But what do you do when you find the copy that you spent weeks writing and rewriting for your new company website has just been lifted by another design company?

Bizarrely, this is exactly what happened to us a couple of weeks ago.

An email from an online friend suggested we check out a company called Relik Creative in Columbus, Ohio, because the copy seemed a bit, well, similar…

It wasn’t similar, it was identical. The main body of copy from our newly launched toggle website had been lifted wholesale. The copy we must have re-written at least a hundred times, the copy we had debated and polished for hours was working hard for another design company.

Obviously, we were not happy campers. So we calmed down a bit and contacted Relik Creative’s owner, Alex Boorman, and politely asked him “WTF?”

To be fair, he immediately took the copy down from his site (but then again, he was pretty much bang to rights…) Alex said that he’d hired a virtual assistant to write it and his lawyers would be taking it up with them immediately. He said he was as angry as we were and at the time we had no reason not to believe him…

But the weeks have rolled by and Alex won’t give us the Virtual Assistant’s name, or the details of his lawyers who insist that he can’t pass it on.

It also seems strange that a company which offers a copy-writing service would hire a VA to bang out what most independent creatives would consider to be the single most important piece of copy they’ll ever write.

And the trouble with the internet is that while our copy is gone from the Relik Creative site, happy clients who thought it was great have pasted it on their site as a tribute to Relik’s creative genius.

Alex Boorman has stopped returning our emails, claiming he’s far too busy with clients to deal with this issue.

We think we’ve been really patient with Alex and have done all we can to try and make sense of it. If you’re a US newspaper or TV journalist who’s beat includes Columbus, Ohio, you might want to pick up the story. We’d be happy to pass on all the emails and screenshots.

Alex, we gave you the benefit of the doubt for as long as we could, but we think you’re guilty. Guilty of online theft and – maybe worst of all – guilty of trying to use the “a big boy did it and ran away” defence in the 21st Century…

My Riverford organic veg box arrived last week. For those not familiar with Riverford, each box contains a newsletter written by Guy Watson (Founder of Riverford Organic Farm). In this particular newsletter he was talking his motivations behind Riverford. These were similar to those behind toggle and the article struck a cord because it coincided with our launch of the laundry service.

“As Yasmina triumphed over Kate as Alan Sugar’s apprentice, we hear Sir Alan is to become a Lord and government advisor on enterprise. Brash, competitive and aggressively selfish behavior makes compelling viewing but has precious little to with good business. I can’t help enjoying the show; I even suspect there is a fair amount of integrity and honesty in the down-to-earth, finger wagging, boy-done-good Sir Alan’s approach, but sales and short-term deal making are just a small part of business. Most successful businesses spend far more time building long-term relationships with their suppliers and customers than they do striking short-term deals.

I stepped out of school in the unbridled market mania of the Reagan/Thatcher years. After a few years milking cows I packed my bags, bought a snappy suit and threw myself into the throng in London and New York as a management consultant. It was lucrative and great fun, but, for me, ultimately soul sapping and it was only two years before I was back on the farm. The unquestioning idolatry of the marketplace as the only valid solution, whether in education, health, climate change or school dinners continued unabated through the Blair/Clinton neo-liberalism. Meanwhile I grew my vegetables and business with an increasing sense that there must be a better way – and a determination to find it. My beef with the Sir Alan approach is that by viewing every object, person and situation as a trade commodity we ultimately belittle the human condition and denigrate our lives as a result….I may not have done as well as Sir Alan, but the belief that good business should be based on serving the genuine, long-term needs of all stakeholders is gaining ground.”

A fantastic lecture called ‘Morals and Markets’ by Professor Michael Sandel (something Mike had already passed around the toggle office) was mentioned at the end of the newsletter. If you are not already familiar with it, it’s definitely worth checking out. The lecture discusses the need for politics that encourage a more morally engaged public life – it looks at the moral limits of markets and how there are some things money can buy but shouldn’t. But that’s another blog post…