Trader Joes in the news - Pirates

I love the Trader Joe's stores and we were lucky that one opened in Bellingham a few years ago. They are not in Canada and since Bellingham is so close to the border, a Canadian gentleman was looking to compensate for this situation. He would buy stock, take it across the border and resell it in his store in Canada. More, from local radio station KGMI:

Trader Joe�s sues �pirate� trader
A Vancouver, B.C. man who resells Trader Joe�s products across the border is being sued by the company.

The popular grocer�s lawsuit accuses Michael Hallatt of copyright infringement, unfair competition, trademark dilution, injury to reputation and deceptive business practices.

Hallatt says the suit is a red herring.

Hallatt says because he pays full market value for anything he gets at the Bellingham Trader Joe�s, he has the right to do whatever he wants with his �booty� after he�s bought it.

He sells the items at his resell store called �Irate Joe�s�, originally �Pirate Joe�s� in the Kitsilano neighborhood in Vancouver.

He says a manager at the Bellingham Trader Joe�s initially helped him come up with the idea.

He even got help picking the most popular products to buy, but the arrangement turned sour when a regional manager found out.

Hallatt is banned from the Bellingham location and other Trader Joe�s stores farther south are starting to turn him away.

That is just sour grapes on the part of the regional manager. Hallatt obviously is not harming the brand at all -- people recognize it and want it enough to pay full retail plus markup plus cost of transportation. Some people have nothing better to do...