Crowdfunding sites makes copied-in-China even easier: All is needed is a Photoshopped image

Pressy Button, a small gadget for Android devices, landed on Kickstarter in August 2013. It drew much media attention as it met its fundraising goal in a single day. Two months later the project ended up with more than 7 times of its goal in funding from more than 28 thousand contributors.

Before long Pressy would come across many Pressy Buttons on Alibaba.com, the marketplace ran by Alibaba Group for Chinese to sell goods overseas. The search query “Pressy” returns a lot of results featuring Pressy Button. None of them, of course, is by Pressy team.

Pressy aren’t sure whether those sellers will really re-sell their products or just want to see if there’s demand. Or, they are making counterfeits and want  them to surface as results when potential customers search for Pressy Button on Alibaba.com. Not only on Alibaba.com, Pressy also found out similar projects on other crowdfunding platforms.

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