Last Sunday, a one-day pop-up for a US-based cookie company appeared in Sydney. Days later, it turned out to be entirely unassociated.Customers who thought they were buying baked goods from a pop-up run by American brand Crumbl Cookies have since found out it was run by an unaffiliated group of fans.Crumbl Cookies has indicated they will not take action against the organisers.Share article
Under Australian law, it is possible to sell imported goods, but it is illegal to misrepresent yourself as a brand if you are not affiliated with them. Organisers of the pop-up, who have chosen to keep their full names off social media, said they "did not use trademarks" in their videos and that it's legal to sell parallel imports in Australia.
Parallel imports don't infringe trademark law or Australian consumer law. But this also requires a reseller is not representing itself as those behind the product, or blatantly misleading the average consumer. The page also used content from the original Crumbl's social media, while Crumbl's branding was on signage at the pop-up.
Earlier this year, accounts and posts spread through TikTok falsely claimed that the US-based fried chicken brand Raising Cane's was coming down under, some being viewed and shared thousands of times.A TikTok page claiming that Raising Cane's is coming to Australia."I think the fact that our market is small here, means that there's a lot of things that never get here," said Ellen Garbarino, a professor in marketing at the University of Sydney's Business School.