Leicestershire and Rutland hospice.

 

We’ve raised money for LOROS before, so it seemed like a perfect suggestion.

This week, we finally found time to get the chest made over. 

 

Handsome Hugo

Laura painted the shell of the chest in Farrow & Ball’s beautiful Pavilion Grey and painted the drawers in a very cool minty green. New knobs were added and, once everything had had a couple of coats of clear matt varnish, Hugo was born.

We decided the best way to sell Hugo was to post a photo on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and set our Likers and Followers the challenge of finding Hugo a new home by the end of the day.

As the shares and RTs from our generous online friends rolled in, we were sure Hugo would be snapped up at his asking price of £120.

We were right, but what we didn’t expect was that Hugo would be bought by someone who shares our postcode!

Our lovely neighbour Sally saw Hugo on our Facebook page and fell in love with him. As we already knew Sally, we said she could pay £100 and we’d make up the other £20, but Sally insisted on paying the full £120 herself and suggested we donate the extra £20 anyway, so LOROS would get even more money. So that’s what we did!

Every little helps

Now Sally, George and Amy have a new chest of drawers, LOROS has an extra £140 (plus £35 in Gift Aid) and we've got a bit more space in our store room! 

Sadly, Gill’s mother-in-law was taken ill in late 2013 and passed away. We hope she would have liked the transformation of her old chest of drawers and the fact it has now been passed on to another young family. One thing we’re sure of, is that Gill’s mother-in-law would be proud that her family’s generosity in donating that chest of drawers to us has helped such a deserving local charity to care for more terminally ill patients and their families.

Donating to LOROS is easy – so if you can spare a few pounds, click here.

7 Reasons Pinching Other People’s Photos For Your Website Is Just Not Cool

The rights and wrongs of photo copyright online

A year or so ago, we noticed a lot of our web traffic was coming from people searching for a shop with a vaguely similar name to ours. Out of curiosity we Googled that shop and found their website – there, right on the homepage, was one of our photos. Taken by Laura, in our house, for our website. The nerve!

The site had other photos that had clearly come from various sources around the web – and the company’s Facebook page was the same (they were also building Likes by offering competition prizes they didn’t have – pictures stolen from US Etsy stores, that sort of thing - but that’s another story – though it did help us to build a mental image of the owners as either unscrupulous liars or simple idiots).

We immediately contacted the owner and asked them to remove our photo from their site and Facebook page.

 

The photo we found on someone else's website

In their defence, they replied within minutes to apologise and they took the photos down (replacing them with a photo lifted from another site…).

Their excuse? “We found the photo on Flickr and because there was a tin of Annie Sloan paint in the photo, we thought it was Annie Sloan’s copyright”

Where do we begin?

1. We couldn’t find the photo on Flickr anywhere, but that’s by the by…

2. How would it be Annie Sloan’s copyright? Does that make every photo of a bottle of Coke the property of Coca-Cola?

3. Even if it was Annie Sloan’s copyright, why would that make it ok for you to use?

Maybe it’s because I’ve worked all my adult life as a journalist and therefore am well-versed in copyright law and avoiding being sued at all costs, but it just seems completely bizarre to me that people think it’s alright to just steal photos for use on their own business website.

Painted by Laura, photographed by Laura, lifted by me

Here are our seven reasons stealing photos of other people's work is not okay.

1. You give a false impression of your business

Customers will automatically assume that the photos on your site are examples of your work – and if you’ve chosen particularly nice pieces of work to decorate your site, it’s unlikely that your work will live up to your customers’ expectations.

One of our most shared photos. Sharing's cool, stealing's not

2. You might get sued

Pinch a photo from the wrong place and you could be in trouble. Big companies take their intellectual copyright very seriously. We once used a piece of wallpaper featuring a well-known design and found ourselves on the wrong end of a solicitor’s email asking us to remove all images from our website and never do it again. Expect the same treatment if you nab the wrong image.

3. Someone else worked hard to make that thing

To you it’s just a photo of a chest of drawers, but to the person who created it, it’s the result of hours of work, financial input and creativity. They worked on it, they photographed it, they put it online to show off their work. And you just dragged it onto your desktop. 

I never noticed that wheelbarrow until now

4. It’s lazy. Quit being lazy.

Seriously, if you’re painting furniture, or making cushions or painting faces – whatever it is you do – how hard is it to take a photo of your work? Not happy with your camera or photography skills? Pay a local photographer to do it for you. Maybe you could even offer them payment in furniture/cushions/face-painting.

5. A great photo is the result of years of training and expense

Swiped a photo from another website because the photography’s great and better than you can do? Why not just break into your neighbour’s house and steal their TV because it’s bigger than yours? Good photography comes from years of practice, investment in a good camera, time spent setting up the shot and than editing it until it is just right... or you could just steal it. Your call.

One of our earliest pieces, complete with mini bunting

6. It’ll probably look a bit crap

A good website has consistent photography. The images all knit together and create a satisfying whole – because they’ve been taken by the same person, with the same camera and had the same post-processing applied. A bad website has images pulled in from here, there and everywhere – different shapes, sizes and resolutions. The site we mentioned earlier had photos lifted from a minimalist  apartment in Japan and a French farmhouse – and tried to pass off the furniture in both as examples of their past work!

7. It’s just not polite

It’s very rude to just take a photo from someone else and use it for your own benefit. Even on Facebook, where seemingly anything goes, it’s just plain ignorant to take a photo of someone’s work and post it on your page without tagging your source. Ask first, and even if you can’t ask/don’t get a reply/can’t tag – use your fingers and your keyboard to type in the name of the page or website where you found the photo. It’s just common courtesy.

What do you think? Have you had your photos stolen? Do you disagree and think it’s harmless to borrow images from other sites? Let us know here or at facebook.com/relovedvintage