Rapha not happy with Torm

Stock on the website though, so is it all sorted ?

i was a customer of both but i will not be buying from rapha any longer

All of my cycling kit is Rapha, having read all of the posts in this thread I am now sure that this will continue to be the case.
If I started a small business(which is what Rapha is) and built it up over a period of years and someone came along and so obviously copied my products and website including the look and the photography, I would take action to protect my business, In fact it is what any responsible commercial organisation would do.
I have no connection with Rapha other than being a very satisfied customer. By the way I'm 55, not well off and ride an Enigma before you start with the incorrect stereotypes.

Hmm… a lot of the detailing on Rapha jerseys certainly was new (not the ring pull zip) as I said above, people think that because the styling is classical that there's nothing much technical going on, but Rapha's success it seems to me is being innovative in terms of fabrics and detail while wrapping it all up in a slightly retro style.

We've had a fair amount of both Rapha and Torm kit through the office and the opportunity to compare the two… The Torm guys seem like good blokes, but if Rapha called the lawyers it surely can't have come as much of a surprise.

erm.

Rapha may be small but they will certainly have a big enough legal budget to scare off any wanna be's.

Rapha are the new Tesco's?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/15/tesco-runs-up-huge-legal-...

PS
I got Torm kit for Christmas. Might now be a rare collectors item...

I'm no legal expert, but I'm pretty sure cease and desist letters cost peanuts

There are no legal grounds - it's a bullying letter.

The legal ways Rapha can stop them is:
a) if Torm has infringed a patent or
b) passed-off / misrepresented itself as actually being Rapha in such a way as may be likely or foreseeable to confuse a consumer

If Rapha has patented those technical innovations then it is clear cut. If they haven't patented them then you have to ask yourself were they actually original or were they not patentable. Either way anyone else can use them. If you haven't patented it then it's freely available - the law is very clear.

Has Torm passed itself off in such a way as to confuse a consumer ? The name is not similar, the styling is reminiscent but not exact. They have not used the touches that Rapha uses to identify itself such as the pink lining. And the legal test is a reasonable consumer giving the products due attention, not someone just grabbing something off a shelf.

So was anyone in the Road CC office ever showing any sign of picking up some Torm kit and only later realising it was Rapha, or vice versa ? Has anyone here gone to the Torm website and not realised it wasn't Rapha ? Because if not, there isn't a case.

This is why the Kia Optima looks like a Mercedes CLS.

Whichever brand you support or favour, this is just an act of bluff and bullying. And ultimately it will be counter-productive in my view, purely from a marketing point of view.

It's clear to everyone that, at the very least, Torm's collection is heavily 'inspired' by the success of Rapha. I honestly don't think Torm's intention was to deliberately 'pass off' their goods as those of Rapha - they are not 'Rapha knock-offs'. The styling details both product share could have been patented by Rapha, but I'm not sure that they are - and the lack of statements from Rapha would seem to indicate that indeed they aren't. Perhaps, in hindsight, Torm will now feel they didn't need to produce items that so closely resembled those of Rapha. With a bit of creativity they could (and hopefully soon will) produce 'classic' styled pieces with a few details that become unique to Torm themselves. After that even Rapha won't be able to touch them. For now this appears to be a newly established market leader trying pull rank on a younger upstart. I hope they don't succeed, but I do hope that Torm learn a lesson from it.

Whoever said Sportswool belonged to Rapha? Not me.

Well, I wouldn't be bothered about losing ad revenue one way or another - that doesn't come up in the case of Rapha or Torm though cos neither of them advertise

If I was being that calculating it would be more in my interest to come down on Torm's side card - Rapha don't do adverts – in the hope that the new guys might. Whereas I'm just trying to be objective - the only Rapha kit I've ever bought was in the sale - list is too salty for me.

Think I did explain how you could produce bike kit and still make a heallthy margin while selling at a very competitive price… same applies to all sorts of other kit too.

The simplest way is to get hold of some Rapha kit (the most cost effective way if it was Rapha would be to go to the sample sale) then find a factory in the Far East, Vietnam would be a good bet – low cost, low minimum runs and if you up the number the cost per unit will really start to drop, send 'em your 'samples' and specify your colours. Arrange shipping, build website, put the word out. Bish! Bash! Bosh! No expensive designers or product testing that'll take a mighty slice out your costs + if you've gone for longer runs on fewer garments you can drop them even further. If you've got the money up front to do that your unit cost will be so low and your margin so big (that you can afford to sell cheap AND know that you will break even by selling just a small proportion of your stock - the rest is bunce.

Finding a factory is surprisingly easy to do - a few years ago some work colleagues and I went quite a long way down the road to having a small consignment of Titanium bikes made at a factory in China.

Now I don't know if that's what Torm did, but I suspect that's what Rapha think they did + because Rapha sell direct they know exactly who've they've sold what to in the past.

