Every growing Shopify brand eventually runs into the same uncomfortable growth pain: success invites copycats.
Once you’re selling through Amazon, Walmart, retail distributors, and your own site, unauthorized sellers and knockoffs start showing up in your buy box and on websites you never built. If you’re doing around $5 million or more across multiple channels, this episode is your wake-up call to find out where that hidden revenue is really going.
Mario Simonyan is the founding attorney of ESQgo, an intellectual property law firm in Burbank, California that works exclusively with ecommerce brands. Before practicing law, Mario built and sold two seven-figure private label brands on Amazon, and he launched ESQgo in 2018 after realizing most IP attorneys understood trademark law but not how Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify actually work in the real world. Based on the brand audits his firm runs, Mario says many clients are losing 15-25% of their revenue to unauthorized sellers and infringers, often without realizing it.
In this conversation, Mario breaks down the two distinct threats hiding inside your listings (unauthorized resellers fighting for your buy box, and infringers cloning your product and copy with AI in minutes instead of weeks), why enforcement might be the highest-ROI growth lever you’re ignoring, and how a real IP foundation can raise your exit multiple when it’s time to sell. Whether you’re just filing your first trademark or staring down an AI-generated knockoff of your own website, this is the practical playbook for protecting what you’ve already built.
Let’s dive in. 👇
✅ Why revenue leaks start around $5M: You’ll hear why unauthorized sellers and infringers rarely bother smaller brands, and what changes once your distribution expands into Walmart, retail, marketplaces, and other third-party channels.
✅ The two-bucket threat model: Mario breaks down the difference between unauthorized sellers fighting for your buy box and infringers cloning your product images and copy, and why each one requires a different playbook.
✅ How AI sped up counterfeiting from weeks to minutes: You’ll learn how bad actors now use AI to tweak your photos and copy just enough to dodge reverse image searches, and what that shift means for how you monitor and protect your brand.
✅ The IP foundation every growing brand needs: We’ll unpack how trademarks, design patents, and utility patents each protect your brand in different ways, and how to prioritize them so you don’t waste tens of thousands of dollars later.
✅ Why “trademark material difference” is a hidden weapon: Mario explains how even a reseller of your exact product can be infringing if they can’t match your warranty or support, and why most founders have never heard of this legal concept.
✅ How brand enforcement raises your exit multiple: You’ll see how buyers and aggregators look beyond topline revenue to the predictability of that revenue, and how a clear enforcement history can meaningfully boost your eventual multiple.
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Mario Simonyan didn’t set out to become an IP attorney for ecommerce brands. He started his first Amazon business in his second year of law school, launching a strawberry stem remover and a three-in-one avocado slicer while his classmates chased unpaid internships. Then came the accidental business nobody would have predicted: an artificial turf doormat, born from a pile of unsold grass rolls sitting in his driveway. It took off fast, the copycats showed up almost overnight, and when Mario went looking for legal help he hit a wall. The IP attorneys he called understood trademark law but had no idea how Amazon actually enforced anything, and they were happy to quote him six figures to litigate. That gap between legal theory and marketplace reality is why he founded ESQgo in 2018.
In this episode, Mario breaks down the two revenue leaks that tend to surface once a brand crosses roughly $5 million and expands into Amazon, Walmart, and retail distribution. The first is unauthorized sellers: resellers and arbitrage buyers who muscle onto your own listing and fight you for the buy box, sometimes using tactics you would not believe. The second is infringers, who lift your images and copy and occasionally go straight to your manufacturer for a knockoff. Mario shares one story about an adult gummies brand whose entire Shopify site was cloned, and the single detail the infringer forgot to change is what gave the whole scheme away. It is the kind of thing you have to hear to appreciate.
From there, Mario gets into how AI has collapsed counterfeiting from weeks to minutes, why trademarks, design patents, and utility patents each play a different role, and a lesser-known concept called trademark material difference that can turn even a legitimate resale of your own product into infringement. He also explains why he built ESQgo to sit between shallow brand-enforcement agencies and expensive litigation firms, and why he approaches brand protection the same way a buyer or aggregator would when they size up the quality of your revenue.
