When Woolworths tried to pull a quick one on Shannon McLaughlin and Ubuntu Baba, Shannon fought back with a widely-shared blog post.

That saga has drawn to a close, with the two parties reaching an amicable solution, but now the retailer is under fire once more, this time for a certain sock design.

Dave Hutchison (pictured above left), the founder of Sexy Socks, detailed his grievances in a Facebook post that (at the time of writing) has been shared close to 1 000 times.

Here’s some of what he had to say, with the images below taken from the same post:

For the last five years, I have poured my heart and soul into building Sexy Socks. I have tried to prove to the world that there is another way to do business. A more human way. A more sustainable way. In a way that proves that it is possible to chase profits while simultaneously uplifting society.

Today I walked into WOOLWORTHS and saw my socks. Only, they weren’t my socks. It was just my design, altered ever so slightly, with a minor colour change. It was one of our original, iconic, designs from the really early days, and one that was a top sellers for years. These were even made from bamboo. And it was on sale for a price well below what I can afford to offer. That’s what you can offer when you manufacture in China.

I looked at the stand of socks, and it wasn’t just Sexy Socks that they have knocked off. They have taken the top designs from every small sock brand in South Africa…

Entrepreneurship can, at times, be a long, dark and lonely road. And it is not made easier when you see the big players so clearly leveraging off our hard work. I hope that South Africans will put their foot down and show that we will not tolerate this…

And WOOLWORTHS, I hope you know for every sale you steal away from Sexy Socks, you take away from our team of 8. You take away from our social mission. You take away and say small business is NOT the way forward. NOT something that can move and transform South Africa…

Maybe you’ll ignore this. Maybe this will even guilt you into donating some socks. But what you SHOULD do is STOP stealing from small businesses.

To spell it out, that first image shows the Woolworths socks with the bicycles on, and the second, taken from the Sexy Socks Instagram account, shows their design on the left-hand side.

Full disclosure – we worked with Sexy Socks back in the day (our collaboration ended in 2016), so we know the ins and outs of what they do, and the social projects Dave’s company runs are inspiring.

For every pair of Sexy Socks they sell, a pair of school socks is given to a child in need. Here’s a video from a Sock Drop back in January:

Anyway, we digress.

Woolworths has been made aware of Dave’s accusations, with TimesLIVE reporting that they are now investigating the matter:

Spokesperson Kirsten Hewett told TimesLIVE on Tuesday: “We take allegations of IP [intellectual property] infringement very seriously. We are investigating this issue and will [provide] feedback as soon as possible.”

Oh, and if you’re keen to support the little guy, it looks like you’re not alone. The Sexy Socks ‘Cycles’ design is currently out of stock:

Click around the ‘Shop’ section of the site, though, and I’m sure you’ll find something you like.

Dave, and the team at Sexy Socks, we dig the work you guys do.

Now the ball is in Woolworths’ court.

UPDATED: Woolies spokesperson Kirsten Hewett later offered a full denial of the accusations:

She later said: “We deny the allegation that we copied Sexy Socks’s bicycle design or the bamboo material used. Bicycles are an international design trend used by fashion houses, designers and retailers all over the world.

“We have used bicycles on T-shirts, socks, trunks and boxers. We first used the bicycle design on a pair of boxers, which we designed in-house in Woolworths in May 2015. Due to its success, we extended the design across other categories.”

Hewett added that Woolworths had also used bamboo as a textile in towels, shirts, trousers, jackets and socks since 2005 due to its “sustainability attributes”.

“We remain deeply committed to the development of small business in SA,” she said.

Despite that denial, not everyone is convinced. You can read award-winning financial journalist Bruce Whitfield’s take on why that is here.

[sources:facebook&timeslive]