Upstart Fermata Partners has won the licensing business at the University of Georgia, marking the third school it has snagged away from industry leader Collegiate Licensing Co. since June.
Fermata, an Atlanta-based licensing agency founded in early 2012 by four former CLC executives, signed a five-year contract with Georgia last week. The new deal will go into effect July 1, 2015, and Fermata will be the agent for the Bulldogs’ worldwide trademark licensing program.
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Fermata will handle licensing for Georgia and Uga starting next year.
Photo by: UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
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CLC was the school’s longtime licensing agent, but the IMG College company lost out to Fermata on a competitive request for proposal process that began in the summer. A six-person committee at Georgia made the recommendation to go with Fermata, which earlier this year also won the licensing business at Kentucky and Miami.
Derek Eiler, who was formerly the chief operating officer at CLC before becoming one of Fermata’s founding partners,
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said his firm’s deep relationships in the college space are now paying dividends.
“Being smarter and nimbler is part of it, but relationships get you to the table,” Eiler said of his 12-person firm. “There’s a long-standing trust that we have from 20-plus years in the business.”
Georgia is expected to formally announce its new relationship with Fermata this week. Financial terms of the deal were not immediately available. Licensing deals typically pay the school 10 percent to 15 percent on the wholesale cost of the product, depending on the arrangement, so a $10 shirt wholesale would net the school $1 to $1.50. They sometimes include a signing bonus as well.
In CLC’s latest published rankings from the 2013-14 year, Georgia ranked fifth nationally in sales of school merchandise. Georgia generated $5.9 million in gross royalties from its CLC deal in 2013-14, “making it a very significant revenue line for us,” said Greg McGarity, Georgia’s athletic director. The Bulldogs share much of that revenue with the University of Georgia Foundation.
“The committee was unanimous that we go with Fermata,” McGarity said. “We really were in a no-lose situation with Fermata and CLC, but I think there was a sense that developed that Fermata was the way to go. Their experience spoke volumes.”
Not only do Fermata’s recent wins establish the firm as a legitimate competitor to CLC, it sets the stage for what could be a transformational next two years. Licensing deals at Alabama, Arizona, Auburn, Notre Dame and Syracuse, schools that have had deep relationships with CLC in the past, will be up for renewal.
So, at some point in the next year or so, Eiler and his team of ex-CLC employees will go head-to-head against many of their former CLC colleagues to compete for Alabama’s licensing business. They’ll be presenting to Alabama’s athletic director, Bill Battle, who founded CLC 33 years ago and hired and trained most of the executives who will be pitching for the Tide’s business.
Subsequent to those deals will come the big one — Texas, the school that has topped CLC’s annual rankings of merchandise sales for nine consecutive years.