If you are wondering whether any of this applies to you, Mario’s firm runs a free brand enforcement report with a 24-hour turnaround for brands above $5 million, and he is building a companion checklist for the brands under that line who want to get ahead of the problem early. This is not a legal episode. It is a blueprint for protecting the revenue you have already earned.
👉 Treat brand enforcement as a revenue strategy, not a legal chore. Every dollar an unauthorized seller or infringer captures is a dollar you already earned through product development, distribution, and marketing, and Mario’s view is simple: protect what you’ve already built before you spend more to launch something new.
👉 File your trademark early, then actually use it. A trademark is the only IP asset that can last indefinitely, but most founders file it and then forget about enforcement; if you’re approaching the seven-figure mark, get your trademark in place so you have something real to stand on later.
👉 Match your patent strategy to your budget and your product. Utility patents (roughly in the five-figure range) protect how a product functions and require real financial commitment, while design patents (typically a few thousand dollars) protect how it looks and are far more accessible for earlier-stage brands. Either path adds to your eventual enterprise value.
👉 Know the difference between unauthorized sellers and infringers. Unauthorized sellers are fighting you for the buy box with a real, if unwelcome, version of your product, while infringers are cloning your images, copy, and sometimes your entire storefront; treating both groups the same wastes time and ignores the real threat in each scenario.
👉 Spend enforcement dollars where the ROI is real. Mario’s team prioritizes the sellers and listings actually moving meaningful volume instead of chasing every low-volume infringer, and he argues that if your current legal counsel isn’t talking about ROI, it’s time to find someone who will.
👉 Build your IP foundation with an exit in mind. Buyers and aggregators care as much about the quality and predictability of your revenue as they do about the topline, and a documented enforcement history plus a real IP moat around your brand can directly improve the multiple you command when you’re ready to sell.
Mario Simonyan
Founding Attorney, ESQgo
Mario Simonyan built and sold two seven-figure private label brands on Amazon before he ever practiced law, giving him a rare vantage point most IP attorneys don’t have: he has lived through the same revenue leaks his clients now bring to him. That includes an unplanned pivot from an artificial turf reselling attempt into a surprise hit doormat business, and then watching overseas manufacturers copy that product almost as fast as he could sell it.
After discovering that traditional IP attorneys understood the law but not how Amazon, Walmart, and other marketplaces actually enforce complaints, Mario founded ESQgo in 2018 to fill that gap. His firm now works exclusively with ecommerce brands, positioning itself between slow, shallow brand-enforcement agencies and expensive litigation firms, and combining IP enforcement, marketplace policy expertise, and regulatory compliance into a single service.
Mario has also been through the exit process himself and has helped dozens of clients through their own acquisitions, giving him firsthand insight into how buyers and aggregators evaluate the quality and predictability of a brand’s revenue, not just the topline number.
Featured in This Episode:
Coming Soon: Mario is building a free IP checklist for brands under $5M who want to get ahead of copycats before it becomes a problem. It will land in the Fastlane Insider newsletter first.
Over 9 seasons, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to chat with some of the brightest founders building amazing Shopify brands, as well as the partners shaping the app and marketing ecosystem. Every conversation has taught me something new, and I’m grateful for the chance to learn alongside you.
What matters most is that this podcast helps you solve real challenges and discover new ways to grow. Your support, feedback, and stories have made this journey truly special. Thanks for tuning in, sharing your wins and losses, and being part of the eCommerce Fastlane community.
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Steve Hutt:
Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane. I’m your host, Steve Hutt. Today we’re going to talk about something that might sound like a legal topic, but I’d argue it’s much more of a growth topic. And I’m hoping by the end of this conversation you’ll agree with me. I’ve done some research in this area, and it’s affected a few brands I used to manage at Shopify. We might get into those case studies a little bit later. But let me give you the setup first. A lot of people listening right now have spent years building something real.
