Is Aldi going all Skandi?
It’s not the first time we’ve been copied.
In our first decade, we’ve encountered Chinese fakes, American brand pirates, English copycats, Canadian ones, even me-too product collections materialising on our doorstep, both here in Denmark and in Norway.
It’s forced us to face off against some big corporations to defend our interests and invest in extensive and expensive IP (intellectual property) to better safeguard our work. But we’re small and independent, so we can’t afford to cover everything. And sharks will be sharks.
We’ve also had to politely but firmly encourage other naive newcomers to reconsider how much they visibly emulate our designs.
None of this is particularly fun. All of this distracts us from our mission to tell sensory stories from Scandinavia with sustainability at our core.
But this is the first time we’ve been copied by a European discount supermarket chain.
Hello, Aldi.
Given Aldi’s apparent enthusiasm to dupe even the strongest brands in our industry — from Estée Lauder to Jo Malone, Molton Brown to Paco Rabanne — we suspect any bruised feelings or negative sales we suffer will have little sympathy at Aldi HQ.
So instead, we thought we’d just publicly celebrate their cynicism, in Oscar Wilde’s words, as evidence of “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”.
And we’ll comfort ourselves with the esteemed company we keep on their wobbly shelves.
