I have a bit of a dilemma when it comes to squishy dumpling toys. I am well aware that there is a preferred brand being RMS, but I found the obsession with my kids they not only didnāt notice or care.
A year ago, due to a serious health issue, I was forced out of my career due to the physical requirements. I will save you the sob story, but I needed to come up with something quickly.
I started building and selling e-commerce, and my kids seemed to take an interest.
It was actually my 5-year old who asked if she could sell her squishies to help my store. So I built a store with my kids in mind, and used my sales license to open up accounts with squishy toy wholesalers, etc. I ordered dozens of samples and let my kids pick the best items for ātheir storeā. I also set up a custodial Roth IRA for each of them to earn a commission for their work and this fund will grow over time and theyāll have some money one day.
The first few months it made a few hundred dollars nothing crazy, and then we got close to $1,000 in month 3, and we closed the āquarterā doing over $2,000 in month 4.
IMPORTANT: all of my products on the site especially non-RMS dumplings have a disclaimer that they are not the brand featured at Five Below & Target. I even have the disclaimer again at checkout. The reason was because I was tired of returning emails from customers asking me, not because I felt I needed to legally protect myself.
That didnāt stop a few customers from emailing me criticizing the product anyways. Thatās the cost of doing business, canāt make everyone happy.
But recently it took a very dark turn. An army of very passionate people inundated my store and reviews with horrific scores and comments, accusing me of being a scam artist while selling āfakeā products. My store has ended up on many social media platforms warning about my scam & the fake products I sell. And of course criticism for citing my children as the motivation for the store (I am exploiting my children with fake scam products). My ads via Meta were temporarily paused as they received reports. Eventually reinstated. But I have stopped them.
I genuinely never set out to scam anybody, and I have done research and there is nothing illegal about the manufacturers or products I am selling. I was unaware that any squishy toy especially dumplings that are legally made and manufactured by dozens of companies and sold around the world, are deemed āFAKEā and āscamsā if not branded RMS.
I am devastated. I have been reported to multiple commissions suggesting I am doing illegal stuff. An agent from one of these commissions has already confirmed to me that nothing will come of it because I have disclaimers that these are not RMS brand in over 30 different places on the site and you have to click to acknowledge this at checkout.
Most of these people are not even customers. They are just very angry yet passionate people about RMS I guess.
I just really wanted to do something fun with my kids, that they are passionate about, and if it made a few bucks, it would go into a fund and help them one day.
I have taken down my social media accounts and pages for this business, as theyāve been overwhelmed by people giving bad reviews and calling me a scammer and of course criticism for citing my children as the motivation for the store (I am exploiting my children with fake scam products).
I guess I could have done more research but I didnāt know about this. I didnāt know that people would try to ruin my life for selling a squishy dumpling. All of my other products are squishies made by several different companies, none of those seem to create the same angst.
And for the record, we have (probably an embarrassingly large amount) of dumplings and other squishies that my kids have had for months. 95% of them are not RMS, and they donāt give a shit. Some are of course iffy quality, but many of them are very nice quality and have a lot of fun different themes & collection opportunities. So if these are all fakes and scams, I guess the scammers won because my kids are super happy, enough for them to want to share what they have experienced collecting them with other kids via āone of Daddyās stores.ā
I have chosen to point the URL/domain to another site and pause it for the moment. Hopefully it will pass?
I cannot return most of my inventory if there is nothing deemed wrong with them. So Iām in a terrible spot now.
I am not including my company or store names because I fear of more retribution after posting on here.
What could I have done differently? All of my suppliers are licensed and sell thousands of products all over the world