Steve Hutt:
We’re talking about a product that works, a brand that people trust, and listings that convert. Somewhere along the way, other people potentially start making money off the things you’ve built. We’re literally talking about unauthorized sellers undercutting the pricing you’ve set, or—even worse in my opinion—copycats cloning your product and imagery. From the research I’ve done, brands are literally losing so much money; it could be 15–20% or more of their revenue, all because of this fraud that’s going on. And a lot of brands don’t even realize it’s happening. That’s why I have my guest on the show today. It’s Mario from a company called ESQgo. That’s ESQGO.com. What’s interesting about Mario is that he’s the founding attorney of this law firm, but he works exclusively with eCommerce brands. I think he started way back in 2018. Before Mario ever practiced law, he actually built and sold two seven-figure brands on Amazon.
Steve Hutt:
So he’s approaching this from a different angle. There’s the brand protection lawyer side, but there’s also the operator side. I think he approaches it more like an operator trying to recover revenue. From what I understand, his whole argument is that enforcing your IP might be the least sexy growth strategy in eCommerce, but it’s probably the highest-ROI one. So, hello Mario, welcome to eCommerce Fastlane.
Mario Simonyan:
Thank you, Steve. That was a great intro. I appreciate it.
Steve Hutt:
I’m hired, right Mario?
Mario Simonyan:
Hired.
Steve Hutt:
So let’s talk about the origin story, because I’m always excited when someone builds a brand while they’re still in law school. Can you take me back? What did you experience as a seller that made you think the legal industry is kind of failing these eCommerce founders?
Mario Simonyan:
Yeah, so I started my first Amazon brand when I was in my second year of law school. At that time, Steve, everyone in law school was going out, getting internships, getting legal jobs. I wasn’t very attracted to that. I thought, you know what, there’s more I could do. I didn’t want to go work for free. When I started law school, I was a bit older, in my early 30s, and I said, I’m going to look for something else because I’ve always been in business. I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart.
Mario Simonyan:
I came across this YouTube video by Daniel Moran talking about doing private label on Amazon. It looked very attractive. So I placed my first order. The first thing I ordered was a strawberry stem remover, and then a three-in-one avocado cutter, slicer, and pitter. I put it under my own brand name. I talked to the manufacturer, had them put the brand name on the product, create the packaging, and ship it to the port of Los Angeles. I remember when it hit Amazon—when it finally arrived—I was sitting in a law school classroom listening to one of my professors, and I kept refreshing my Amazon Seller Central dashboard.
Mario Simonyan:
Sales were just coming in while I was sitting there doing nothing. At one point I thought, I’m probably making more money than the professor. That’s when I realized, okay, we’ve got something here. So I expanded the brand, eventually created another one, and finally hit a point where I got maybe a little bit too cocky. Being in Los Angeles at the time, the City of LA was giving out reimbursements to any homeowner who replaced their lawn with artificial turf. So I said, you know what, I’m going to order some artificial turf and sell it.
Mario Simonyan:
It seemed like a great opportunity and a great idea. I got the rolls, and it was just a nightmare. I couldn’t sell it. I had to list it on Craigslist and local bulletins around town. I thought, what am I doing? I’ve got this great business on Amazon, and now I’m driving around delivering grass. I ended up selling just one roll of grass. Those rolls stayed in the driveway for months.
Mario Simonyan:
Finally, one morning I’m having my coffee, looking at these rolls, thinking to myself, Mario, this was the dumbest move you’ve ever made. Then I came up with the idea: what if we cut these up and make them into doormats? There was nothing like that out there. So I went to the local Home Depot, grabbed a few guys, and said, cut these into 18 inches by 24 inches. They’re looking at me like, okay, you seem a bit crazy, but fine, let’s do it. They cut them, and this was not a perfect product as you can imagine, Steve.
Mario Simonyan:
The cuts were not straight. My packaging was just polybags from Uline. The stickers I put on them were printed on my local printer. It was not sexy at all. But it sold. It sold, and we couldn’t keep up with demand, and this was just on Amazon. Finally, I called the manufacturer and said, I need you to cut it into these pieces and send it. At the time, I had several different sizes and dimensions. The manufacturer rep asked, are you sure? He thought I was crazy too. This was a manufacturer making artificial turf for FIFA stadiums.
