Paper Shoot Official Announcement Letter Sep. 30

Dear Valued Paper Shoot Community,

We would like to address an upcoming video series created by our former North American distributors, which contains several inaccurate claims regarding the termination of our agreement with them. Videos created by our former distributors that detailed the contents of this series were posted to their Discord channel, and were shared with us by dedicated community members. While we regret that this situation has escalated, we assure you that Paper Shoot has always operated with integrity.

The key reasons for the presentation of a new contract to our distributors and the ultimate termination of their agreement include:

• Violations of the multi-party contract include significant issues such as cross-regional sales, unauthorized use of the brand, and creating unauthorized merchandise in China without permission. 
• A pattern of dishonesty and public misrepresentation regarding their role within Paper Shoot, and discomfort around their marketing of our products. 
• Unauthorized attempts to manufacture digital cameras under our brand name, in direct violation of the original contract.

We will address and clarify these claims directly in this statement. Our hope remains for all parties to move forward peacefully and amicably.

Claim 1: They Were Presented a New Contract Without Cause

In their series, our former distributors will claim that they were suddenly presented with new, overly-restrictive contracts and that their agreement was subsequently terminated without cause. This is untrue. There were a collection of instances that led to these events after many years of successful and collaborative partnership:

LATE 2022 - NOW:

We continually reminded our former distributor not to sell to regions or countries outside of their contract throughout our agreement. However, in late 2022, we received feedback from consumers in other countries stating they purchased from our former distributors’ website. We also received complaints from other distributors worldwide that our former distributors had been shipping to their territory without authorization.

Additionally, everyone is able to see on Google Ad Transparency that their business account ran ads in unauthorized territories including Australia, India, Philippines, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Estonia, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

This is a clear violation of our agreement and was one of the first actions that eroded our trust in their intentions. Once we discovered this occurrence and reminded our distributors of their contractual obligations, they resolved the issue temporarily, though this occurrence became more common throughout our partnership.

 

 

 

 

Over time, we also noticed that our former distributors often subtly misrepresented themselves as the CEOs and owners of Paper Shoot, relying on the technicality that their business name was “Paper Shoot Camera LLC’, which they registered in 2022 without our prior consent. We had signed with their company Silver Marketing in 2021. We were initially upset when we discovered this, though we chose to trust they were operating with good intentions.

While they now emphasize feelings of betrayal following our decision in 2023 not to merge with them as equal partners, this decision was a personal one. We never confirmed that we would merge our businesses, nor that we were interested in co-founding a business together. We were not prepared to break our collaboration model to form with a distributor. Our founders, who had invested over a decade into building Paper Shoot, simply chose to maintain full ownership of the brand they created and operated for seven full years before our former distributor acted as the operator for the North American market.

APRIL 2024:

In April 2024, our former distributors traveled to Guangzhou, China, claiming the trip was for workshops. However, this was misleading. Along with attending a sourcing and manufacturing course, they toured factories and attended the Canton Fair, a convention known for promoting cheaply made and counterfeit goods. They failed to disclose this to us. While we now understand that their true intent was to pursue an unrelated side project, their lack of transparency at the time further eroded our trust. We found it concerning that our former distributors were untruthful about their activities in Guangzhou if there was nothing to conceal.

 

 

 

 

 

MAY 2024:

In May of 2024, our distributors began selling unauthorized items made in China containing our brand name on their website. These items were not made by us nor were they approved by us, which was a clear Intellectual Property violation of their 2021 Agreement.

 

 

 

In May 2024,during their website rebrand, they removed almost all references to our brand's origins and changed their logo. We had previously expressed our concerns about the logo change before their website launch, as we believed it would create confusion. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication during this conversation and our former distributors went ahead with the logo change.

 

When we reached out again to explain that they needed to restore the original logo and clearly indicate that they were the North American branch of our company, they did not respond. In that communication, we also offered to pay $15,000 for new marketing materials as a courtesy, though Paper Shoot owns all Intellectual Property related to Paper Shoot Cameras worldwide, so we weren't obligated to do so to use the images. We would have been happy to share the cost, but we never received a reply. They did restore some of the information in regards to Paper Shoot’s origins, claiming it was an oversight by their website company. However, this incident left us feeling uneasy - that our family business was being undermined.

 

 

 

 

 

JUNE 2024: We clearly informed our distributors on June 6th, 2024, that all orders would be on a temporary pause, effective June 26th - July 22nd.

