Help! Other Vendor Copying from My Site!

pushing books

Hi,

I have a problem. Since i started business early this year, a few new competitors have entered the market selling the same products as me at the same places as me.

One of them is an acquaintance of my family. When i started this business, he showed some interest in my business model and started to visit the stalls that i had around the island.

Shortly after, I noticed some ads in tampines selling the same products as mine and decided to check them out as their marketing message was the same as mine.

Upon checking out the livejournal stated, i found out that it was that guy who was running it and alot of his content was directly lifted from my site. I'm very sure its from my livejournal as the whole format of the t&c was the same and word for word except for the delivery details and contact details. Even the colour was exactly the same. He even posted pictures of my flea/bazaar stalls on his site showing the books. I have quite a distinctive table cloth and i arrange all the books in a certain way.

He also started to participate in alot of the events that i've been participating in and i saw him a couple of times selling a few stalls down from me. I even saw him giving out flyers that were exactly the same as my dad's site except that the contact details were different.

He even started to take from suppliers that are our contacts. This supplier does not supply to others as they themselves are retailers. However, we got their contact through a close friend who was a close friend of the boss and only after we explained our business to him and our market, did he decide that we would not compete with his business directly.

After purchasing from them for some time we found out that the other guy was also getting his books from them. And they were only supplying him because he was acquainted with us and they probably thought we were in the same business or doing some sort of partnership with him. Which basically means that he was indirectly using his connection with us to use the special discount that was given to us. The supplier only works with registered businesses to ensure that it is legitimate. Since the guy's business is not registered, he is kind of riding on us to get the corporate discount as he would only be able to get a regular customer discount at most.

Since he is using pictures of my stall on his site and my dad's flyers (except the contact details), i'm afraid that if he has a bad reputation, it may have a bad image/branding transference to my business as well as my dad's as his marketing tools are copied from us.

Btw my dad's business and my business are registered separately as we have a different range/market as well as biz model.

I've sent an equiry to Ace(http://www.ace.org.sg) but they haven't replied and its been some months now.

What should i do? Has anyone encountered similar situations?