Steve Hutt:
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
And I said, yeah, this is what I want you to do. We had it nicely packaged and so forth, and things were going really well. But next thing that happens—and I’m sure most of your audience can relate—when you’ve got a great product that’s selling, copycats show up. Manufacturers out of China started offering these doormats on Alibaba and AliExpress and 1688, saying, hey, these are doormats. At the time I was still in law school, but I didn’t have any IP classes. I didn’t know how the real world—at least the legal world—worked. So I called a few law firms and talked to a few attorneys. None of them understood eCommerce or what I was trying to do.
Mario Simonyan:
I told them, I just want to protect this product so no one else copies it. Some said, well, you can sue. I asked, how much is that going to cost? They said, you should budget at least a quarter million dollars. Steve, at the time I was in law school. Quarter million dollars? They might as well have said a trillion.
Mario Simonyan:
So I thought, okay. As I started expanding my brand, other IP-related issues came up, primarily focused on Amazon and Walmart. What I learned was that these attorneys were great—very knowledgeable about IP—but they weren’t knowledgeable about how the marketplaces work. For example, if you go to Amazon and draft a 30-page brief about how a competitor is infringing your trademark, copyright, or patent, they’re not going to accept it. At the lower level, they’re spending maybe 5–10 seconds reviewing a complaint. If an attorney sends a 30-page brief, forget about it.
Mario Simonyan:
It will be automatically rejected. So the nuance was that they didn’t understand the language and terminology we were using, and they also didn’t understand how the marketplaces work. I felt like, this isn’t going to work. I gave up and said, okay, there are no attorneys out there who really understand the marketplace and IP. When I sold my brands in 2018, I decided that’s what we were going to focus on. We started with intellectual property for eCommerce sellers.
Mario Simonyan:
Since 2018, we’ve been helping brands and giving them someone who understands the marketplaces, has been an operator, has exited, and is now an attorney. That’s what we offer and what we’ve been doing. We’ve been growing ever since and we’ve been blessed to help a lot of brands. I’m sure we can get into more stories about situations we’ve faced and how we helped clients, but that’s a five-minute overview of my backstory.
Steve Hutt:
That’s amazing. I love hearing origin stories. They set the stage, and everyone has a story about why they went down a certain journey. It’s great that you were an operator yourself and this happened to you. That’s the pain in the marketplace. You can’t afford traditional IP protection, so you’re stuck thinking, okay, what can we do? That’s why ESQgo is out there, and that’s why I wanted to have you on.
Steve Hutt:
I want to talk about another topic that I find interesting—something you’ve labeled the “invisible leak.” I think you can correct me if I’m wrong here, but you say that typical brands you work with are losing between 15–25% of their revenue to unauthorized sellers and infringers that are taking revenue away from the brand. Can you walk me through that? What I’m trying to figure out is where that money is actually going and why the founders can’t see it.
Mario Simonyan:
Sure. So this is the scenario with unauthorized sellers. Most brands that are growing and are below $5 million in revenue may not even have this issue, and I want to be very transparent about that.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
This issue with unauthorized sellers appears when they start growing larger. As a result, they may be selling in Walmart, selling to brick-and-mortar stores, or working with retailers. As your distribution channels expand, this problem shows up. Here’s how it looks: Steve, suppose you and I have a great brand. We sell pens, and we start selling to local brick-and-mortar stores. We have a distribution channel—let’s say 25–50 distributors.
Mario Simonyan:
Next thing we know, our Amazon or Walmart listing will have other offers from other people. There are resellers who buy from brick-and-mortar stores or do online arbitrage. If you sell cheaper on another website, they’ll buy your product there and then list it on Amazon under your listing as another seller. Now it’s a fight for the buy box. Even if you own the buy box most of the time, there will be scenarios where you run out of inventory. Guess what happens then? That unauthorized seller is now in the buy box.
Mario Simonyan:
You won’t be able to control what they sell it for. You might think, if I’m selling it for $10 at brick-and-mortar and that’s the going price, fine. But we’ve seen scenarios where these hijackers, these unauthorized sellers, use stolen credit cards or other fraud. On the extreme end, there’s a criminal element. They’re buying inventory for free. Even though you’re selling at $10 or $20—maybe that’s your MAP price—they’ll undercut you.