 

 

 

Our distributor will allege that we withheld inventory unfairly during this time, specifically in regards to an order placed in May of 2024. We were under no obligation to accept this order, as it was agreed in 2021 that orders must be paid in full to be placed, which this order was not.

 

 

 

 

While we indeed may have fulfilled orders without the complete payment as a courtesy to our former distributors in the past, we felt uncomfortable doing so for this specific reason:

On June 20th, 2024, we were made aware that our former distributors were soliciting the manufacture of digital cameras in China.

Our former distributors sent a non-disclosure agreement to a factory in China. This factory recognized the Paper Shoot brand and forwarded the agreement to us. It clearly showed the distributors’ intent to develop digital cameras using the Paper Shoot brand name, which is a serious breach of our agreement.

We believe this will be entirely omitted from the series.

 

 

 

 

We strongly believe this is the announcement they will be making the week of September 30th: the launch of a digital camera, solicited using our brand name, during the time of our agreement, that we believe will directly emulate all of the features Paper Shoot has worked hard to build with integrity since 2013. As this situation has unfolded, we have unfortunately confirmed this suspicion through finding a public trademark application for Cappy Camera, filed on September 16, under the same business address as our former distributors: https://uspto.report/TM/98753119

 

JULY 2024:

As a solution to these issues, as outlined over multiple months and years, we presented our distributors with a standard contract that imposed higher protective measures for Paper Shoot on July 9th, 2024.

However, we still intended to work with these distributors as their contributions to Paper Shoot were monumental and we did not want to cause conflict with them. We also didn’t feel as though having an honest discussion about this serious breach of contract was an option due to recent behaviors. We took the opportunity to simply announce a system update and present our distributors with a new contract. After many days of back-and-forth internally, we assessed that this was the strongest option for resolving this issue professionally and moving forward peacefully.

We never told our distributors it was the exact same contract.

The contract specified that the social media accounts would only be returned to Paper Shoot’s ownership upon termination of the contract, as we were fearful that this exact situation would occur: our former distributors would use Paper Shoot’s dedicated community to promote their new camera. We intended only to impose these measures if a serious breach occurred, which we made clear over several communications with them.

GEORGE EMAIL ABOUT THE CONTRACT - SHOWING IT WAS NOT STATED IT WAS THE SAME

 

 

 

The contract was indeed similar to their 2021 agreement, though it contained new standard protective clauses including these:

1. That in the case of a severe breach of contract, the signee would face financial penalties.

2. That the Paper Shoot brand owned the social media accounts, websites and customer lists of all distributors worldwide, once the agreement was terminated.

 

 

Our former distributors declined to sign the contract that included these protective measures, fully aware that this would lead to the termination of their agreement. While we respect their decision and understand their desire to pursue other business ventures, it is important to acknowledge that businesses operate under agreed-upon rules. These were the terms they voluntarily accepted three years prior, committing to uphold them until 2026, which they unfortunately did not.

AUGUST 2024:

After many weeks of unanswered communications from our end, we made the difficult decision to terminate our agreement on August 20th, 2024. At no point did we suggest to our distributor that the reason for their termination was due to an inability to meet order quantities. We simply sent along a reference of the termination clause in their 2021 agreement, and again later clarified via communications from our counsel our reasons for terminating the contract.

 

 

Claim 2: Allegations of Theft

We have repeatedly attempted to settle the remaining balances owed to our former distributors, confirm we have the same numbers, and buy back unsold inventory. Until very recently, we had not heard from them in nearly two months after repeated communications. 

 

On Thursday, September 26th, we received communication from our former distributor's legal team regarding a discrepancy in the outstanding balance. They did not settle the balance of their May 2024 order, which totaled $97,000. 

Furthermore, we are aware that our former distributors feel that we at headquarters have wrongfully stolen their content and images for our social media use. To clarify, all website and social media imagery belongs to Paper Shoot under the terms of the 2021 Intellectual Property Agreement that our distributors signed. All other distributors worldwide wilfully share and collaborate on social media and web content.

 

Our former distributors will also claim that headquarters charged them extra fees unfairly. These claims are also false. Our distribution partners began working with us in 2020, during one of the most challenging and uncertain periods of the global pandemic. Since then, rising costs have impacted industries and individuals worldwide. Despite these economic pressures, from 2021 to 2024, we remained committed to maintaining fair and transparent pricing for our global distributors. As outlined in our 2021 agreement, any adjustments to pricing have always been at the sole discretion of our company.

