Peter Dering, CEO of San Francisco-based Peak Design, said his company's "Everyday Sling" bag became a target for Amazon to copy after it was the top-selling premium camera bag on the site "by a longshot."
"It feels like somewhere in Amazon there's a bell that goes off, which says 'OK, this one's going to be worth our time to go make the knockoff,'" Dering said in an interview. "And that sort of finally happened to us."
Dering decided to go public with his concerns. On Wednesday, Peak Design released an ad, titled "A Tale of Two Slings: Peak Design and Amazon Basics," which co-stars Dering and pokes fun at Amazon's "copycat" product. Soon after the ad went live, Peak Design customers flooded Amazon's listing for the "Amazon Basics Everyday Sling" with negative ratings, enough that Amazon temporarily disabled reviews on the item.