Shirt brand owner shares fix to get thousands of Temu dupes taken down

When Warwick Levy learned copies of his T-shirts were being sold on Temu, he did not know how to handle it.

The Sydney-based owner of Lonely Kids Club, a genderless graphic tee company, hoped the problem would go away.

It did not.

"It got to a point where our entire website was scraped, and we have thousands of designs … so all our designs were on Temu," Mr Levy said.

"Our top selling designs were on there like 10, 20, 30, 40 times from different sellers, all with lots of sales attributed."

The copies hurt sales; the bestselling "get in the van" shirt — featuring a drawing of the Healthy Harold giraffe — suddenly became significantly less popular.

"At the time we thought maybe it's just gone stale. But then once it got removed [from Temu], it picked back up almost immediately," Mr Levy said.

Like many other small designers in Australia who have found their work copied by overseas giants, Mr Levy did not have the time or money to take the fight to court, and was unsure what government bodies would be able to support him.

"I'm a very small self-funded business without any sort of capital or investors, that sort of thing just didn't feel feasible," he said.

He reached out to Temu and was directed to its Intellectual Property (IP) Violation form — but the problems did not stop there.

"I spent like half an hour, 40 minutes going through and putting in data and then right before the end, where you then click to submit, it just disappeared; the whole window vanished, and then I lost all my work," he said.

"I tried it again, spent another 40 minutes and then again, it disappeared.

"I really stressed out because I was like, 'I've lost, like, my work twice; I feel very helpless in this situation, and I don't know what's going on'".

Mr Levy launched his business in 2011 working out of his bedroom, and now has a studio-warehouse in Artarmon where he collaborates with artists and has a focus on ethical, local production.

"It felt like I let [the artists] down because the work was stolen from my website and so that was my responsibility to remove it," he said.

Once Temu began selling copies, Mr Levy got complaints from customers about receiving low-quality garments, not realising they had purchased duplicates.

"We actually had one person not that long ago sort of say like, 'why would I buy this design from you when everyone's selling it?'" Mr Levy said.

"I say, 'Well, first of all, it's our design. No one else is meant to be selling it. Everyone else has stolen it.'"

The workaround

After struggling to successfully navigate Temu's IP violation portal on different browsers, he found a workaround to complete the form.

Mr Levy said he started by having the information needed for the report prepared in a separate document. Then he opened the IP form in an incognito window, signed in and never closed the tab.

By acting fast, he was able to get the form through to the final stage. After that, he says it took days before he received a confirmation.

Mr Levy realised complaining about trademark violation sped up the process, and he says eventually the copies were removed — taking just over a week.

A Temu spokesperson said they had promptly removed the listings in question after the Lonely Kids Club's reports were received.

"Sellers are required to comply with applicable laws and platform policies, and those found to violate our IP policies are subject to enforcement actions, including listing removal, account suspensions, or permanent bans," the spokesperson said.

In the hope of helping other designers, Mr Levy has shared detailed instructions on how to get violating Temu listings taken down on the Lonely Kids Club website, and has since added software to his website to help prevent design theft.

Support from fans

Mr Levy said while he still finds copies of his work online, it is not at the same scale as Temu.

Throughout the process, the small business owner received great support from his fans, releasing a "How shit is Temu" tee that became very popular.

"People did come out saying, 'I would never buy it from Temu again. Thanks for telling us and we'll make sure that we report it wherever we can as well,'" Mr Levy said.

"It was really sweet."

He said he would like to see a hub created to support Australian designers impacted by IP violation.

"I think Temu's more just created a culture with their marketplace that the sellers know they can scrape and steal and no one's going to stop them until it gets noticed,"