With 38 years in the manufacturing business, we have great admiration & respect for competitors original designs. Competition fuels both our economy & imagination. All of us as consumers reap the benefits of fair trade. I sincerely am glad customers have a choice with whom to do business.
Alot of product available is generic in design & intended funtion. Scallops, flutes, triangles. You can't differentiate one supplier from another. However, many times, we have seen a competitors' original product & thought, "wow, why didn't we think of that!" For instance, Fast Eddie came up with the great idea of inserting a Union Jack decal on the brake reservoir cover. Brilliant and cost effective. Will we copy his original idea? Legally, nothing is stopping us from doing it. It's out there in the public arena. We could even make a few extra bucks. It's definitley alot easier to copy than create.
Gina, you wrote that our Hammerhead design was available in any HD shop. Respectfully, I believe you are mistaken. The Maltese Cross, of which you are referring, is in the shape of a cross, with 4 legs. The Hammerhead has 3. It was our intention to offer Triumph riders a unique & original design and name.
This design is the center of all this mess. Not only did a competitor choose the easy way & copy our original design, he didn't even have the imagination to rename it. That's what offends us.
Will we start manufacturing Fast Eddie's reservoir cover design? We have never, nor will we ever, take a competitors' original idea & design and blatantly copy it. We hope that we have instilled these values in our son.
Karen & Roger Smith
