 | Episode Cheat Sheet |
EP669
5 OCT 2026
63 MIN LISTEN
Warwick Levy
Founder, Lonely Kids Club
| Brought to you by |   |
THE TL;DR
Warwick has run Lonely Kids Club for 15 years with no investors. Every one of 4,000+ products is printed to order in Sydney.
Temu sellers scraped the whole store, photos and brand name included, and sold it at half price.
Reporting listings one by one was slow. His registered trademark cleared thousands of them overnight.
His range comes from his team, his community and independent artists who earn a cut of every sale.
| From Bushy |
There's a conundrum in ecommerce at the moment. You need to create unique products to survive. However, as soon as you crack the unique product and prove some success, you become a copy target from the bigger guys with more money and less conscience. We've heard plenty of hard luck stories in the press this year but not many wins.
Today, Warwick Levy from Lonely Kids Club joined me to tell us what happened when Temu copied thousands of his products. But he also tells us how he took action to reclaim control. If you design your own products, this is one you'll want to get across. Or... if you just loved Grace Tame's 'F*ck Murdoch' shirt. We got you.
CHEERS, BUSHY
| Watch the Full Episode |
| 01 Skip To The Good Bits |
Tap any time code anywhere in this cheat sheet and the episode opens on YouTube at that exact moment.
| Getting your brand noticed with no marketing budget | 7:34 |
| Letting your community design your range | 11:33 |
| Taking a stand other brands won't and ending up on the news | 15:04 |
| Making hundreds of thousands of SKUs work with print-to-order | 20:31 |
| Paying artist collaborators on commission | 29:15 |
| Spotting an SEO agency that isn't doing the work | 34:15 |
| Getting copies of your store taken down on Temu | 42:11 |
| Raising prices instead of cutting standards | 52:20 |
| Sponsor content · Shopify | |
 | |
| Can your commerce stack keep pace? Forrester & Shopify unpack how ANZ retailers can adapt to change, manage platform costs and reduce migration risk. | |
| Tue 13 Oct · 11am AEDT · 1pm NZT · Online | |
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“People are smarter than they get given credit for. And I think they can see authenticity.”
WARWICK LEVY | Lonely Kids Club
| 02 The Big Lesson |
HOW WARWICK GOT THOUSANDS OF COPIES OFF TEMU
When a marketplace seller copies you like for like, it's tempting to fight design by design. Warwick tried that first. What worked was much simpler and needs to be actioned well before the incident happens.
RULE 01 43:49
Monitor your bestsellers for sharp drops
His top seller, the Get in the Van tee, bottomed out in sales from 2023. The decline lined up with Temu's arrival in Australia where his popular designs were relisted 20 to 40 times each.
That was the exact timeline of when Temu launched in Australia in 2023.
RULE 02 44:39
Report the trademark not the design
Temu's IP portal wiped 40 minutes of his work twice before he pre-filled a doc and pasted in small batches. Then he reported against his registered trademark, which applied because the copies were being sold into Australia. Of course, you need to have your trademarks registered first.
Warwick has written up every step he took, from what to gather before you open the form to how to stop it resetting. Read his guide to reporting copied products on Temu.
And so basically all of that then overnight, the thousands of things disappeared.
RULE 03 46:28
Expect whack-a-mole and block the right bots
Collaborators' designs still turn up and were scraped from other sites they sell on. He's added Cloudflare bot protection but was careful not to shut out the AI crawlers that recommend him.
You don't want to stop the actual AI bots that are gonna recommend you to people.
Copyright protects the art. A trademark protects the brand. If copycats put your name on every listing, a trademark registration may be the blunt instrument you need to combat the lot at once. Worth checking if your trademark is registered and still relevant.
FOUND YOUR DESIGNS ON TEMU?
Warwick has written up exactly how he got thousands of copies taken down. What to gather first, how to stop the form wiping your work and why the trademark mattered.
100+
PEOPLE ON SITE
Warwick's usual is 15 to 20. That was the day Grace Tame wore his F*ck Murdoch tee to the Lodge. It was a Chaser collab no other brand would put online. Hundreds of orders landed before he knew why. 15:57
| 03 Test Yourself |
Warwick's trademark did the heavy lifting. But it only works if it's registered before you need it. So how long does that take?
You file a trademark application in Australia today. What's the soonest it can be registered?
| 04 Steal These Tactics |
1
Give customers a place to request the designs they want and batch-make them. Warwick's community events produce 20 to 30 designs in 24 hours and some become bestsellers. 11:50
2
Use a sorting app to reshuffle collection pages every few days with new and recent best sellers up top. Shopify's default best-seller sort is all-time. 32:15
3
Pay a specialist for a few hours of audit you implement yourself instead of a retainer you can't check. Warwick's found strong backlinks lost in redirect chains and collection pages with no real copy. 38:00
4
Andromeda changed the rules. Stop tweaking ad sets and keep feeding them new creative. Video is doing more of the work. 40:24
5
When your costs rise, raise prices before you cut standards. Customers can tell the difference. 54:28
| 05 The Stack |
Loyalty and rewards. He's stayed on a legacy plan he won't upgrade because it's cheaper than anything they sell now.
Dynamic ads carried the account for years until Andromeda forced a restructure.
Bot protection to slow the scrapers without blocking the AI crawlers that recommend the brand.
Direct-to-garment printers Warwick has run since 2018, so every tee is printed only once it's ordered.
| 06 If This One Landed |
EP547
How to Legally Bulletproof Your Ecommerce Brand in 2025 with Marianne Marchesi
A registered trademark is what finally moved the marketplace this week. Marianne explains picking the right class so your registration covers what you actually sell.
EP185
The Unmissable SEO Episode: Harry Sanders' Tips and Tricks
Internal linking and real copy on collection pages did the heavy lifting this week. This is the episode that explains why, from the founder of StudioHawk.
EP441
Real Ecommerce Talk: Success, Failure and Not Giving a F*ck with Anaita Sarkar
Fourteen months of retainer with nothing to show is a familiar story. Anaita's rule is to learn a platform yourself before you pay anyone to run it.
| Pass It On |
Episode Cheat Sheets are built to be forwarded. If someone you know has ever found their product on a marketplace at half price, send them this one.
| Continue the Conversation |
Would you raise prices before you'd lower your standards, or is that only an option for a brand with a loyal crowd behind it?
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