Reason I've got some clue to all this is that over the past few years I've done a fair amount of jersey buying for various magazines & websites+ we're in the middle of the same process at the moment on road.cc for both lycra and merino jerseys - both coming soon and both will be good quality and reasonably priced - and the reason we can do that is that we're more interested in having lots of people wearing our jerseys than making money - just as well with the unit cost of Italian made merino

No worries Ian, didn't take it that way - fair questions I reckon.

howabout phoning Torm to see what the beef is eh?

Maybe they haven't got anything except arm warmers because they've sold everything else?

I'm surprised to hear the two jerseys were so similar. I got a Tørm l/s jersey for Christmas and really like it, except that the arms are too short by a really quite silly amount - a good four inches I'd say. I've also got a Rapha Stowaway jacket (as was) and it's the best-fitting piece of kit I own (with the possible exception of my Assos shorts...could this be heading in a get-what-you-pay-for direction?)

Both items are sized large and while I grant you they're not directly comparable, I'd be amazed if Rapha's jerseys were cut that differently to their jackets. I'd defo try a Tørm s/l jersey - if they become available again - because of the price, but this is one orangutan who won't be buying any long-sleeved stuff from them, whatever the price.

If they come back online I would look to purchase based on the content of this thread.

I'd say that Rapha is not going after Torm for ripping off their product, but rather their marketing campaign. As is often the case with small companies, I guess that they'll have cut some corners on marketing and advertising, and simply copied something that is already working well.

The website, the art direction of the photography and the overall positioning of Torm is identical to Rapha's. If your a company like Rapha, your brand is to a greater or lesser extent more important than the product. If someone is infringing on that, then you have to act.

It seems as if Torm have a product that is good enough to stand on it's own, they just need to sell it as such.

The simple reason why Rapha are going after Tørm is profit margin. Tørm has shone a bright light on the difference between how much it actually costs to produce the pieces compared to the price Rapha sells them for. Their markup is enormous. It highlights the greed at the heart of their business model. If Rapha wearers knew that a rain jacket they buy for £190 actually cost £30 to produce, they might consider whether their passion is being exploited. Lets see how Rapha's laywers fare when Nike launch their range.

How many people do Torm employ? How many do Rapha employ? Do Torm have any designers to pay? How much to Torm spend on office space, warehousing, marketing? Sponsoring a professional cycling team? Developing free iPhone apps? All that costs. The difference in profit margin between Torm and Rapha is probably a lot less than you think.

I'm still intrigued as to why all this venom on pricing is coming Rapha's way? I can think of a very expensive continental brand who's clothing it could just as easily be argued doesn't justify the prices it commands.

Don't get me wrong I'm not a Rapha fanboy in fact I find a lot of the "brand image" side of what they do either laughable the "epicness" or irritating the "exclusivity" but there's no denying that most of their clothing is extremely well made and designed and the core parts of their range aren't that expensive for what you are getting (certainly not if you buy it in the sale) while the more ludicrously over-priced stuff (yes, the silk scarf, the training diary and the granny bag) seems to me about brand positioning to bolster their high end image.

Like Tony I am no Rapha-like but I do feel that they are the victim in all this..

If it happened here in the US we'd back our boys above some cynical import of far eastern goods designed to feed off the back of Rapha's marketing dollars!

I may or may not work for the company that Ramott mentions and I know we'd do exactly the same as Rapha if someone copied our brand identity…

FG

Hmm… Assos, not the greatest reputation for customer service up until fairly recently, can't think what happened to cause them to up their game?

Assos have traded on their top end roadie image for quite considerably longer than Rapha - wearing their kit has been a badge of belonging for the well heeled roadie and the 'proper' road cyclist wannabe for years. I see no real difference on that score between them and Rapha and good luck to them both - I'm quite happy to see more rich blokes on bikes.

Most Lycra shorts should last if you look after them. Assos make their kit in china, don't think they ship in any fabric from Switzerland specially either they also make great play of the quality of their pads - you'll find exactly the same quality pad from the same pad manufacturer in a pair of dhb shorts for considerably less money and indeed you will get a good level of workmanship and detail too, oh and dhb/Wiggle are pretty hot on customer service too.

One final thing to ponder, if Torm were producing garments that looked very like Assos kit, with similar marketing etc etc, wonder if Assos would call in the lawyers? I think they would.

to 11speedaddict - whilst Assos may market themselves as a textile company, i'd be interested to know if they actually develop the textiles themselves. I was under the impression that Cytech invented the elastic pad - Assos are listed as one of the many brands that use their pads, along with Rapha and others. I dont doubt that Assos invest in their products - designers are still required for clothes whether they are 'classically styled' or not, and I'm sure the Assos designers focus on the technical aspects of the clothing and then Assos testers try it all out.

However, dont Rapha do the same? I'd bet that both companies spend a lot on branding (probably more than anything else) - just because Assos dont focus on aesthetics doesnt mean they dont focus on their 'premium' brand.

I have both Assos and Rapha gear (including various shorts from both) and actually find the Rapha gear more likely to get me through a 120mile ride in comfort than the Assos. There's no denying that the Assos kit is good, but so is the Rapha kit, and (imo) the Rapha kit also looks much nicer.