Laird Hamilton’s eponymous Superfood accused of brazenly stealing from starving artists: “Do the right thing. I’ll give every dollar you owe to the employees that poured countless hours into all of the concepts we created for you.”

Gauntlet thrown.

Another day, another dollar, or so the saying goes but some capture that dollar a little easier, catch stacks upon stacks upon stacks of them, in fact. Take the case of big wave icon, tow pioneer Laird Hamilton. The Malibu-ite, by way of Maui of course, pulled in many dollars over the years what with being the face of Davidoff Blue Water and starting a plant-based coffee creamer company.

Laird’s Superfood is, without doubt, a success story earning millions upon millions on the stock market, bringing health and happiness to homes… except, allegedly, to homes of starving artists.

Brandon Ball, founder of Starch Creative, took to Instagram yesterday, posting pictures of a Superfood snowy pop-up plus plans for that exact same snowy pop-up and declaring:

I’ve never said anything. I consistently swallow pride, take the high road, and move on to fight another day. But today I’m done. I’m tired of seeing the look on my teams face when their work is stolen and used without payment.

Consistently we are asked to do what is called an unpaid “RFP” (request for proposal). This typically includes design concepts, with a contractual obligation and guarantee that if the client chooses your work, you will be paid for it. The reason companies do this is so they can solicit free design by leveraging small design companies against each other.

Here is another example of that happening. @lairdsuperfood approached Starch in February of 2021 and asked us to provide design ideas under an unpaid RFP. Being Covid, we had to say yes. We were fighting for our lives. Fast forward to them telling us they have decided to go a different direction and wouldn’t be moving forward with our concepts….

Now here you see the launch of our concept on their Instagram. They took our teams creative work and used it anyway. They never paid us a dime.

It’s unfortunate but this happens constantly. Creative teams are quiet and never speak up because they don’t want to impact future opportunities. It’s no different than stealing art or music. Creative isn’t free.

Your move @lairdsuperfood . Do the right thing. I’ll give every dollar you owe us to the employees that poured countless hours into all of the concepts we created for you. #laird #lairdsuperfood

Many comments all supportive of the li’l guy, not Team Laird.

Do you think he will do the right thing?

More as the story develops.