In case you haven't heard, Addison Rae just recently started a cosmetic company. This company is called Item Beauty. They recently just dropped a line of products including lipgloss, mascara, brow pencils, but most importantly a powder compact with the quote "I love you say it back" on the mirror.
I think most of us have heard, seen, or know about that quote. It is such a common quote, but influencer Indy Blue recently brought it to life. She opened her own fashion brand originally called Indy the Label, then soon after changed it to Lonely Ghost Co. When creating this company, she didn't want it to be 'merch'. She never wanted to sell a shirt with her name on it. She wanted to sell trendy, affordable, and easily attainable items, and that is what she did. She started with an Inhaler necklace, but the first clothing item she sold was with the iconic quote "I love you say it back" on it. Keep in mind, she copyrighted this quote and starting selling these items back in early 2019.
Since then, Addison Rae has blown up on Tik-Tok and is practically the 'it girl' in the social media and entertainment industry right now. She has accumulated almost 60 million followers on Tik-Tok and 27 million on Instagram. Indy knowing how influential Addison is currently in the industry, she sent her a DM over Instagram asking Addison if she would like to receive some "I love you say it back" merchandise. A day later Addison responded back saying yes and then later made a Tik-Tok wearing a Lonely Ghost tee-shirt, but not the 'I love you say it back' one. Which nobody saw that as a problem at the time, Indy got a free sponsorship from The Addison Rae, she was so grateful. Little did Indy know, Addison Rae's team had some other plans.
About three days after Indy direct messaged Addison asking if she wanted the 'I love you say it back' merchandise, Addison's team copyrighted that quote for cosmetics. What Indy and her team didn't know, that cosmetic copyrights and merchandise copyrights are two totally different things. So, Indy had the copyrights for clothing and merchandising, and now Addison's team had the copyrights of that quote for all cosmetics.
Now fast forward to about a week ago, Addison dropped her first launch of her cosmetics line ItemBeauty. With the iconic quote on the mirror of all of their compacts. Indy was completely blindsided. She had no idea about this, but her supporters made sure this was not left unnoticed. They all flooded ItemBeauty's comments on the day of the launch. They are still flooding the comments today, if you look at any of their posts the comments are 90% of Indy's supporters defending Indy.
So what's being done?
Since this whole problem has arisen, Indy was forced to bring in a legal team to meet with Addison's team in order to get this sorted out. Addison's team told them they would be happy to just 'co-exist'. This means that Indy cannot go into the cosmetic industry while using that quote and Addison can't go into merchandising. Which yes that is the easiest route to go because it doesn't require going to court, but Addison and her team get to benefit from Indy's idea while Indy just got out of a court battle. So Indy came up with the idea that she will send Addison another package full of merchandise and Addison would do the same with her cosmetics. Then they both would post each other's items on Instagram and say 'I love you say it back'. That way, all of the fans would think they are supporting each other and this whole feud would be behind them. Addison's team agreed. They then had another trick up their sleeve and had Addison post Indy's merchandise in between 5 other sponsors and fold her clothes so you are unable to see the "I love you say it back.
At this point, Indy was fed up done. She had kept silent about this issue for the entirety of this situation and finally talked to her fans about all of this. She went on her good friends Podcast 'Wake Up With Weslie' and decided to discuss all of this. She believed Addison is not the problem of all this but it is simply her team taking advantage of her. This situation is the perfect example of huge influencers taking advantage of small businesses. These large corporations and influencers think nobody will notice if they take others ideas but Indy's supporters proved them wrong. The sole purpose of her account and brand is to spread love and positivity and nobody can take that away from her.
