Lauren Aston said retailers copying her products caused tens of thousands of pounds to be lost.
A Worcestershire small businesswoman has reported losing “tens of thousands of pounds” because her designs were stolen online.
Lauren Aston, from Hagley, has been knitting at her studio in the town for more than 10 years. She came to prominence after Claudia Winkleman wore one of her designs in the hit BBC series The Traitors.
Currently, she collaborates with the online store Not on the High Street to help other entrepreneurs protect their ideas.
“It’s tens of thousands of pounds and I’m learning to develop the resilience to deal with it,” said Aston.
“In the beginning, it was a huge loss for me in many ways and we spent many hours trying to send extrajudicial notices and contacting people, asking them to remove the content.”
“Then after a while I realized that I was actually losing even more by trying to reach it, because it’s like trying to scoop up water with your hands.”
Not on the High Street reported that intellectual property theft prevents some small businesses from launching new products.
Pascal Schuster, CEO of Not On The High Street, explained: “They don’t want their products on Instagram or Facebook anymore because as soon as a product goes into a campaign it will be cloned, recreated and sold cheaper.”
“We have created our own legal fund where we help our partners combat design theft wherever possible.”
A side-by-side image shows one of Aston’s designs (left) next to a copied design.
The government has also stated that it takes the matter seriously and has already contacted major e-commerce stores in the UK and abroad.
An Intellectual Property Office spokesperson said: “We also provide detailed guidance to help both small businesses and the general public identify and report counterfeit and copyright infringing products, while working together with our partners to protect legitimate traders and raise consumer awareness of harm.”
But Dids McDonald, director of the organization Anti Copying in Design, said the problem was still “widespread”.
“People are looking for the quickest way to market, and the easiest way is to copy the work of designers,” she said.
“In fact, many within the creative industry suffer from copies made by the giants of this world.”
A second side-by-side image shows another of Aston’s designs (left) next to a similar design.
McDonald advised designers to be “more vigilant” by keeping a paper or digital trail of their designs, as well as using watermarks over images.
Meanwhile, Aston stated that she would continue to be creative, but that she would like people to be more aware of what they were buying.