Fake NeeDoh and Why We Walked Away
We get asked to help with inventory problems more often than you might think. A line that overran, a buyer who pulled out, a warehouse that needs clearing. It is part of the job, and most of it is straightforward. What is not straightforward is the company you are asked to keep while doing it.
This week we were offered a parcel of fake NeeDoh, though we did not know that when it arrived. NeeDoh is having a real moment. Triple-digit growth, every buyer asking for it, the sort of line that makes the phone ring on its own. So when stock appears, you look. The samples came in. They looked right. They felt right. We had pushed the due diligence almost all the way to the line before the thing came apart in our hands. Counterfeit. Good counterfeit, which is the dangerous kind, but counterfeit all the same.
We were not the only ones looking at this. Both Bigjigs, who hold the official NeeDoh distribution UK, and Nico Blauw have been warning openly about fakes in circulation, and their guidance on how to spot them is worth two minutes of anyone’s time.
Twenty years in this trade and two things still turn my stomach. The first is the jobber who offers you ten cents in the dollar for perfectly good stock, then sells it on at a fortune while looking you in the eye. I have, on occasion, genuinely preferred to destroy inventory than hand him the satisfaction. The second is fakes. I have spent a career placing other people’s brands and protecting what they have built. Selling a copy of someone else’s work is not a commercial decision for me. It is simply a no.
So we walked. No drama, no deal, and a quiet reminder that the cheap line is rarely the cheap line.
The week was not all caution. The HipShot range we have been quietly building has started pulling enquiries faster than I can answer them, and they have not stopped since the line went up. Some products you have to talk a buyer into. This is not one of them. It does the work itself, which is the nicest problem an agent can have.
One last note, off the subject entirely. I am now 92kg. I have not weighed under 100 since I was sixteen years old, and that is twenty-six kilos gone since September. The wine has survived the cull, you will be relieved to hear. John Baulch got 22,000 hits last week for a post about drinking, so I am told this is the winning formula and I have no shame about borrowing it.
Lighter all round, then. Stock, conscience, and me.
