Macy’s threat to hairdressers
A GIANT American retailer has forced a hair salon in Bathgate which was named after the owner’s daughter to change after threatening to sue for trademark infringement.
Jon and Kirsty Nelson named their West Lothian business Macys after their daughter, little imaging they would shortly face the wrath of corporate America.
But the couple received a letter from a London law firm acting on behalf of Cincinnatibased Macy’s alleging they had breached its trademark.
Macy’s is worth £6 billion, has almost 900 stores, stocks products by Ralph Lauren,
Hugo Boss, and Calvin Klein, and sells mink fur coats for £8,500.
Their Bathgate “rivals”,
Macys Lounge, offer female customers a cut and blow-dry for £30 while men can get a cut for £9, or £13 if they want a shampoo.
None of that stopped Macy’s instructing lawyers Page White and Farrer sending Jon and Kirsty a letter.
The couple revealed on their Facebook page: “We are changing our trading name. Back in September, we received a letter from a law firm in London acting on behalf of Macy’s Inc from the USA.”
The couple discovered they were at the centre of a legal wrangle entitled “Macy’s Inc Stores West vs Macys Lounge Bathgate”.
They wrote: “This multibillion dollar company – whose closest store to 78 North Bridge Street, Bathgate, is more than 3,000 miles away with a rather large pond between us – has filed a trademark Infringement against us. It turns out that Macy’s Stores has a trademark operating within Europe that covers them for a book-worth of products and services from submarine parts, paperweights, writing materials, clocks, fishing equipment, rubber gloves. The long, long list goes on. It also covers trademark registration EU12060943 – which cover Beauty & Hairdressing Salon Services.”
According to the couple, Macy’s claimed: “Macys Lounge’ is confusingly similar to Macy’s and relates to identical services to those in their registration. The fact that the name was chosen by you because it is your daughter’s name (as stated on the website) is no defence.”
The store has had no option but to change the name and has decided to go with Maciz Lounge in order to keep their daughter’s name as the company name.
In the same post, they said: “We wanted to fight this battle, David and Goliath style, but we did not have the funding or resources available to do so and were somewhat backed into a corner to ‘angrily’ agree to their terms of changing our name.”
Macy’s would not comment.
We wanted to fight this battle, in a
David v Goliath way, but we do not have the resources to do so