Dymo

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Dymo

Basic information
Founded	1958
Legal structure	Subsidiary
Industry	Electronics
Official website	https://www.dymo.com/

Dymo Corporation is an American manufacturing company of handheld label printers and thermal-transfer printing tape as accessory, embossing tape label makers, and other printers such as CD and DVD labelers and durable medical equipment.

The company is a subsidiary of Newell Brands.

Anti-consumer practices

Restriction to first party labels

The Dymo LabelWriter 550 Turbo and other 500 series label printers have introduced a controversial feature: DRM (Digital Rights Management) via RFID tags in their consumables. Affected printers come with "Automatic Label Recognition™", a marketing term that translates to DRM implementation in thermal labels. This system restricts users to purchasing only Dymo-branded labels, potentially increasing costs and limiting consumer choice.

This move has sparked frustration among users and prompted the hacking community to develop a solution to remove the restrictions that is available via a free license on GitHub.

Business Tactics and Other Models

This type of business tactic is not unfamiliar among different industries or variances in product and can be found in the refrigerator industry in the form of water filters, power tool industry in the form of batteries, automotive industry in the form of parts or diagnostic software, or most commonly known the printing industry.

In some cases, it can be that a standard for the consumable hasn't been agreed upon or the technology is proprietary to the company, but in most cases it's a form of greed locking the consumer into a product that they are then required to purchase in many cases at a significantly inflated price. For example, a printer company might sell a printer at next to or less than the cost to build it as a loss leader, but then now that the consumer has bought into their product line, they are obliged through marketing, embedded DRM, or necessity to purchase the consumables for the product from the original manufacturer.