 

 

We have never knowingly shipped faulty products. It would not be conducive to fostering trust with our business partners and customers to do so. We replaced 81 faulty camera boards in March after hearing of their defects. Product defaults rarely occur, though we will always accept full responsibility in this occurrence. We accept full responsibility for missing a product default in an order batch, and apologize to any customers or distributors who were affected.

 

● We received multiple emails from our former distributor’s customers citing that they had been directed to us for post-purchase care and our former distributors were not responsive with order issues.

 

 

 

 

 

Since then, we have been working closely with Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, and Shopify to address the unauthorized distribution and marketing of our products. We remain fully cooperative throughout this process. Regarding the claims about account access/hacking, there was a misunderstanding involving a former employee of the distributor, now part of our team, who mistakenly initiated a routine password change due to a miscommunication with platform representatives. Our founders were unaware of this event and have since reinforced their commitment to respecting the privacy and rights of our former distributors throughout this process.

Our former distributors have also opposed our public condemnation of their defamatory remarks, and will insist in this series that they have not posted negatively about Paper Shoot prior to this series. In fact, they have made multiple posts in their Discord community containing untrue statements about the situation. This community has over 1,000 members, and we reserve the right to defend ourselves against public defamation, regardless of its scale.

 

 

Claim 3: Poaching of Employees

We have never solicited the services of current or former employees of our North American distributors. On July 27, 2024, a former employee of the distributor reached out to us regarding an unrelated matter. After several exchanges, they casually offered to assist Paper Shoot Headquarters with marketing services, should the need arise. At that time, neither party was aware that our agreement with the distributor would be ending, as discussions to resolve the situation were ongoing. This individual later introduced colleagues who had voluntarily left the distributor weeks or months earlier due to personal reasons. None of these individuals joined Paper Shoot until September 9, 2024, well after the agreement had been terminated.

 

Today, we are proud to have five former employees from the North American distributors as part of our team. These individuals have consistently demonstrated their dedication to the Paper Shoot brand, and we are thrilled to offer them a positive working environment.

Claim 4: Takeover of Their Business

Paper Shoot is, and always has been, our brand—founded by George Lin and Miffy Chen over a decade ago in Taiwan. By the time our North American distributors signed the contract in 2020, Paper Shoot had already established a significant market presence, with hundreds of cameras being shipped to North America daily. Since then, we have received multiple offers from distributors and marketing agencies to promote Paper Shoot to this region. While we greatly appreciate the efforts of our former distributors over the last four years, and their success is undeniable, it is disingenuous, self-serving, and misleading for our former distributor to claim sole credit for the global success of Paper Shoot.

Throughout our partnership and in this series, our former distributors frequently referred to Paper Shoot headquarters using terms such as 'their factory,' 'their manufacturing partners,' and themselves as “CEO’s” and “Co-Owners”, often misrepresenting their role in our brand. Paper Shoot is more than a product supplier. We are a brand. We are a community.

On Thursday, September 26th, we received a communication from our former distributor's legal counsel offering to sell us the North American trademark, Paper Shoot Camera, for over $50,000 USD. This trademark had been registered by the distributors in 2022 without our consent. In Canada, where our distributors are based, registering a trademark costs approximately $500. Furthermore, our distributors should understand that Paper Shoot owns ALL trademarks related to Paper Shoot Cameras worldwide, per the agreement they signed in 2021.

 

Paper Shoot proudly collaborates with 10 distributors worldwide without issue. Our founders had no intention or desire to "take back" the North American territory. When the agreement was terminated and our former distributors continued to operate without authorization, we simply took responsibility for our brand and its customers and will continue to do so until another North American distributor is appointed.

Moving Forward: Our Commitment to You

Moving forward, we will not engage in any further public disputes regarding this matter. Our priority remains with our community and our global team. We deeply regret that you’ve been drawn into this situation and asked to choose sides. We are committed to handling the transition with our former distributors in a professional and private manner from this point on.

For customers who have purchased Paper Shoot Cameras through our former North American distributors in the past year, we will extend your warranty for another year on our Warranty Page. Please feel free to contact us at info@papershoot.com with any questions or concerns.

Additionally, you can now follow our new North American social media channels to stay updated on the latest products and news:

• Instagram / Pinterest: @papershoot.us
• TikTok: @thepapershootcamera

These are our official worldwide distributors.

For shopping, you can now purchase directly from our headquarters at papershoot.com.

We sincerely appreciate your ongoing support and understanding during this challenging time. We are committed to upholding the values of creativity, sustainability, and ethics that Paper Shoot was built on, and we will continue to grow and innovate with those principles at our core.

Sincerely,
George Lin & Miffy Chen
Founders of Paper Shoot