To let you know that Tesco stole the skin tone plasters

[drspouse]

I just saw this on Twitter

twitter.com/lovettejallow/status/1234880832415969282?s=19

I would like to say I'm shocked but I'm not really.

but why didn’t they tell the person to grow their business and they’d take orders from them instead of just taking their idea?

Because it's not in their interest. I certainly wouldn't help a potential competitor in any way at all, I'd want to take as much business away from them as I could.

Good luck in defending your opinion in court.

Thousands and thousands of other people no doubt have had the same idea at the same time.

Even if Tesco did nick the idea you can't copyright or patent an idea. Her only recourse would be if there was a confidentiality agreement in place and they breached that.

Why are they blue in the food industry

so you can fish them out of food better if they come off. Much easier to spot in standard bright blue

Are you having me on? You couldn't serve food a plaster had fallen into!

A quick google brings up multiple companies making this product years before this alleged thievery. Tesco might even have a libel case here.

@pedanticstyleguide it’s so you can see them in food and the food be thrown out - not so you see them and fish them out before selling it anyway. In theory, anyway... (not envy)

The picture just proves that someone who works at their building bought some. Surely someone could have just bought them for their personal use? And it be nothing to do with the laugh of the product at Tesco?

*launch

We had plasters in a selection of skin tones school in the1980s!

They've probably ordered them for product comparison tests against their own. They hardly needed to buy them to copy the idea did they? When I worked in the HO of a retailer we'd often have competitor products in the office for comparison analysis- product testing is just standard practise.

It's totally normal. Tesco likes an idea, looks for examples and then builds their own. Every manufacturer takes inspiration from what exists in another country or available in a niche offer and then sees how they can scale it to a mass offer or bring it to a new market.
Sorry, but that's how it works.

It's not a competitor or an example. It's a small business that pitched the idea to them.

It's a small business that pitched the idea to them.

No.

They didn’t pitch an ‘idea’.

They didn’t have a patent and they weren’t the first to come up with it.

They pitched a product which Tesco had the option of stocking or not.

They chose not to. They probably had their own product already in development and they may even stock similar, non Tesco branded products.

But it wasn't a new idea. So it wasn't theirs. Tesco probably viewed the 'pitch' as a supplier pitch, viewed the Etsy proposition as too expensive and niche so explored a more mass market approach.

It's not a competitor or an example. It's a small business that pitched the idea to them.

And they liked it, so used the idea, simple.

It's a small business that pitched the idea to them.

They pitched a product that had existed for years before.

No patent/copyright, no ownership. The end.

They didn’t have a patent and they weren’t the first to come up with it

Exactly. Tescos will know that these products existed and have done for years. They're the first big supermarket to stock such a product, that's all.

It's ridiculous for the twitter person to think that she owns the idea. She doesn't have a patent, nor could she have, because she's not the first to think of them, either.

How come almost 40% think the OP is not being unreasonable? Have you even bothered to read the thread before voting? Or were you sucked in to have bash at Tesco without thinking it through?

It's ridiculous for the twitter person to think that she owns the idea. She doesn't have a patent, nor could she have, because she's not the first to think of them, either.

Exactly. And if everyone tweeting how disgusting this is thinks that Tesco will be harmed in any shape or form over this, is very misguided.

They've been around for years, as others have said.

Tesco has never claimed that they were the first to think of the idea of varied skin tone plasters. Any more than they do with any of the many thousands of things they stock.

That twitter thread is really depressing. It's as though people have lost the capacity to think.

Twitter is all about mob mentality. It’s not a place to go to get sense out of people.

Awful!

While Tesco don't really appear to have done anything particularly wrong in this instance I can see it must be a bit galling for the woman who was selling them on Etsy:

Company run by black woman sells product= no one notices.

Company run by (presumably) white men sells product= everyone applauds.

Obviously it's a bit more complicated than that, with Tesco already being a massive, well known brand and the other company being fairly new and not widely known, but I can see why this plaster issue doesn't sit well.

I've been buying dark brown plasters on Amazon for 6 years. It's not a new thing.