[Jewelry making - Article 00533] - [Orchid] Friendship Dilemma

[Mike Dibble]

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Hey Orchidians,

    This is not the kind of thing I would normally post to an open,
    public, list but I'm hoping some of you might have some helpful
    thoughts or ideas you might be willing to share. Here goes: Last
    winter we were having a really hard time keeping up with orders and
    really needed some help to get us through the Christmas season. A
    neighbor/friend of ours had some previous experience working in
    jewelry and is pretty good in a number of different art media. She
    was happy to help us get through our tough spot so we hired her,
    trained her on our finishing processes and ultimately showed her how
    we use a drawing program to digitize our artwork, produce masters
    for new designs, etc., etc. She had a fair amount of mold making
    experience and offered to do our molds for us. So far so good. At
    some point in the process, she decided she wanted to start her own
    jewelry business and is using all the processes and materials that
    she learned from us. The result is that she has a line of jewelry
    that is strikingly similar to ours in its basic appearance. Don't
    get me wrong...her artwork is original. We have done a few local
    shows together this summer and people who know are work have
    commented to her about how much her work looks like ours and she
    gets really pissed off about it and rants about what is wrong with
    these people that they can't see the difference? So far, we just
    kind of shrug our shoulders. We recently started thinking about
    getting plating equipment so that we could do some accents to some
    of our pieces or maybe bronze some of our stuff if we couldn't find
    a bronze caster that we could afford. So today I get an email asking
    what I would recommend for a plating setup! She noticed that men
    were looking at our cuff bracelets so she's working on a cuff
    bracelet. She has seen people buying stuff that is matched with
    beads that a friend of ours makes (lampwork) so now she's ordering
    beads. 

    We live in a remote, rural area and we are really dependent on each
    other when animals get sick, vehicles crap out, snow storms kill the
    power, etc. but we are at the point where we feel like we just can't
    even say anything about ideas we have for new designs or materials
    without having it show up in our neighbor's "new" jewelry line! Let
    me also say that we don't see this as being at all a threat to our
    business or integrity. I guess it just seems really insulting that
    she's doing all this and not having the grace to thank us for all
    the knowledge we've shared and passing it all off as her own
    "inspiration". 

    I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions about how to handle
    this and hopefully avoid creating a huge nasty mess. 

Mike Dibble
Black Horse Design
www.black-horse-design.com

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