Sinful-ly Shameful

Howdy, everyone!  It's been a disappointing day for me.  One of my favorite nail polish brands has been caught out in some pretty blatant blogger photo theft.  Sinful Colors, currently owned by Revlon and sold in Walgreen's stores, issued a pamphlet recently displaying some nail art techniques.  Unfortunately, they used some photos that weren't theirs for the taking.  At least two bloggers, The Swatchaholic and Swatch and Learn, had photos of their manicures taken from their blog sites and used in this pamphlet.  Additionally, the Sinful Colors displays for their most recent polish campaigns also use these "lifted" photos.  In one case, you can see in the photo where they actually 'shopped out a watermark!  So wrong!  As if all that wasn't enough, there are NO Sinful Colors products used in ANY of these stolen photos.  So, they're stealing AND trying to other companies' products off as their own.

This is so irritating to me because I used Sinful Colors a LOT.  In fact, I would say that about 50% of my stash are Sinful Colors.  They're inexpensive and the quality is pretty good for the price.  I'm currently boycotting buying any more, however, until they clear this whole thing up.  At the very least, the bloggers are owed compensation and a BIG apology.  Even then, my confidence in the brand has been really tarnished and I'll be thinking twice before spending any more of my hard-earned cash on their dubious business ethics.

Sorry for the wordy post, but I'm really put out by the whole thing.  I'm also trying to do my part to spread the word.  I'm not able to find a direct email or phone number for Sinful Colors, but they do have a facebook page.  Feel free to go write them a note to tell them how you feel about this issue.  You can also hit up Revlon, since they're the parent company here.  I don't know whose "bright idea" this was, but we, as a community, have to put the pressure on them to make it right.