Getting his PHD and coaching the middle school team were not what was allowing him to live in Boulder. If he needed additional income, he could have taken more clients.
Getting his PHD and coaching the middle school team were not what was allowing him to live in Boulder. If he needed additional income, he could have taken more clients.
The crazy thing is, we’ve all been wondering how this setup actually worked for YEARS — there have been endless threads and posts questioning where the money and structure was coming from. It’a been a house of cards and basically everyone other than the involved parties saw it.
Here’s my take on it — Schwartz made the name but he didn’t make the brand. No one watches Tinman elite on YouTube or buys their merch because he’s the coach, but because of the guys on the team. According to their release, he was compensated (don’t see why they or Tammy would lie about that), but I don’t believe that the team owes him anything else. It seems like Drew needed a name for his club and that worked and sounded best at the time, and made an essentially unknown name into a (my guess)several hundred thousand dollar brand.
The club has reached a point where it is much, much more notable than the coach. From my understanding, Drew started the club, not Schwartz, and it sounds like Schwartz took no steps to get ownership of the team. I honestly don’t even think that Schwartz necessarily deserves to be compensated for the merch sales. Did he design it? No. Did he market it? No. Did he ask for money? No.
If someone does absolutely all of the work for something that you put your name on, is it really yours? I don’t think so
The name is also under a trademark by Drew, Schwartz has absolutely no legal entitlement to the name Tinman.
Schwartz took absolutely no steps to protect himself for the absolute possibility of him being replaced, that’s on him.
Sure, they should have gave him a more definitive reason as to why they removed him from the team, but if he was not able to properly coach the full team, I believe that they had every right to remove and replace him while keeping their brand.
These kids are cowards! They saw all the hashtags supporting Tom in their last post and where do they post their PR statement? In their Instagram story! They don’t want people to publicly react to that bogus statement.
tintake wrote:
Here’s my take on it — Schwartz made the name but he didn’t make the brand. No one watches Tinman elite on YouTube or buys their merch because he’s the coach, but because of the guys on the team. According to their release, he was compensated (don’t see why they or Tammy would lie about that), but I don’t believe that the team owes him anything else. It seems like Drew needed a name for his club and that worked and sounded best at the time, and made an essentially unknown name into a (my guess)several hundred thousand dollar brand.
The club has reached a point where it is much, much more notable than the coach. From my understanding, Drew started the club, not Schwartz, and it sounds like Schwartz took no steps to get ownership of the team. I honestly don’t even think that Schwartz necessarily deserves to be compensated for the merch sales. Did he design it? No. Did he market it? No. Did he ask for money? No.
If someone does absolutely all of the work for something that you put your name on, is it really yours? I don’t think so
The name is also under a trademark by Drew, Schwartz has absolutely no legal entitlement to the name Tinman.
Schwartz took absolutely no steps to protect himself for the absolute possibility of him being replaced, that’s on him.
Sure, they should have gave him a more definitive reason as to why they removed him from the team, but if he was not able to properly coach the full team, I believe that they had every right to remove and replace him while keeping their brand.
You’re absolutely right in all aspects, and Tom was way to naive and forgiving going into it, but I’m not sure how it would work if Tom actually sued them to remove his name from the team (or if he wanted to sue to be cut into future money).
Either way, IMO this looks bad enough for tme that they should rename the club anyway.
tintake wrote:
The name is also under a trademark by Drew, Schwartz has absolutely no legal entitlement to the name Tinman.
You must be in insider to know that off hand. Legally is one thing, but registering someone else's long held name as your trademark alone is shady and unethical as hell.
namniT wrote:
tintake wrote:
The name is also under a trademark by Drew, Schwartz has absolutely no legal entitlement to the name Tinman.
You must be in insider to know that off hand. Legally is one thing, but registering someone else's long held name as your trademark alone is shady and unethical as hell.
Someone said they looked it up and it had even filed by Drew in December 2020, which makes it even more suspect because they might have known they’d fire Tom at that point.
rojo wrote:
We've udpated the initial article.
In terms of payment. Let me clarify a few things as Weldon clearly didn't read everything. The TME guys were paying Tom $2k per month - a discount on the standard $200 per month he charges. Drew's adidas contract had a separate coaching stipdend in it that Tammy said was around the range of a beginning teacher's salary,.
She has also said he never made $60k from the team so I would guess he was making in the 50s from the team if we combine the two income sources once the TME guys starting paying him (she said he didn't charge them at first) as a stipend in the 30s seems about right based on what I know about the normal coaching stipend % and the rumors of how large Drew's contract is.
