Giddy Goat and the Curious Case of the Copy-Paste Brand
A tale of dogs, ice cream, intellectual property, and one very unoriginal goat.
Gather round everyone! Before we begin today, we have a bedtime tale of branding and belligerence.
A clever dog once had a great idea,
To bring frozen joy and canine cheer.
With tasty treats and and scoops to sell,
They built it up and did quite well.
But far away, across the sea,
A goat was watching jealously.
They thought, “Why innovate or strategise,
When I can simply plagiarise?
I’ll copy the lot, right down to the lid…”
And then that’s exactly what they did.
Now the clever dog, with jaw askew,
Watches the goat sell its knock-off déjà vu.
It looks the same, but lacks the spark,
The bite is weak, and it has no bark.
So, here’s the lesson, both sad and true:
If you steal the heart, the soul goes too.
The goat may grin, but the charm won’t last.
Because a hollow copy fades twice as fast.
Picture this. You spend years building your brand from scratch. You taste-test. You market-test. You refine obsessively over months and until you manage to convince a suspicious public that yes, dogs can eat ice cream and no, it’s not weird. You don’t sleep. You burn through your savings. You give it a ridiculous name that somehow works. You build a loyal following of fluffy little evangelists. And just when it feels like you’ve made it and all the hard work has paid off… you wake up to discover that someone on the other side of the world has copied the whole thing like a student panic-Googling an essay five minutes before it's due.
That is the real-world horror story currently faced by New Zealand’s Scoop Dog.
Scoop Dog, if you don’t already know, is a rather delightful Kiwi company that started out selling dog-friendly ice cream mixes. If your instinct is to roll your eyes, I challenge you to find anything more emotionally bulletproof than a golden retriever licking peanut butter gelato from a branded dog bowl. This is a business built on joy (you heartless monster).
Founded during the nationwide lockdown in 2020 by entrepreneurs Aleisha and Jono (and their original Scoop Dog, Rufus), the company began with a simple but adorable idea: if we get dessert, why shouldn’t our dogs? What started as a side hustle quickly gained momentum, with Aleisha hand-making the first batches in her kitchen before scaling up to meet demand. Now operating out of a full factory in South Dunedin, Scoop Dog offers a full range of ice cream and yoghurt mixes, sprinkles, toppings, bone broth, even aroma-infused bubbles. It’s stocked nationwide, online, and in the hearts of dog owners everywhere.
It’s also made with actual care. Goat’s milk has long been a solid, more pet-friendly alternative to cow’s milk due to its lower lactose content. The ingredient list is clean and nutritionally sound, with real protein and fats, not rebranded sludge with a novelty sticker chasing an Instagram trend. But it’s not the ingredient that matters. It’s how you serve it. And through grit and graft, Scoop Dog struck frozen gold.
Full disclosure: I like Scoop Dog. I like the business. I like the scrappy start-up success story. And my two dogs especially like the products (and they can be fussy little aristocrats at times). You should see their eyes light up like a crack addict getting a fix when they hear the freezer door open and ice cream is back on the menu. But as this piece will show, I’m clearly not the only one who likes them.
Enter the Giddy Goat
Meet Giddy Goat. A UK-based brand that appears to have looked at Scoop Dog and decided, “yeah that’ll do” before recreating it with all the subtlety of a taxidermist armed with a trowel and a stapler.
They’ve swiped the visual identity wholesale, right down to the playful tone. The fonts are nearly identical. The label layout is eerily familiar. The pastel colour schemes mirror Scoop Dog’s to the near exact shade. They even mimicked the ‘O’ shaped like a little tongue and snout. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this is flattery with a balaclava and a crowbar telling you to hand over your wallet. It’s not a nod, it’s full-blown Scoopy cosplay.
And for the cherry on top of this suspicious sundae? The Giddy Goat website politely blocks New Zealand visitors and redirects them to a dead-end 404. Nothing says “innocent mistake” like geo-fencing the country you just ripped off.
Subtle. But VPNs exist, so let’s dig in.
Spot the difference (if you can)
Let’s start with the flavour line-up.
I’ll be fair. Peanut butter and carob are pretty commonly found in the dog treat universe. But if the near-identical flavour set is just a coincidence, then I am three corgis in a trench coat.
