E-commerce Giants Are Eating My Sister's Lunch—and Destroying The American Dream...

My sister and I developed NightCap when she was only 16. She came up with the idea in a dream and built the first prototype of our product with a scrunchie and our mom's pantyhose. We applied (and were awarded) a patent on her innovative solution to the scourge that is drink-spiking—and bootstrapped our way to Shark Tank, where we landed one of the fastest deals in the show's history with Shark and business icon, Lori Grenier. In just two years since starting the business, NightCap had reached nearly half a million followers on social media and done over $2 million in sales in 40 countries. However, three years in, we find ourselves in shark-infested waters again, but this time, they are out for blood.

Worse, sellers of infringing products will go as far as to create these listings across multiple platforms, knowing that each will require a separate court order to get them removed. While this may be a plausible fee for a small business to incur once, there is no practical way to spend $50,000 over and over again to obtain court orders repeatedly. Even then, these sellers are free to continuously put up new listings—an unbelievably expensive game of Whack-A-Mole.

Many of these e-commerce websites are able to price your product so low because they have no expenses. They let business owners like us invest all of our time and money into marketing and building our products and brands. All they need to do is bid on the keywords that our product uses—and they will funnel half of the traffic that you drive right over to their cheaper alternative. The third-party platforms couldn't care less because a sale on their platform is profit in their pocket. They make money either way—and it's irrelevant where it comes from.

The internet is nearly infinite, and businesses like mine are tackling major issues with knockoffs and drop-shippers listing our products on every platform imaginable. By stealing patented products and concepts and listing them for a fraction of the price, these platforms are pocketing earnings that should go to the creators and entrepreneurs who did the work. These listings based on stolen intellectual property incite price wars and reduce the profit margins of the brands we know and love. 

Reference: Found here