Challenge
Snowboarding and skateboarding are sports that thrive on the fringe. Youth-driven and urbanized, the sports represent a flourishing counterculture with its own wardrobe, equipment and soundtrack. Rather than go head-to-head with established industry giants like Burton, some manufacturers of board gear and apparel build their customer bases by avoiding the mainstream.
The dilemma has been that many of the cutting-edge manufacturers lack the sound business practices to make it over the long haul. Enter the brandbase management team. With decades of industry experience, the founders of brandbase wanted to marry their professional commercial insight to the raw creativity of independent gear and apparel makers.
The brandbase team decided to form a confederation of brands, each with a distinct identity, which would be managed from a central parent company in Broomfield, Colorado. They identified companies to acquire and began to develop brands in-house as well. They wanted to bring in the leaders of the independent companies, offer them equity in a new holding company, and provide them with design expertise, sales knowledge, retail contacts and a distribution network.
From its first days, the company entered into talks with Denver-based private equity firm CHB Capital Partners, but CHB needed a more seasoned corporate vehicle with an operating business before it could commit funds. brandbase needed to develop a corporate structure that would encompass multiple brand names and allow room for future growth. It also needed merger and acquisition help for some initial asset purchases. In addition, brandbase needed intellectual property advice to license industry patents and to register various brands and trademarks, both in the United States and abroad.
Solution
In May 2007, members of the Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck Corporate & Business Group began work on corporate entity formation for brandbase in the United States and overseas. The Mergers & Acquisitions Group stepped up to facilitate the acquisition of key assets for the brandbase portfolio of brands. The Intellectual Property & Technology Group helped clean up the trademark portfolios of the acquired companies and worked with management from the early conceptual phase to protect new brands developed by the company.
As brandbase’s corporate structure began to take shape, Brownstein attorneys provided advice with regard to a $6.5 million private equity investment from CHB. They also offered employment law and benefits counsel for the emerging corporation.
Today, brandbase is the proud owner of five separate snowboard and skate-related brands, with others in development. Brownstein continues to help the company with general legal support and ongoing intellectual property work related to new product development. The initial success of the company has prompted another round of equity financing, and brandbase appears poised to continue its mission of bringing sound business to the terrain park, and beyond. |