When a store gets cloned

Why this exists

Small retailers who find copies of their stores can struggle to assemble evidence and coordinate an effective response. The original September proposal began with a manual incident-response pilot. The October plan broadens the starting point to finding suspected copies, reviewing evidence and producing a report before preparing complaints.

What I’m testing

The current direction is a detection-first MVP with operator review. The hypothesis is that a useful report can help an owner decide whether to pursue a takedown. Effectiveness, operating effort and willingness to pay remain unproven.

Key decisions

• Review evidence before presenting an accusation. Candidate scores order the operator’s queue; they do not decide what the customer sees.
• Keep owner approval in the workflow. The owner approves each complaint before it is sent.
• Use staged validation. Detection and reporting are followed by outbound and self-service experiments; monitoring comes later.

How it would work

The workflow finds suspected copies and collects comparison evidence. An operator reviews candidates before a customer report is released. The owner reviews the evidence and approves proposed complaints; responses and outcomes are tracked separately.

Evidence and learning

A current MVP plan defines detection, triage, reporting and takedown workflows. Engineering progress is being tracked, but this case study does not yet establish a complete working service, public launch or successful enforcement outcomes. The earlier manual-pilot proposal remains in the project history as the starting point.