Baby Slings

There has been a lot of buzz in the babywearing community about the unethical practices of the company behind the Ergo Baby Carrier. The rumors, which I have been hearing for the last 4 months, are that they have decided to try and strong arm the structured baby carrier market. One email that is flying around has a link to the US patent office where supposedly the Ergo Baby Carrier company is trying to get a patent on soft structured carriers. I will not publish the link at this time because the link given says that the patent information is not public yet.

Honestly I guess they are made nervous by the Patapum Baby Carrier and Patapum Toddler Carrier because of its growing popularity on the market.

Here is an excerpt of an email I received today:

They are also now targeting WAHM companies overseas. When they are targeting these WAHM companies overseas, they are looking to collect damages from the distributors that have sold other competing SSCs(soft structured carriers). So, basically, they want the companies that are selling other SSCs to pay them money for each carrier that they have sold.

Personally, I find this behavior wrong on many levels. Ergo used (and still uses) many WAHM companies to get the name of their product out and now that it is becoming more mainstream and more popular, they are going after every company that makes and/or distributes anything similar so they can try to gain a monopoly. It just disgusts me that they are now trying to destroy the same companies that they used to make money for themselves

Anyhow, I thought I’d let you all know what is going on with Ergo so that way you can continue to decide if this is a company you want to support further. Also, if you are a manufacturer of an SSC or a distributor of SSC’s, you may want to seek legal advice just to be sure that you are protecting yourself.

Is there any truth to these claims? Are you a wholesaler that has been contacted by Ergo? Please leave a comment. I would love to see any emails you have to validate the rumors.