Wee Controversy

Scott Hardie | July 20, 2008
Apparently the company that makes Weemotes is losing business because Wii controllers are often called Wiimotes. (link) Three thoughts reading this article:

1) How are they losing business because of Nintendo? Because they're harder to find? Because they're falsely considered a ripoff? The article implies but doesn't explicitly draw the connection. Conventional wisdom says that the surge in popularity of "Wiimote" would lead to an increase in sales and visibility of the Weemote. Since the article doesn't demonstrate a causal relationship, you're left wondering how many other factors could explain the decline.

2) Rulings like the eBay verdict, Edwards adds, simply demonstrate that in the Internet age, "American small business is getting gypped." Yeah. Right. Forget the millions of small one-person operations (hello Lori) that couldn't exist without the Internet. Forget the thousands of niche markets that thrive on sites like eBay that would slowly die out otherwise. And forget that the Internet is the new American Dream for small businesses; you can start something like Google or Yahoo or YouTube in your garage and turn it into a billion-dollar sensation. Copyright infringement happens online, just like bad word-of-mouth and trade secret disclosure and misinformation campaigns, but these obstacles pale compared to the business advantages offered by the Internet.

3) Why not just change the product's name? That seems inevitable, if they're convinced that the "Wiimote" moniker is behind their decline (which I am not). If the cost of rebranding is less than the cost of going out of business, and the market indicates continued support for a product like this, just do it already.

Lori Lancaster | July 21, 2008
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Amy Austin | July 21, 2008
Conventional wisdom says that the surge in popularity of "Wiimote" would lead to an increase in sales and visibility of the Weemote.

This was my thought exactly. Seems to me that Fobis just doesn't understand marketing 101.