Yuppiechef’s official response to customers about our legal case with Yuppie Gadgets
At the beginning of 2006 we took the bold move of naming our company Yuppiechef.
According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, the word “yuppie” has been in steady decline since its peak in the early 90’s, and it is fair to say that it has always been slightly derogatory. It had been invented in the 80’s and was used to mock the rich elite who had more money than sense, splashed out on material goods, and wanted to be seen. With that in mind, it is no surprise that there were no active South African companies (and possibly even international ones) using yuppie in their names in 2006.
At that time the world was getting hooked on Jamie Oliver and Masterchef, we were all learning the difference between ceviche and sous-vide, and we struggled to pronounce “quinoa”. Every kitchen was becoming open-plan and cooking was something for the whole family. The New Yorker magazine even said that “the kitchen was the man’s new shed”.
We launched Yuppiechef to join in this revolution, and to make available the products and brands that people were seeing on TV but couldn’t always get in a retail store. We knew that our primary market was not real chefs, and so we bravely added the tongue-in-cheek “yuppie” to our name as a throwback to the 80’s era. We wanted to embolden our customers to feel that even if all they could make was a tomato sandwich, at least they could enjoy preparing it with a decent German knife and serving it proudly on an on-trend slate board. Tools and ingredients don’t turn ordinary people into a Gordon Ramsay, but they inspire and motivate us to cook and share meals together, and that has always been our ultimate mission as a company.
From humble beginnings in a lounge in Cape Town, Yuppiechef grew to be a well-known South African retailer. Where before there had not been a single other “yuppie” branded store or service company, there were suddenly a number of them — from pets to furniture and even a cash loans website. Whether or not this was because we had started a national yuppie-naming trend, we were definitely the first and most well known, and this put us in a tricky position. We had often been colloquially referred to as “the yuppies” (which always makes me cringe), and now customers assumed that these other companies were related to us or part of our bigger group. I even got personally congratulated for how quickly Yuppiechef was expanding into other categories, and countless times we were given well-intentioned advice that we should start “YuppieShoes” or “YuppieGardenFurniture” or something similar.
The crunch came when the online store Urban Gadgets renamed itself to Yuppie Gadgets in 2011, and in particular started selling kitchen and home related goods. Very similar products from our two companies were appearing next to each other in magazine editorials. The two websites were selling identical products from the same brands. Our customer service team was fielding phonecalls and emails from confused shoppers thinking that we could help with their Yuppie Gadgets order. We even received an invoice from one of Yuppie Gadgets’ suppliers, who sent it to us thinking that we were the same company.
We have never intended to bully or hurt any other company, and I wish that this sort of thing could be resolved over a beer and a civil conversation. Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in. I am not a lawyer, and trademark and copyright law is particularly baffling to me, so we largely followed the advice of the experts that we appointed to try deal with this on our behalf. After two years of legal sparring which reached all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeals, this week the smartest judges in the country decided that the confusion over our names wasn’t actually real, and that Yuppie Gadgets and Yuppiechef must co-exist in the market.
We acknowledge that the word “yuppie” is found in the dictionary and we didn’t invent it. Also found in the dictionary are the words Apple, Virgin, Twitter, Sky, Canon, Sharp and hundreds of others that have become associated with a particular company. Taking a legal route was a response to what we saw happening to the word “yuppie” in minds of the market, rather than an arrogant claim on an english word.
We are not bitter about losing our case, but we do care about customers being confused, and we now have to overcome this confusion in other ways. Please don’t assume that just because a company says “Yuppie” in the name, it belongs to us. There is only one “Yuppiechef”, we are completely focused on kitchen, home and food-related products, and we are working day and night to build the best shopping experience in the world at Yuppiechef.com. If we ever expand beyond that, we’ll be sure that you’re the first to know.
Onwards and Upwards.
Andrew Smith
(The Yuppiechef co-founder who was initially skeptical about the name, but eventually agreed, and is very happy that he did.)
