Hi, I run a couple of online businesses as my full time job and web design is my hobby, so I'd really like to know the professionals point of view on a situation.

 

One of the businesses is selling our own brand of skincare products. We have wholesale customers who buy unlabelled goods from us and put their own labels on and then sell on their website or in their shop.

One of these such customers told us they were selling through party plan in their area and they had no plans for a website.

 

They haven't ordered in a while so I tried emailing just to say hi, hows it going...never heard back. I googled their business name and found they do have a website, two in fact, one with the original business name with just a holding page and another domain name that is their shop.

 

Their web designer is related, shares the same last name as one of the business-owners, so I doubt they ever intended NOT to have a website. (dad, brother, son?)

 

They've copied all the text for the products we supply them with from the source code of my website! Part of our wholesale terms and website terms is that we own copyright for all text and images and permission must be sought before reproducing. They never sought our permission or let us know they had done it.

 

As an aside they also copied the navigation/category headings but I was particularly shocked to see they had actually copied from the source code which I would have thought a web designer would know that is wrong.

 

As I have webstats I knew a while ago someone was trawling the website and I said to my hubby I knew I was being copied (not for the first time) but never expected it to be a customer!

Tricky one that. On one hand you don't want to fall out with a customer but on the other hand, they've 'stolen' your work. Perhaps a polite email to the customer is in order, suggesting that their Web Designer (sic) may want to pay you for the work he/she has passed off as their own.

...on the other hand maybe you should be providing your wholesale customers with promotional material they can use on their own marketing/web sites. If you don't provide anything copying content from your site is all too tempting!

Thanks for the replies. I have emailed them this morning just saying 'h, not heard from you for a while' and not heard back yet. I tried calling first but there was no answer.

 

As I said, part of our wholesale terms is that permission must be sought before using text or images. This is standard practice and a simple requirement that the wholesale customers ask or let us know they are using the material. I have never disallowed any wholesale customer using images or text and provide a csv file with all the product information.

 

However the issue I have is that they haven't ordered for a while and it is possible they have another supplier now, in which case using my text would be inappropriate.

 

I just thought that it was a step too cheeky to copy and paste from the source code!

Hmmm, perhaps contacting their web host might help if you don't get an answer, you should be able to claim that they're using stolen content and get the host to suspend their site - only as a last resort!