After stealing and reusing BART’s design work for some of its products, which were given out for free, Baggu recently hinted at a potential collaboration between the two … sans the controversy.
BART has continued its upswing lately with additional cars deployed on some lines, fewer slip-through gates, and a host of other welcome updates. Recently, Baggu, a fashion brand synonymous with its reusable vegan bags and other products, opened at 911 Valencia Street last week to long lines and eager patrons. But shoppers were quick to point out an unexpected collaboration: the Bay Area Rapid Transit Agency (BART) had its recognizable logos and typefaces printed on some Baggu products, like reusable water bottles.
The discovery was a delight … until it wasn’t.
According to BART officials, Baggu had no licensing agreement and did not conduct any internal deals with BART to use its logos or branding designs. Instead, Baggu apparently just repurposed BART’s logos and other brand-specific details to use on its products … without permission or even contacting the rapid transit agency.
“It pissed me off,” Dillon Smith said to SFGATE after learning the BART-inspired merchandise from Baggu was not a part of any official collaboration. “I came to this to support BART. It’s f—ked up.”
BART quickly came online and denounced the collaboration, but in tandem made it known it doesn’t “blame [Baggu]” for wanting to be associated with the agency during its Bay Area debut.
“We don’t blame them for wanting to associate with our awesome brand, and we are thrilled they love us this much,” BART continued online. “But it would be nice if they reached out to us and perhaps shared some of the profit since we are in a financial crisis.” (Baggu gave out the BART-affiliated merchandise for free during the Mission District store’s initial launch week.)
Until this past weekend, Baggu remained silent amid the controversy, but the company finally broke its muteness Saturday after posting an apology on its Instagram Stories.
“We should have reached out to BART to partner on our San Francisco store merch, and we regret that we didn’t,” reads the company’s apology, which was notably published on Instagram Stories, the Meta-owned company’s time-sensitive content product and not on its evergreen grid. Baggu later in the post recognized it should’ve reached out to BART and, even though its branded products weren’t sold, violated certain copyright laws and conducted some shady practices.
“We’ve grown a lot in the past few years, and this experience has highlighted that there are places our process needs to be stronger,” continues the post. Still, we should have known better.”
Baggu hinted that it’s now in talks with BART and an official collaboration could soon be in the works — a partnership that would hopefully result in purchasable products with a portion of those earnings going back to BART itself.
Feature image: Courtesy of Threads via [at]sophnewsnet