Mario Simonyan:
They’ll sell it cheaper than you can, and guess who gets the revenue? These unauthorized sellers. So that’s one bucket. The other bucket is infringers.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
Infringers see your product and say, that brand is doing pretty well, let me copy it. They’ll copy most of your IP assets—from product images to copywriting on your listing—and sometimes even go to your manufacturer saying, I want the same thing, can you sell it to me? If your manufacturer doesn’t have a strong moral compass, they’ll offer it.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
So that’s the scenario that comes up.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah, it’s amazing. There really are two battles going on here: infringers versus unauthorized sellers. You have to be mindful of both. Is there any way for an early-stage brand—say, under $5 million in revenue that doesn’t even realize this is happening—to get a handle on it? I know sub-$5 million isn’t necessarily your main focus, but what would an early-stage brand want to do? Are there AI tools that can import a catalog, scrape some of these things, and in real time figure out if there’s infringement going on?
Steve Hutt:
I think the challenge I see is that people don’t know what they don’t know, especially under $5 million in revenue.
Mario Simonyan:
Yeah. So it’s not even about starting with search or monitoring, Steve. It comes down to legal fundamentals. They should have a trademark in place. That’s a given.
Steve Hutt:
Okay.
Mario Simonyan:
As soon as you think you’re going to reach $1 million—or even at the beginning—look at getting a trademark. That’s step one. Step two: if you’re creating a new product that doesn’t really exist and it’s somehow unique in the marketplace, talk to a patent attorney or IP attorney to see if you can get a patent around it. A patent, as much as some patent attorneys hate when I say this, sort of gives you a monopoly. It gives you a limited monopoly and says, this is my product design or invention; you can’t copy it.
Mario Simonyan:
Design patents cover the aesthetics—how it looks—while utility patents cover how it functions. Utility patents may cost somewhere between $10,000–$20,000. For some people, that’s too much. I’d still say, look at investing in it. If your patent attorney tells you that you should get it, seriously consider it, because it’ll give you a lot of leverage in the future and increase your brand’s enterprise value. Design patents that protect how the product looks are fairly cheap—around $2,000–$3,000. Get those. As long as you have the IP foundation in place, you should be okay when you need to enforce it. That’s step one.
Steve Hutt:
Okay.
Mario Simonyan:
Step two: if you’re going to be selling to anyone, make sure you have an attorney who understands marketplaces and contracts, so they can review your retailer agreements and authorized supplier agreements.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
That’s really where it starts. Going back to your question: sub-$5 million brands may not even have this issue. I don’t want to make it seem like everyone has this problem. If you’re under $5 million, you may be the only distributor. You’re not selling to other parties; you’re the only one selling it. At that point, you have pretty good control over unauthorized sellers because your product isn’t floating around the market as much.
Mario Simonyan:
But you may still have infringers. For infringers, sometimes it’s as simple as taking on the role of the customer. Maybe once a month or once a quarter, spend some time searching the keywords your customer or potential customer would use. You’ll see if other infringing products or copycats show up.
Steve Hutt:
It’s interesting when I think about brands going into Seller Central and similar tools. I would think that early-stage brands on Amazon should look for pricing anomalies or strange review patterns. Those are early telltale signs that something’s going on that might not be in their favor.
Mario Simonyan:
Pricing is definitely one. But again, if you’re under $5 million, usually you won’t have that issue. You generally have good control. It’s when you start growing that it becomes one of those growing pains—new level, new devil.
Steve Hutt:
Oh man, that’s crazy. How does the AI acceleration that’s happening right now affect this? I think you said in another conversation that fundamentally a lot has changed in the last 18 months because of AI. What’s interesting is that what used to take counterfeiters weeks now takes minutes. I’m curious if you can walk me through how these bad actors are using AI to clone brands today.
