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October 31, 2009
Pirates earn $600-M annually in sales of Marley unlicensed wares
The Bob Marley name, look and sound are estimated to generate an estimated $600 million a year in sales of unlicensed wares, according to a report from the Associated Press.. Legal sales, however, are much smaller — just $4 million for his descendants in 2007, according to Forbes magazine.
Heirs of the Jamaican reggae legend are plunging into the global trademark wars, seeking to enforce their exclusive rights to an image that has grown steadily in scope and appeal since the Jamaican superstar died of brain cancer in 1981 at age 36.
Now the family has hired Toronto-based Hilco Consumer Capital to protect their rights to the brand. Hilco CEO Jamie Salter believes Marley products could be a $1 billion business in a few years.
“The family managed all the rights before Hilco was brought on board,” said Marley’s fourth son, Rohan. “We didn’t have a real good grasp on the international scope prior to Hilco, nor the proper management.”
The turn to big business has stirred some grousing from die-hard fans in Internet chat rooms, who say it goes against the grain of a singer who preached non-materialism and popularised the Rastafarian credo of oneness with nature and marijuana consumption as a sacrament.
But Lorna Wainwright, who manages Tuff Gong, backed the move, saying “the world needs the Bob Marley police”.
“It’s a free-for-all out there with all the fakes, all the piracy,” she said. “It’s important to continue getting his real message out like when he was alive because the world is in a crisis and Bob Marley’s lyrics provide a solution.”
Rather than focusing on street vendors, who hawk everything from Bob Marley T-shirts to beach towels, the partnership is creating a new line of products dubbed ‘House of Marley’ and will police the trademark vigilantly.
Snowboards and tropical Jamaica may seem an odd pairing, but they’re among a wide variety of planned merchandise featuring the dreadlocked musician’s image, name or message — backpacks, stationery, headphones, musical instruments, restaurants.
Items are expected to hit the market in mid-2010.
Marley “would be amused to know that his face is being used to brand a wide range of products and services, some of which he himself might never have thought of using,” said Professor Carolyn Cooper, former coordinator of the reggae studies unit at Jamaica’s University of the West Indies.
But Cooper added in an interview that the Marley family is absolutely right to emulate the estates of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and other pop heroes in protecting the trademark. Presley’s estate brought in nearly $55 million in revenue last year.