Social Media Fights Urban Outfitters & Wins, Kinda

Last week, the social media hive rallied together on behalf of Chicago artist Stevie Koerner of IMakeShinyThings.com, who complained last Wednesday on her blog that hipster supplier Urban Outfitters appeared to have stolen jewelry designs from her A World of Love collection.

Within minutes, links to the tumblr post were shared across social media space, and within hours, Urban Outfitters was trending as a topic on Twitter. And not in a good way.

[Image: Amber Karnes]

Blogger Amber Karnes of My Aim Is True documented the spread of the story in her blog post Anatomy of a trending topic: How Twitter & the crafting community put the smackdown on Urban Outfitters. In the article, she shares how she found out about Koerner’s plight, how Karnes used Twitter to share the story, and how the story subsequently spread.

The story was picked up by HuffPo and Boing Boing immediately, and within several days, even CNBC had picked up the story. Even Miley Cyrus was Tweeting against Urban Outfitters.

Karnes’ article documenting the trending topic also went viral, and the bit.ly link she used to share Koerner’s Tumblr post has received over 250,000 clicks.

Urban Outfitters pulled the jewelry in question from their line on Thursday, however, an article on Regretsy showing proof that Koerner’s jewelry wasn’t as original as she thought gave UO ammunition against Koerner’s claims.

UO cited the Regretsy article’s research in a statement to CNBC “We are not implying that Koerner stole her necklace idea from one of these other designers, we are simply stating the obvious—that the idea is not unique to Koerner and she can in no way claim to be its orginator.”

Karnes said, in a follow-up post about the incident, “I’m fascinated by how this whole thing went down, and I’m determined to learn, learn, learn from it.” Her conclusions about the trending topic were: don’t underestimate the power of Tribes, social media matters, and people love a cause.

Koerner, the artist whose original post inspired the tweetstorm, wrote a response post on Tuesday, saying, “The power of social media allowed our community to unify and proliferate our message,” and “Urban Outfitters was forced to respond… because their bottom line was threatened.”

“I never claimed that people should boycott Urban Outfitters,” but “the impact that resulted was surprising, and oh so beautiful! Harnessing the power of social media, our voices were heard.”

Koerner refutes UO’s statement that they did not copy her design and the assertion that her product was not original, “I never claimed to be the first person to create a state necklace. I claimed that Urban Outfitters copied my product collection. If you look at the name, size, scale, and copy of both of our lines, it is too close for comfort. Obviously UO felt the same way, because they have since removed their line.”

No clear winner has emerged between Urban Outfitters and independent designers, but the horde that is Social Media has definitely proven its might.

[top images: Stevie Koerner; Urban Outfitters]