As for ingredients? At the time of writing, Giddy Goat doesn’t list theirs on their website. A bold move for a consumable product, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the formula also rang a few familiar bells.
What about the wording on the packaging then?
Lead line:
Scoop Dog: Ice cream mix for dogs.
Giddy Goat: Ice cream mix for dogs and cats.
Truly groundbreaking, they added cats. The distinction practically writes itself.
Instructions:
Scoop Dog: Add water and freeze.
Giddy Goat: Simply add water and freeze.
The word “simply” really elevates things, doesn’t it? A true game changer. I should be grateful really. I’ve been adding water to Scoop Dog the hard way for years. It never occurred to me I should be doing it simply.
Sarcasm aside, on their own, some of these elements are actually fairly standard. You can’t trademark a generic phrase like ‘just add water’. But when the fonts, the colours, and the layout all neatly line up, it stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like a corporate organ harvest.
This isn’t new, but it is getting worse
Copycat branding isn’t exactly new. Apple has spent decades in trench warfare with phone manufacturers whose designs resemble an iPhone in an unconvincing fake moustache, and AirPods have endless knock-offs with functionality ranging from “surprisingly ok for the price” to “why is this heating up and beeping suddenly?”
If it’s stylish, solves a problem, or went viral on TikTok, you can bet your bottom dollar there will be a hundred suspiciously similar items suddenly available and named as if they were smuggled through customs via thesaurus. Just look at the original Antsy Labs Kickstarter darling Fidget Cube, now surrounded by an infinite army of clones with names like “Stress Relief Cube” and “Anti-Anxiety Box”.
But there’s a difference between being inspired by something and just pressing Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V on someone’s entire brand and business model and calling it a day. The Scoop Dog vs. Giddy Goat situation is a sobering reminder that a good idea can quickly become a free buffet for the creatively bankrupt.
What to do when someone rips you off
1. Trademark early, trademark often. Get your brand name, logo, and key phrases locked down in your home market and any country you plan on expanding into in the future. It’s boring, it’s bureaucratic, and it feels wildly premature when you’re still operating out of your garage. Do it anyway.
2. Document everything. Dates, designs, concepts, packaging, brand guidelines. Keep a smug little archive of your brilliance, because one day you might need to prove who had the idea first.
3. Make a noise. Shame is free. Social media is the great equaliser, and the public loves a literal underdog. If you are in the obvious right, then be loud about it. Scoop Dog has been admirably vocal about the Giddy Goat situation, and it’s working. The story is gaining traction. People are mad. Rightly so.
4. Lawyer up. When all else fails, unleash the legal hounds. It’s not always affordable or easy, but intellectual property law exists for a reason. Even a stern letter from a lawyer can spook copycats into retreating.
Altogether, it pays to remember that branding isn’t just fonts and logos. It’s your business’s personality in full costume. It’s the voice, the vibe, and the gut feeling people get when they see your product on a shelf. Having that ripped off is more than irritating, it’s existential. It’s theft of the thing you built that made you, you.
What makes it worse is that Scoop Dog isn’t some secretive, territorial juggernaut. They’ve describe themselves as wanting to “carve a path for other businesses to follow.” That’s the attitude of people who want to see others succeed too, not hoard all the ice cream to themselves. But that’s not the same as laying down a red carpet for someone else to nick the packaging and charge at the checkout.
When you build a brand with heart, people feel it. They trust it. They root for it. When you steal a brand, you don’t inherit the warmth, you inherit doubt. You get cynicism and side-eyes, not smiles. It ends up being the branding equivalent of reheated canned soup; technically edible, but deeply uninspiring and unmistakably sad.
So, here’s to Scoop Dog. May their scoops stay cold, their bark stay loud, and their branding stay theirs.
And a parting word for Giddy Goat. Nobody is saying you can’t set up a business selling frozen treats for furry friends. Just don’t lift and shift from an already successful business and pretend it’s creative or original. If you want to be proud of your brand, build one. Spend the time and effort creating something that uniquely reflects you. And if you won’t do that, at the very least update your label to read: “Ice cream mix for dogs and copycats”. It’d be the first honest thing on the packaging.