Children’s clock business gets letter from Rolex demanding it ‘rebrand’

A children’s clock business has been sent a letter by luxury watch makers Rolex demanding it rebrands.

Oyster & Pop sell a collection of colourful wall clocks and charts designed to help children learn to tell the time, which retail at about £20.

The company was set up by sisters Emma Ross-McNairn and Sarah Davies and is named after Oyster Bend in Torbay, Devon, where they grew up.

But lawyers for the eight-billion dollar company Rolex wrote to ‘Oyster & Pop’ in early January to demand they rebrand.

Rolex claim it’s a similar name to their ‘Oyster Perpetual’ line of watches that sell for anywhere between four to ten thousand pounds.

The company argues that the “average, reasonably well-informed consumer” would likely call the Rolex line of watches to mind when looking at the Oyster & Pop logo.

The letter added: “Consumers will inevitably be misled into thinking that your products emanate from Rolex.”

As a result the lawyers have demanded the firm, based in Teignmouth, Devon, change its logo, website domain and name to avoid further action.

Director of Emma, 46, said the situation was “nonsense” and that the lawyer’s letters had been “bullish”.

She told the BBC: “If someone says oyster to me, the first thing I think of is the Oyster Card on the tube, not Rolex watches.

“I don’t think anyone could confuse our clocks as coming from Rolex.”

It is the second time Rolex have come after the company.

It previously beat the sisters by default in a trademark battle in the United States after Oyster & Pop proved unable to fund a legal battle over the issue.

During that battle, Rolex USA lawyers had told the sisters that changing their category filing from International Class (IC) 14 for clocks to IC28 Toys and Games would resolve the issue.

However, the sisters say now they have made the change, lawyers have since decided that this would no longer be enough.

Rolex has the largest market share of the Swiss luxury watch market.

Emma, who founded the business during lockdown in 2020, says that the rebranding would ‘crush’ their small business.

She has started a petition to try and stop the company.

She wrote: “The idea for Oyster&Pop was borne out of a desire to create a business that made fun, useful products for families.

“In the 2020 lockdowns we used our savings to set up a small business to help support our families.

“We chose the name Oyster&Pop for our clocks because we were born and raised on a road called “Oyster Bend’’ right by the beach in Devon. We wanted to connect the company’s identity to our family roots.

“We don’t think that Rolex should be allowed to stop us from using a name that is not only substantially different from theirs but has personal connections to us as the founders of a small business.

“We have invested our savings in creating Oyster&Pop, including branding, stock, our website, packaging and marketing. If we were made to re-brand then the company would not have the resources to start all over again.

“We believe that there is no risk of anyone confusing us with Rolex.”

Their online petition on change.org has now gained nearly 57,000 signatures since it was first posted on January 10.

Oyster & Pop now have until January 30 to file a defence and counter statement in response to the trademark application objection.

Emma told the BBC: “You see Formula One, and Rolex sponsoring such huge events like that - you don’t then think of a children’s clock company.’’

Rolex has been approached for a comment.