It’s just news that interests us. Big drama, smart moves, and other strange indicators of the possible future of beer.
It’s just news that interests us. Big drama, smart moves, and other strange indicators of the possible future of beer.
Before discovering what he called the “glassware community”, Nick Rex had been working hard to find a way out for his art. As a tattoo apprentice who also took a graphic design course, Rex drew tattoo flash art for his daughter and drew illustrations for some children’s e-books. But none of these efforts brought him close to his goal: to make art that people want to integrate into their daily lives. Then, using the beer rating app Untappd three years ago, he discovered the cartoon and pop culture world of online, small batch, designer beer glassware.
“Now it’s no longer just painting without a purpose…it’s a purpose,” Rex said. He has a full-time job in plastic manufacturing, attends school full-time, and describes designing beer glassware as his hobby. (He can make a few dollars for each cup he sells.) “As an artist, how often do you say that your art is spread all over the world, and people are enjoying it and taking pictures of it?”
Rex lives in Michigan and sells his glassware under the name Rextacular Sipware. He is just one of the people who design, sell, and collect beer glasses. As part of a relatively close subculture, this subculture is also legal. The most popular of these glasses have original illustrations that combine legally protected pop culture characters with beer-related visual elements: Ren and Stimpy holding beer mugs, King Max by Where The Wild Things Are, surrounded by hops Cone, Pac-Man is renamed Hop-Man. They are printed in small batches, ranging from 48 to 144 glasses, and artists sell them online for about $20 each.
Designers say that they are involved mainly to gain friendship and status in a small corner of the Internet, not for money. But the reality is that glassware collectors are keen on the next reference to the infamous Big or Beavis and Ass design. A spokesperson for Grandstand Glassware and Apparel, the company that prints the vast majority of this type of glass, called the custom glassware “money that [company] can grab.”
But because companies or artists make money by quoting other people’s intellectual property (IP) designs, this raises questions of legality, liability, and how long this gray area can exist before the company’s lawyers notice it—or whether they care.
Popular culture references are at the core of the designer glassware market. Ryan Galiotto, a glassware designer in Pittsburgh and the founder of the online beer community Fueled By Hops, said that original artwork that does not include pop culture figures cannot be sold. This means that for many designers, the risk of breaking the law is worth it.
“Some of the [cartoon design] glasses I launched will be sold out in two or three minutes. Most of my original designs, I still sit there,” he said.
He attributed the popularity of pop culture glasses to two emotions: “Nostalgia and FOMO.” Nostalgia is nostalgia for favorite shows, books or music artists; FOMO stands for “fear of missing out” to be able to purchase these small batch designs. Some of the earliest Fueled By Hops glass designs include characters such as Tyrone Biggums and Rick James in “Chappelle’s Show.”
The resulting issue of intellectual property theft is not new in craft beer. Similar controversies have arisen about label artwork in breweries, where nostalgic, pop culture-inspired images are common.
“We put them in the glassware group and it caught fire; we sold them out,” Galitoto said. “The person who bought that character wants a new character. This is the basis for us to move forward.”
However, last year, Galitoto decided to stop using cartoon characters in his designs. He believes that intellectual property issues are too risky for a growing company.
In a December 2020 post entitled “Why should I stay away from intellectual property theft in our products”, Galioto published the post on Fueled By Hops’ blog. He wrote: It doesn’t seem to be very interesting to grow the business while in the fear of stopping. To be honest, the energy we put in C&D will be better served in other aspects of the company’s development.”
He and Rex said that collecting glassware is about standing in the glassware community. Drinkers share photos of newly bought glasses on Facebook groups, Instagram (see #dopeglass example) and Untappd, but Facebook is where most of the discussion and community building takes place. Rex said his main beer and bourbon Facebook group, called The Laundry Room, includes about 900 members and is “very close.” He said that group moderators don’t need to do much because “everyone knows each other.” Rex said that although the main focus was beer and bourbon, it was indeed “anything is possible” in terms of the discussions there; he even sold a car through the group.
This kind of interpersonal relationship makes designer glassware seem less like a business to Galitoto, but more like a hobby or community building activity. However, he still runs it like a business: Galiotto’s goal in the past was to release two glassware a month, usually around 72 to 144 pieces each. He said that despite this, the public nature is changing because newcomers believe that such designs can make money.
“We have a code, you know. If I’m doing [a cup of featured]‘Chappelle’s Show’, others will avoid it and do’South Park,’” Galitoto said. “There are so many new designers now, if you want, they don’t follow the code.”
There is a bit of irony here: once, glassware designers respected each other’s “ownership” of certain roles-and none of them actually had the right to make money from these roles.
Lauren Ewing, account manager of Grandstand Glassware and Apparel, said: “We have noticed that the number of many small retailers has increased significantly. They are just as a hobby, designing and selling these super cool glasses.” She said that since Grandstand a few years ago Since it started printing full-color glassware, the company’s orders have increased from 600 in the first year to 3,200 last year. “We also have a brewery and started producing cooler retail commemorative glassware.”
It is not clear whether all the breweries mentioned by Ewing use pop culture characters, but at least some breweries do. They include The Answer Brewpub in Richmond, Virginia, which released this glass with the Nintendo character Yoshi. Richmond Times-Dispatch called this limited edition glass “almost as popular as the beer itself.”
“Glassware, you can bring considerable profits to these customers at a fairly good suggested retail price,” Ewing said, referring to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.