Mario Simonyan:
Yeah. I love AI. I think it’s great. But it’s also a double-edged sword. While it has helped brand owners, attorneys, and law firms, it’s also helping bad actors.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
Previously, if a bad actor wanted to rip off your brand, they had to use the same photo you have on your listing and copy the same copywriting. They’d then create a new listing or new website.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
Nowadays, they can just grab your product photos and have AI modify them a bit, to the point that if you do a Google reverse image search, it won’t find the infringing product. It allows them to set up websites and create listings within minutes where before it took days or weeks. That’s what has exploded. We can now make a copy of your product and your website within minutes. Their ability to do more and cause more damage has been amplified.
Mario Simonyan:
We had one client that sells adult gummies. An infringer took their listing and created a new Shopify website with it. The images were AI-altered, the copywriting was altered—everything changed. What they didn’t change was the address and phone number. It still showed our client’s phone number. So our client had people calling, saying, “Hey, I placed an order for your product, but I never received it.”
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
Our client looked through their database and said, “You never placed an order with us. What do you mean? I paid you; here’s the website.” That’s how they found out about this other site. Sometimes it’s customers calling asking, “Where’s my order?” Other times, people place an order on a website created without your permission, get a terrible product, and then go to your Amazon product page to leave a bad review.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
You’re thinking, I’ve checked the quality of my product; that doesn’t sound like my product at all. But now you’ve got a one-star review on your Amazon listing.
Steve Hutt:
Oh my gosh.
Mario Simonyan:
That’s why monitoring your product reviews—not just seller feedback—is very wise.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah. I’d say a lot of people listening right now might have filed a trademark and then stuck it in a drawer and called that protection. It sounds like enforcement is actually a better growth lever overall. It’s great to have a trademark, but if you’re not enforcing it, what’s your thought process on that?
Mario Simonyan:
Look, in the IP world there are trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Trademark is the only one that can last indefinitely. There’s no expiration date on it. When do you need that trademark? I’d say if you’re above $5 million, contact our law firm. We can do a brand audit. We’ll see if there are unauthorized sellers or infringers and how much they may be taking from you.
Steve Hutt:
Okay.
Mario Simonyan:
That would be the first move. That’s where we use the trademark. There’s a lot we can do with it. Going back to what I said earlier about someone who understands the marketplace and IP law, there’s something called “trademark material difference.” Even if someone buys the exact product you sell—everything is the same—it can still be infringing.
Mario Simonyan:
A lot of resellers rely on the first-sale doctrine defense and say, “Steve, I’m not infringing. I bought the same product you’re selling. I just bought it from Whole Foods, Target, or Walmart.”
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
There are ways we can still make that product they’re selling infringing through trademark material difference. Material difference is a legal concept that says: if your original product offered under your brand comes with a warranty, pre-sale support, or post-sale support, then any reseller has to offer that too. If they can’t, they’re infringing. We help clients set up those guards, which we call IP moats—creating a moat around your brand where you have full control over pricing and who sells and who doesn’t.
Mario Simonyan:
It’s a bit more complicated than I just described, but that’s the ten-second version.
Steve Hutt:
Okay. What about internationalization? I’m in Canada, and I know Canada and the US, even though they’re different countries, tend to have a general understanding and appreciation for each other’s frameworks. We’re not complete idiots; we understand someone is infringing on something. But I feel a lot of bad actors are in countries that are not receptive to takedown notices. I’ve had enough DMCA takedown notices via Shopify for people cloning and copying stuff. What’s your thought process around these actors hiding behind VPNs in countries that aren’t exactly above board?
Mario Simonyan:
Yeah, great question. What we try to do is look at ROI. Coming from an operator perspective, if I’m talking to a brand owner, I’ll say, you may have a million infringers, but who’s really doing the damage? We don’t want to spend legal time going after a listing or website that sells one unit every five years.
Mario Simonyan:
If you present it that way to any entrepreneur or brand owner, they’ll say, yeah, let’s focus on ROI. With that said, let me go back to your question. On marketplaces, the number one revenue leak is usually Amazon, then Walmart. It’s usually inside the United States. Second to that, if they want to look at Canada, that’s another area we can explore for ROI. Trademark law is jurisdictional, meaning if your trademark is in the US, it’s only good in the US.
