An artist has said it felt “infuriating” to discover “hundreds” of items featuring her work for sale on an online marketplace without her permission.
Jenny Urquhart, 49, from Bristol, decided to visit Temu after reading a recent BBC report about card firms complaining about rip-off greeting cards being available for sale on the website.
She said she found “pages and pages” of items using her designs, including men’s underwear, cushions and car mats. “You think of a gift item and I’d find one of my images printed on it,” added Mrs Urquhart.
A spokesperson for Temu said the company had immediately removed the listings in question when it was made aware of the situation.
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“It’s really hard at the moment to make money out of art because quite rightly buying art comes well below obviously, paying the mortgage, buying food, paying the bills,” she said.
"At the moment we’re really struggling. As soon as I get an order on my website I’m overjoyed - every single sale counts.
“To think there’s some multi-million pound business on the other side of the world just flogging your stuff. It’s completely out of your control and infuriating.”
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Temu are stealing her work and profiting from it. It matters - clearly there are a bunch of people who can afford to keep art alive who are spending their money at Temu rather than with her. Sort that out - currently it’s pretty much a risk free crime for the third party seller- and then art can be less dependent on public spending and thus more robust
Isn’t Temu just a bunch of shady Chinese resellers in a trenchcoat like Amazon?
Temu sell it for just over the cost of production, while the artist sells it with a high mark up, there’s a difference in affordability.
Well, kinda. Their cost of production is lower partly because they don’t have to pay an artist enough to feed themselves. Your costs are always lower when you don’t pay for stuff that those playing by the rules do.
Art takes time, money and creativity to make. Of course that’s going to be more expensive than downloading something someone else made and printing it out. Accounting for the time and costs that go into making art isn’t a high markup, it’s being paid for your labour.