
Big storeowners watch helplessly as local carpenters copy their designs on customers demand
When a few big furniture mall owners decided to make simplicity their priority,they werent counting on their own precious customers to pull a fast one on them by bringing in carpenters from wholesale shops to the mall itself and have them study the imported furniture designs in order to reproduce the same patterns at a much cheaper rate. While high-end storeowners found themselves at a helpless position,small carpenters had a gala time
The wholesale shop owners,on their part,indirectly blamed the customers and the sky-high prices set for imported furnishings by malls. Rizwan Khan,who works for Designo Furnitures,Bajirao Road,explaines,We are only doing our job as it is the customers who come to us and ask us for carpenters who can accompany them to malls to analyze display patterns and then try to implement those same designs while making sets and pieces,as per the customers demands. But we try as much as possible not to charge extra for this effort unless the labour and capital required proves to be too excessive.
Even though it comes across as unfair to the suffering party concerned,this exercise hasnt been declared as illegal by the law. Atul Angal,unit head,Home Town,was sure of copy-proof design by the store. He says,Sad but true that our designs is being copied,however,our only saviour is technology. The beauty of our furniture is the curves,which is not exactly possible for local carpenters to copy. The kind of study and research that is taken up here before producing one piece of furniture is not possible. And even if they fool the people,it will not come out good. We cant do much about this.
Prabhavati Jana,owner,Balai furnitures,justifies the trend by saying that they are just trying to fulfill customers demand. Getting inspiration is not bad. Everybody has the right to think and get the best in minimum price so customers turn to us for that and we are happy serving them. Though we know that exact replication might not be possible,but we try to meet customers expectation as accurately as possible, says Jana.