Creative Tops and Portmeirion reach agreement on designs

Creative Tops is withdrawing two of its tabletop designs, having come to an amicable agreement with Portmeirion.

Orchard Garden and Wild Strawberries, both of which are part of Creative Tops’ Kew Royal Botanic Gardens collection, will be retired at the end of this year. The move has been made to help avoid confusion with Portmeirion’s Botanic Garden collection.

“It has been suggested that there could be similarities between the two designs purely as a consequence of using the genre of botanical artwork,” Creative Tops’ marketing manager Clare Farthing told HousewaresLive.net. “But we’ve spent a lot of time building a strong brand name and so has Portmeirion, and we didn’t want to create any confusion in the marketplace. So we thought we’ll move away from that look.

“The designs have been around for 18 months and we wanted to refresh the ranges anyway,” she went on. “It means we can develop some new ideas to strengthen our Kew Royal Botanic Gardens range, and we’re going to be showcasing some great new designs at Spring Fair. There’s going to be one that’s much more contemporary along with the popular traditional styling.

“This is a joint decision,” she added, “and we’re looking at this whole situation as a really positive move for Creative Tops.”

A statement put out by Portmeirion said that its managing director, Michael Haynes, and Creative Tops’ managing director, Pat Dawson, “are both pleased that this result has been achieved”.

The Orchard Garden and Wild Strawberries patterns were both interpreted from historical designs in the Kew Gardens archives.