Before you say “yes” to that dream career, you better read the fine print.
According to wedding dress designer Hayley Paige Gutman, noncompetes can result in the establishment of their own businesses in the same industry and a predetermined amount of time working for a company after the job ends.
Gutman with a Senate monetary policy committee on Monday, three-and-a-half decades after the start of a noncompete constitutional battle with her former boss, JLM Couture, and three weeks after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission banning noncompetes.
Hayley Paige. Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Runway Heroes
Five years after leaving her job as a wedding gown designer, Gutman was denied access to the noncompete.
“I may start over with a new brand, I could open new social media accounts and repair, but I may not work in my chosen craft”, Gutman said.
The FTC that around one in five American, or about 30 million people, are under noncompetes. The bureau estimates that the agency’s ban on the agreements may result in an increase in the average employee’s annual salary of $524.
The noncompete restrictions was set to take effect starting, but may delay, or even withdraw, its execution.
Opponents of the ban, however, say businesses from noncompetes because employees can’t use what they learned to start rival companies. Additionally, the contracts help to extend employee retention and guard trade secrets.
In her evidence, Gutman extensive how she signed an employment contract with a noncompete clause in 2011, at the age of 25, with JLM Couture. Nine years later, JLM alleged that Gutman had violated the noncompete by using the @misshayleypage social media accounts, which had more than a million followers, to encourage other organizations without JLM’s agreement.
JLM that the business was the reason for Gutman’s cultural media popularity, and appearances on TLC’s “State Well to the Dress” and “Say Yes To America” reality TV shows merely happened because Kleinfeld Bridal, where “Say Yes to the Dress” is filmed, is one of JLM’s biggest clients.
“I spent every dollar I ever earned designing wedding dresses to fight for my right to do so once again”, Gutman said in her testimony, adding later, “I want to demonstrate how noncompetes operate shamelessly on a one-way highway: if we are not limiting competition among corporations, why are we limiting it among individuals”?
Let a girl design a dress???? ?
In May, Gutman and JLM finally granted her the rights to the “Hayley Paige” name and social media accounts. Gutman agreed to pay JLM $263, 000.
In an interview with the Independent Business Podcast, Gutman, a now-owner of a small business, discussed her lengthy legal battle.
In response to a question about advice for fellow small business owners, Gutman said, “The thing you work on works on you. The obstacle is the way.”