Are official Onesies now available at Zazzle? I see in the Mother's Day guide that designs for Onesies are requested. Page 4.
I wonder if it is referring to the "baby bodysuit" since the department title shows "Baby Bodysuits and One-Pieces".
I noticed while looking at these that the image in the left side description shows some that are no longer available.
Here's a long, interesting thread on this very topic:
"I contacted Gerber about using "onesie" in listings; here's their response."
Thanks for reaching out.
I do have some product information and contact information I will be happy to share.
Gerber owns the exclusive right to use the mark "Onesies," and any confusingly similar term, in connection with infant's and children's clothing. Consumers do not have authorization to use the term ONESIES, ONESIE, ONSIE, ONEZIE, or anything confusingly similar to describe infant or children's clothing UNLESS the item is a genuine Gerber product. You can identify such garments, among other ways, by the presence of the Gerber baby head tag in the neck area and a rectangular white tag with the word "onesies" in blue located just above the left leg opening of the garment. If you believe you are selling genuine Gerber products, please contact Gerber using the provided information. onesiesbrand@gerberchildrenswear.com
Note: This policy applies to new and used items. Link to Gerber Childrenswear Trademark Policy: http://www.gerberchildrenswear.com/brand-standards/ Best of luck on your new business venture."
I believe its being used improperly here because it's being used as a noun rather than as an adjective and they haven't included the ® after Onesies.
Assuming they are referring to actual Gerber Onesies I think its supposed to be written like
... Onesies® brand by Gerber or
... Onesies® brand baby bodysuits
This image that appears in the About this Product info
is confusing because there is only one style bodysuit actually available and it must be the Basic style since the image previews don't show a Gerber neck label or the Onesies name at the leg opening as is shown in this little picture. And if they were actual Gerber Onesies then I'd think they'd be all over including that in the product info. 😉
My guess is that at one time, Zazzle did offer authentic Onesies® brand by Gerber as an option and of course would have had permission to refer to them as such, but at some point they stopped offering them as a choice and just never updated this image.
Also interesting is that if you search for [onesies] spelled correctly you get zero results. But if you search for [onsies] you get 340k results and of the few I clicked on, none of them had any version of "onesies" in the tags or title. Almost like they know "onesies" can't be used on the site, but they have search set to bring up baby bodysuits if a customer is searching for that using a common misspelling of what to them is just a generic type of clothing.
It is weird. If you try some other misspellings, like say "onesee", you only get a smattering of results and from the ones I clicked on, they come up because the designer used that misspelling in their tags and/or titles. (Which is, uhm, against Gerber's rules- using creative spellings to try to skirt the trademark issue.) But "onsies" (which I think is probably a common honest misspelling, I didn't even know the correct spelling was "onesies" until looking at the Gerber site) brings up 340k results even with the category filter set to Baby Bodysuits and One-Pieces. And every product on each of the 17 scrollable pages of results were actually baby bodysuits. It seems like search is programmed to translate "onsies" into "baby body suits". Which is probably a very gray area legally because while neither Zazzle nor the majority of designers are using "onesies" (or a creative variant) to describe/advertise the products, search is using a variant to bring up non-Gerber bodysuits.
I can see what a big problem this is for anyone selling baby body suits regardless of actual brand/maker. If the majority of the general population knows and refers to some generic item as B, how do you market your product and get it found if you can't use B in describing it? If average person searches for B and gets zero results, are they going to think "whelp, they don't carry what I want" and go elsewhere, or are they going to think "ok, let me try calling it something else"? I didn't even know myself until this thread that "onesie" is a trademarked brand and not just a generic garment type.
Gerber Childrenswear is proud of the outstanding name recognition of the Onesies® brand in the marketplace (95%) and will continue to be aggressive in protecting our trademark ... in the market. The Onesies® trademark, or any confusingly similar variation thereof (e.g., “Onesie” or “Onezees”), may not be used as a generic descriptor or a noun; it should be used only as an adjective when referring to the Onesies® brand by Gerber®.
I'd been searching the forum for an update to this question after also seeing TONS of products with titles and tags saying "onesie". Just did a test using the word in a description, and was presented with this really helpful alert.
Because I like to geek out on tech, I did more tests, and the warning shows up if you use it in the title or in a tag as well.
It would be AMAZING if this was in place for other common mistakenly-used trademarked phrases. This is the first time I've come across this type of warning and found it really helpful.
