My family has scratched out a living using that design for four generations. We had blanket versions, drapes, linens, and other variations. I never gave our family design to them, they stole it from me. They tricked me into showing them how to do it and promised to help me save time and make more money. I thought they were there to help me refine our process and technique, not steal our life’s work.
It started when that fella Tom Shanks came by to talk about purchasing a number of blankets for next season. He said our designs stood out to customers and the blankets all sold out in three weeks. He wanted to pre-order more than I could make from now until the fall. I said I’d accept the order but couldn’t have all of them done in time—-he said he could help us get it done faster. I didn’t understand how that was possible, as we work as hard as we can.
Two weeks later, Tom Shanks came by with another fellow named Joseph who never would tell me his family name. We spend about a week with this fellow who sat with use as we worked. All he did was draw little dots in a notebook along with the occasional scribble I could never quite read. He worked with us 12 hour days for five days straight without ever really asking any questions. Tom would come and go, occasionally asking questions of us, but this fellow just watched.
By the weekend they were gone. I didn’t hear from Tom Shanks until near the end of summer. He wrote us a letter which state he’d no longer need the linens he’d ordered and I was free to sell them at marketplace. At the first day of the market after we got our space all setup, some came by haggling with us on price, stating that the merchant at the other side had the same prints for 2/3 the prices. Sure enough, there was a merchant who had pieces that were similar to us, but they were nowhere near as good. We knew our work was superior, even if they were copying us.
We thought they’d come and go like other copycats over the years, but they didn’t. They kept dropping their price until they reached 1/3 our price, and pretty soon our other buyers who work markets in other towns stopped buying, saying cheaper versions were available in their market as well. We no longer stood out as anything special. That was the hardest part, being told that my families work was no longer anything special, after years of growing up in a family who was very proud of our work, and our designs. We were told that times were changing, and it was getting easier to produce linens, and that our time was over.