Steve Hutt:
I see.
Mario Simonyan:
It doesn’t matter if the infringer is from Canada but selling in the US, or they’re from Africa or China but selling in the US; we can still enforce it in the US. The good thing about Canada is that the same law firm here in the United States that represents Amazon can also help with Amazon Canada listings.
Steve Hutt:
I see. Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
But again, focus on ROI. If the law firm you’re talking to isn’t focused on ROI and what you should be doing from that perspective, you probably need a new attorney.
Steve Hutt:
All right, very cool. I want to talk about your framework for brand enforcement. I think it’s a good time to discuss why you created this framework. There’s an acronym around it, covering IP infringement and copycat issues. Can you talk about your framework, your trademarked framework, and how it might be valuable for brands above $5 million who are listening today?
Mario Simonyan:
We took a completely different approach to brand enforcement. Right now in the market, there are brand-enforcement agencies and litigation law firms. We’ve positioned ourselves in the middle and further differentiated ourselves. Let me explain the two other options. With brand-enforcement agencies, Steve, they’re just filing IP complaints on the marketplaces. Very shallow.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
On the other end, you’ve got litigation firms, like the one I mentioned earlier about my artificial turf doormats, where they say, “Okay, let’s go after them—but you have to pay us a quarter million or six figures.” That’s what it will cost because IP litigation is expensive. We thought, there’s a better option. Why can’t we enforce on the marketplaces themselves? If litigation is ever needed, then we can suggest it to the client and give them options. We have a network of litigation firms across the nation.
Mario Simonyan:
Agencies are too shallow. Litigation firms are too slow. Neither really has the marketplace expertise I believe brand owners deserve. So that was our first differentiator—to give clients what they truly need. Second, when we go after infringers, we’re not just looking at IP law and stopping there. We look at IP violations as the first pillar. Second, we look at policy violations. Sometimes, with marketplaces like Amazon, it feels like they care more about their own policies being violated than the actual law.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
Third, we look at regulatory compliance issues. Is this violator violating FTC, FDA, or Prop 65 in California? That’s what we address. In addition, we said, if we’re going to help brands stop revenue loss today, why don’t we also help them set up the foundation they need to increase their brand value if they ever want to exit? Their brand becomes more valuable because of the legal foundation we put in—authorized distributor agreements, a trademark material difference memorandum, tracking all authorized distributors, providing an IP gap analysis.
Mario Simonyan:
We show what IP they should be looking at, what’s missing in their portfolio, and the status of their current IP portfolio. We did all of that, and we’re the only law firm that does brand enforcement while also being concerned about increasing brand equity and enterprise value for tomorrow.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
That’s what we did. The results have been amazing. Our clients love this approach. I created it putting myself in the client’s shoes. If I could go back and represent myself, what would I have wanted when I had the grass-mat idea?
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Steve Hutt:
Think about it. There are a lot of people listening right now who are north of $5 million in revenue, wondering how long they’ll run this. Do they take it to $20 million? As revenue goes up, complexity usually goes up too. PE firms, aggregators, and others are going to do their due diligence. It’s not just earnings before tax and depreciation—they’re going to check if you have moats, defensibility around the business.
Mario Simonyan:
Exactly.
Steve Hutt:
I think that’s where you fit in. It’s very founder-minded thinking. If you’re looking to exit in a couple of years—say two to five years—imagine having an enforceable IP portfolio built into your brand. When a buyer looks at your company, they’ll say, ok, you’re not just selling a shiny widget in large volumes; you’re actually protecting the asset too. That’s important to them, and it must raise the exit multiple.
Mario Simonyan:
Exactly. And keep in mind, I’ve exited two brands myself and helped dozens of clients exit. I’ve seen how PE firms look at businesses and brands, and how aggregators look at them. One of the things they ask is, okay, great, you make a million dollars a month, but how do we know that’s going to be predictable? If we can show them enforcement history—how we protect IP and the moats we’ve built around the brand—obviously the multiple will go up.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
Right.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah.
