An interesting and rather sad story from a small business. A small startup in N. Colorado has a piece of hardware (patented design and TM name) for scanning know as the Flip-Pal (http://flip-pal.com/introducing-flip-pal/). Coincidentally a newer company has emerged and seem to be selling a product to the identical market… the product is coincidentally, similarly named the Doxie Flip – ya, nice choice of of the usage of the term Flip! The Flip-Pal scanner has been for sale for several years and the Doxie was announced in a PR just recently, November 2013, whereas the Flip-Pal launched in 2010 and received numerous awards and even a mention in Money Magazine – Doxie even refers to their product as “inventive and new”
Upon closer look the product is, well, essentially it’s the exact same piece of hardware – oh, and it’s manufactured by the same hardware producer in China! I’ll let you decide for yourself, however, the moral of the story is, beware of who you get to design your hardware and be careful when you shop your business offshore – a sad but all too familiar story! I’m no psychic but if I was a betting man I’d guess that the crew selling the Doxie Flip just might find themselves in a court room one day…
The Flip Pal mobile scanner from Couragent
The Doxie Flip mobile scanner