But according to Tammy, he was getting zero in merch sales and zero from the athletes doing their own coaching on the side.
To move from cheap Idaho to expnesive Boulder with a family for 50k a year and no multi-year guarantee in writing was not smart. But we as runners all know how powerful the dream is (when I started at Cornell the salary was 13k per year and they had a ton of people wanting the job) and we also all know how powerful the coach-athlete bond is when things are going well. They probably never imagined it would turn ugly.
This whole thing reminds me of why they say never to go into business with friends or relatives. You can't imagine something will go wrong but it inevitably does and then it's awful afterwards.
live in Boulder area off 50k/yr with a family? Good god... lemme guess...did Tinman have to commute from like Greeley ? Or did Drew let him sleep at the house? people move out here with no plan thinking it’s cheap mountain town (by reputation out of state i guess that’s how they picture it)....Usually people be moving here for 2 years tops if not for school (University of Colorado)and then they go back to wherever they came from before the new set of distance runners come in. Sad but We see it over and over.
This will likey end up with a BUSINESS DEAL where Tom Schwartz gets a small fraction of the Tinman Elite business in exchange for the guys to be able to use his name. Nothing to see here....
lonesome moon wrote:
namniT wrote:
You must be in insider to know that off hand. Legally is one thing, but registering someone else's long held name as your trademark alone is shady and unethical as hell.
Someone said they looked it up and it had even filed by Drew in December 2020, which makes it even more suspect because they might have known they’d fire Tom at that point.
I'm not an expert at this, but Tinman should have rights to his Tinman name as the "prior user", akin to prior art in patents, according to this primer. He should be able to get his name back.
https://www.fr.com/prior-user-vs-federal-registrant-whose-mark-is-it-anyway1/Here’s how it would work if Tom tried to sue; it wouldn’t. The name and logos for “Tinman Elite” are registered to “Tinman elite, LLC”, presumably owned by Drew Hunter(addressed to his house).
I actually just found that Tom did trademark “Tinman junior elite”, before tinman elite was trademarked, which makes me think that Tom is not ignorant to giving Drew the brand, but allowing.
Yep, you caught me red handed. Nice job Sherlock!
Or maybe I just searched a public database
Let’s use our brains here
From that site:
Conclusion
While owning a trademark registration provides many significant benefits, registration by itself does not conclusively establish the owner’s exclusive right to use the mark. Prior users have significant protection under the Trademark Act, and those rights should not be overlooked in any trademark dispute.
Tinman will always have superior claim to the name Tinman in the territory of running because of his long established and continuing prior use. TME should get going with choosing a new name and rebranding. Tinman should go ahead and register/claim the trademark ad the prior user.
Maybe, but I find it very unlikely that Tom goes to sue them, I think it’s just likely that they cut some financial agreement like what someone previously said in this thread.
What did their recent Instagram story say about all this?
Did it explain why they got rid of him?
Same statement that Wejo posted earlier in the thread.
If Tinman Elite do what the Tinman Track Club did, and drop the Tinman component of their name, could somebody sue them for false advertising?
I’m not sure how the whole “Tinman” trademark issue would really play out given that he clearly took this name from the Wizard of Oz character, which is from the very early 20th century and presumably has entered the public domain. I guess he could still trademark it even if he couldn’t copyright it, but it still sounds strange to claim “prior user” status when you obviously stole it yourself.
Bingo - unless you get an IP attorney to work on contingency, I'm guessing Tinman won't want to fund the costs for very long. And the Hunters have nine kids - don't know what the dad does for a living but that is a bunch of mouths to feed.
Let me help you out, since Tinman has yet to be trademarked. All Schwartz has to show is reasonable proof that he 1) established the name; 2) established the name as a moniker of himself, his name; and 3) show usage. I think a simple website like LetsrRun.com shows that he has done the above. And what you're missing, tintake, is that to have a successful brand, you have to be authentic and have a great story. Without Tom Schwartz as Coach, there is no longer the connection to Tinman. So when every kid that doesn't know your background starts to learn about the name of the Tinman Elite group, this abomination of a situation will arise and the market cap potential of the brand will not be reached because there is no connection to the name, no authenticity and it will turn some consumers off. Imagine them in the future trying to wordsmith why they named themselves Tinman: uh, we named ourselves after the Wizard of Oz character wanting a heart. Period.
tintake wrote:
Maybe, but I find it very unlikely that Tom goes to sue them, I think it’s just likely that they cut some financial agreement like what someone previously said in this thread.