Australian woman’s flatpack furniture stencil hack business is being targeted by Ikea. She’s not having any of it..
The Sydney Morning Herald reports
Hughes started Stylkea from her garage in 2017 after she designed some mirrored stick-on panels for a piece of Ikea furniture and the hack went viral.
Stylkea turns over about $5000 a month selling panels, handles and other accessories for flat-pack furniture, with 23,000 followers on social media.
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“I looked in the marketplace and wanted a name that described what the business does in a clever portmanteau. There were lots of businesses around using the -kea suffix to describe the fact they were part of the Ikea ecosystem.”
Hughes points to Mykea, which makes adhesive wraps for Ikea furniture in the Netherlands, Mamakea, which provides Ikea assembly services in the United States, and Plykea, which makes doors and fronts for Ikea furniture in the United Kingdom.
Other unrelated businesses that use the -kea suffix in a generic way to infer “market” or “store” include UK furniture retailer Oakea and US tobacco retailer Smokea.
Hughes registered the business name Stylkea and website name, but the problem came when she applied for a trademark.
“That was when Ikea sent me their first cease-and-desist letter asking me to withdraw my trademark application,” she says.
“I said, ‘No, my research tells me this should be OK because there is precedent for this.’ My trademark was approved, but then it was advertised and other companies have a right to oppose it and Ikea did.”
Hughes says Ikea offered her $105 to cancel the business name and transfer the Stylkea domain to it.
“They have very deep pockets and very short arms,” she said. “I said to Ikea, ‘I want us to find a way to co-exist.’ I think it is a case of bullying. They put the heavy word on me before the trademark was approved because they just wanted to bully me out of it.”
Read full story at https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/i-won-t-be-intimidated-ikea-tackles-aussie-mum-in-trade-mark-tussle-20190509-p51lk6.html