Mario Simonyan:
I’ve been part of several M&A transactions, and one of the first things any buyer looks at is not just revenue, but the quality of that revenue. How predictable is it for the future? What’s stopping another knockoff brand from coming in and taking all your revenue?
Steve Hutt:
Yeah, this is amazing. Wow. It really is eye-opening. If your sweet spot is brands north of $5 million—because they have product-market fit and are more likely to be copied as they grow—there are two trains of thought for people listening. For those under $5 million, let’s talk about what you believe ESQgo can help with. Then we’ll talk about what happens for those who have found, or soon will find, that a lot of revenue is being lost to copycats and infringers.
Mario Simonyan:
Sure. If any of them have issues like this, or just want to say, “Hey, I’m curious, my marketing department may have mentioned this and said they’re taking care of it,” let’s look at it. Because it’s not a marketing department problem.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
Marketing teams—I love you guys, and I know you can do a lot with very little—but this is more of a revenue and legal problem.
Steve Hutt:
Right.
Mario Simonyan:
If a founder is thinking, “Hey, I need to look into this,” we can step in. Within 24 hours we’ll have a good idea and provide a report on whether they’re losing revenue and how much.
Steve Hutt:
Okay, that’s cool. That’s the brand enforcement report you’re talking about?
Mario Simonyan:
Exactly.
Steve Hutt:
Okay.
Mario Simonyan:
And that’s completely free.
Steve Hutt:
Okay, that’s awesome. I’ll make sure there’s a link in the show notes so people can access that. Regardless of where the business is today—north or south of $5 million—there’s still an opportunity to have this report done. It opens the door to saying, “Hey, we don’t believe you’re at that level yet,” or “You have product-market fit but aren’t being infringed yet,” and maybe there’s opportunity with trademarks or other IP protection systems to mitigate future risks.
Mario Simonyan:
Exactly. I’m also working on something for the sub-$5 million group: a checklist for what you should be doing even before you contact an attorney. This comes from experience. I was working on it last night and sent it to our marketing team. It should be ready in the next two to three weeks.
Steve Hutt:
Okay, beautiful. I’ll add that to the show notes so it’ll be part of this transcript. So, a checklist for sub-$5 million brands. If you’re north of $5 million, it sounds like you’ll have a brand enforcement report created so you can see what you can’t currently see. Founders and marketers are wearing a lot of hats, margins are squeezed, and they don’t realize there’s an issue. Some know they’re being copied but don’t know how to deal with it. Others don’t even know it’s happening, which is worse.
Steve Hutt:
Not knowing you’re being copied and experiencing fraud against your brand is dangerous. That’s where your report comes into play. That’s really cool.
Mario Simonyan:
Absolutely. Again, we look at brand enforcement as a revenue generator. Instead of focusing on launching a new product, let’s first protect what you’ve already built.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah, 100%. All right, Mario, this has been great. Whenever I have “legal” shows—and this isn’t really a legal show because it’s about profit maximization—it’s interesting because I’ve had other legal conversations about setting up corporations, LLCs, and those frameworks.
Steve Hutt:
This is different. These are companies and brands already on Amazon or Shopify, doing their thing, but they don’t realize that—as we talked about offline—the best form of flattery is plagiarism. We joke about it. The joke is that people can steal from anyone, but they chose to steal from you.
Mario Simonyan:
Yes. You’re special. You did something right.
Steve Hutt:
Yeah, you did something right. All right, Mario, thanks again for recording today. Have a lovely day. Everything will be in the show notes, and this has been really impactful.
Mario Simonyan:
Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it.
Steve Hutt:
All right, have yourself a great day. Well, that’s it for today’s episode. I’d like to thank you personally for being a loyal listener of eCommerce Fastlane. It’s my hope that this podcast offers you a ton of value through growth strategies, tactics, and exclusive insider tips on the best Shopify apps and marketing platforms—all with my personal goal to help you build, manage, grow, and scale a successful and thriving company powered by Shopify. Thanks for investing some time today and listening to the show. I’m so proud and excited that you have a growth mindset and are a constant learner. I truly appreciate you and your entrepreneurial journey. Enjoy the rest of the week and keep thriving with Shopify.
