Do you have a copier?

[TheSnakeLady]

So while I have not touched a cash register in years, I do recall these incidents from ages past. My mom used to run a local craft store in a small town that was 10 miles up the interstate from a major city. This was back in the heyday of pony-bead critters... you know, the lizards and snakes and everything else that were made up of pony beads, some form of string or cord, and a key ring?

Well, my mom had created a bunch of new pony-bead critter designs, designed and printed her own instructions, and assembled a bunch of kits that she put up for sale in the craft store. Since they were produced in-house, the kits had the store's logo and name on them.

SC = you know
Me = a teenaged highschooler version of me

SC = Excuse me, miss?
Me = Yes, can I help you?
SC = Do you have a copier?
Me = Um... no.
SC = Well do you have blank paper and a pen?
Me = Yep. *I pull out some blank printer paper and a pen.*
SC = *puts one of the pony-bead kits on the counter* Can you open this and copy down the pattern for me?
Me = (!!!) Um, sorry. That would be violating copyright law.
SC = But I don't want to buy it. I just want to make it myself.
Me = No.
(And so on...)

(Why would I give you the instructions for free just because you don't feel like paying $2.50 for a kit? Let alone one that my own mother designed and assembled?)


Eventually the store closed down. Why? Because a) we were more expensive than Wal-Mart, and b) if we didn't carry one item on the customer's shopping list, they'd just go to Wal-Mart and buy everything there. Of course, when the store was closing, they would whine that it was going away, but they didn't like it enough to spend money there. :P


And then there was Shoplifter Girl that when we caught her shoplifting and told her to return the items she stole, returned something completely different than what we had seen her steal. It must run in the family, because when Shoplifter Girl's mom was in the store one time, one of the beaded purses that my mom had made and put on display suddenly went missing...

[Andara Bledin]

Argh!

What is it about amateur hobbyist beaders that are too cheap to at least buy the thing that they want to copy?

My mother and aunt have been doing traditional and contemporary beadwork for longer than I've been alive, and I've helped them out over the years for over a quarter of a century (geez, I feel old when I say it that way).

I can't tell you how many people would walk up and take a picture of an item or copy down the pattern on something because they wanted to copy it for themselves.

The worst were the ones copying the holiday designs. The ones that they have a printed book of. Basically the same thing as the kits in the OP, only without the beads.

Really, if you're going to use someone else's designs, you could at least have the decency to buy an example of the real thing.

^-.-^