But Rex and Galitoto refuted this claim, saying that most individual glassware designers barely break even in their designs.
Rex sells his glasses for $20 each, including shipping. He said that the cost of printing each pair of glasses is US$5; the cost of packaging supplies and shipping to customers is US$9 to US$10 per cup; and his e-commerce website provider Shopify charges him a fee of US$1 per transaction. He said he earns $3 or $4 per cup, if that is the case. He usually orders 96 glasses for each design because the printer requires him to order in multiples of 48. This is the total profit of design and transportation working hours is 288-384 US dollars. Of course, designers who sell in large quantities can make more money, but this may jeopardize the super-exclusive and small-volume nature of these glasses.
“It’s not about the financial aspects of it, it’s about feeling the accomplishment or satisfaction of making a product and shipping it out,” Rex said.
Although this may be Rex’s personal motivation, the company’s lawyers may not care-for them, his business may infringe the intellectual property rights of others, no matter how much or how much he earns.
Galiotto added that when you consider the time required to make and ship the glasses, any profit the designer has on paper will disappear. (He also said that he donated a portion of his glassware sales to local COVID-19 relief efforts and the Brooklyn Community Foundation.) Galitoto has bigger plans for Fueled By Hops and hopes to turn it into a The beer community website also hosts events, podcasts, blogs, etc. This is part of the reason why he no longer uses popular culture references in his design.
However, in the 2020 blog post announcing the decision, Galitoto specifically stated that he does not want other designers to follow his approach: “I will not crack down on anyone in the industry who uses IP’wiring’ theft. If this is what you think is the most The way that suits your business, please continue. Of course I will not be angry with you, honestly, I will continue to support you.”
But John Seamankiewicz, a beer lawyer based in Raleigh, North Carolina, told the GBH podcast last year that intellectual property theft is not the best option for small businesses. Whether it’s a brewery that prints sports team logos on its labels or a company that sells glasses with Bart Simpson’s portrait, this small company is taking legal risks.
Szymankiewicz told the GBH podcast: “When you know that you are blatantly using someone else’s trademark, trade dress, or similarity, or calling it something that doesn’t belong to you, you should expect that someone might feel uneasy about it.”
For example, Rex is indifferent to the legal risks of using Ren and Stimpy in its design. He said that he deliberately did not use the words Ren or Stimpy on the glass to avoid irritating the copyright owner (viacom). He said he also added additional elements to the drawings—such as beer glasses or hop cones—making them more than just “identical clones.” This is the defense mentioned by both he and Galioto: these designs are tribute or imitation, not theft.
But Brendan Palfreyman, who specializes in beer maker bidding as an attorney at PLLC Syracuse in Harris Beach, New York, said that slightly modifying a role is still legally risky. He said that the legal test is “substantial similarity, not just an exact copy.”
Gallioto’s assertion that the glasses are a tribute and not a theft is in contradiction with the fact that he explicitly stopped the production of such glassware out of fear of legal proceedings. In addition, few glassware designers use the names of the actual characters they quote: the sold-out glassware on sipnproper.com, with Kang and Cordos in The Simpsons as the protagonists, simply describing them as Alien. This is a paradoxical defense: the artists say that what they did was not theft, but they still took measures to cover up what they were doing. If all other methods fail, the designers assert that they will stop selling any glass that the company opposes.
“I have never heard of anyone receiving a C&D notice or being sued, but if it happens, it will happen,” Rex said.
Breweries usually use this reasoning when they use someone else’s IP on beer labels: they say it makes sense, because it is a limited edition, small-batch product that will only be released once. But companies with intellectual property rights can still take serious action. Last year, Hershey asked Side Lot Brewery in Wokanda, Illinois to pay approximately $8,000 in profits, which the company made through the use and promotion of Jolly Ranchers and Milk Duds in its beer.
GBH contacted Walt Disney Company, Nintendo, Morris Sendak Foundation, Universal Publishing Syndicate, and Viacom to ask if they have ever issued suspension and cessation orders against glassware manufacturers that contain some of their images. Nintendo declined to comment; the rest did not respond to requests.
For its part, the printing company Grandstand stated that artists take full responsibility for their drawings.
“In this case, we passed this responsibility to the customer,” Ewing said. However, she cannot be sure whether the policy has been formulated anywhere. Ewing later emailed Good Beer Hunting to say that, in fact, the policy was written on the company’s FAQ page: “Grandstand is not responsible for collecting, maintaining or verifying the copyright status of the documents provided by customers. Before submitting the above documents to Prior to Grandstand, all printing customers were responsible for obtaining permission to use, copy and/or edit all copyrighted materials; and must provide written permission upon request.”
Currently, Rex believes that he is small enough to avoid angering large entertainment companies. (“I am the scum in this world,” he said.) But if, as Grandstand asserts, more designers and breweries order these types of custom glasses, the entertainment industry’s eyes may change. More vigilance and litigation. Much of this may depend on whether these companies see popular small-batch glassware as a niche art expression, or more like a cottage industry.
Galioto envisions a third scenario: the glassware market will be exhausted and drinkers will switch to other products. This is also part of the reason why Galitoto hedged his glass bets and expanded “Fueled by Hops” to other products, content and events.
“You can only hold so much glass in your cabinet,” he said. “We just made a bigger plan for this brand.”
Post time: Jun-04-2021