I recently made a wholesale purchase of belt buckles from www.beltbuckles.ca (aka FunBuckles) and later discovered that that they were knock offs of legitimate licensed designs.
I purchased a number of licensed designs (ie rock bands, sports, beverage, and movie designs). The belt buckles themselves looked great when I got them, but I am now discovering that they are an inferior quality. I've recently been getting reports from friends and customers that their buckles are breaking and falling apart only after a month or so of use.
Regardless of that, upon listing some of these belt buckles on eBay I was contacted by another seller who told me one of my buckles was a knock off of his own design. He is a sculptor who makes and sells his own keychains and belt buckles. He informed me that he doesn't license out his designs to any companies and that he could tell this was a knock off of his design because of the finish (ie it wasn't an original purchased from him and then resold). He sent me pics of the mold and I compared my buckle to pics of his and it was apparent that it was a copy.
Upon further investigation, we discovered that FunBuckles produce these belt buckles themselves. I initially thought that they were just wholesalers (because they have such a variety of licensed designs), which puts into question the legitimacy of all the other belt buckles that they sell.
I kept in contact with the sculptor, sent him the info for FunBuckles and even sent him the knock off buckle, which he confirmed even more definitely that it was a knock off. He explained that his name and copyright were rubbed out of the copy mold and that they used a cheaper hooking mechanism, which is now evident with reports from friends and customers.
The sculptor also kept me updated as he contacted the company. The guy he was in contact with wasn't too friendly with him when he confronted him about the knock off buckle. He tried to claim that the designs were only similar (when it was very obvious that this it was a direct copy). He got angry with the sculptor and asked him for the name of the person who told him where to find the buckles (ie me), as if that even mattered. But that's very telling of his character. It's also a bit unnerving as I wonder what he would've done had he did find out it was me that simply passed along the info. This is definitely someone you do not want to give your credit card info to. You also don't want to waste your time with these cheap bootleg designs.
So i highly recommend not purchasing from FunBuckles.
That is all.
Bob
Mississauga, Ontario
Canada
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