CEO Talks: Jamie Salter on Building Authentic Brands Into a $32 Billion Juggernaut Over 15 Years

Jamie Salter has come a long way in the past 15 years. The 62-year-old Toronto native started his career in sports marketing and was the cofounder of Ride snowboards in the early 1990s. After that company went public, he and Fanatics’ founder and executive chairman Michael Rubin created Global Sports Inc., which eventually became GSI Commerce. Once he exited that business, Salter turned his attention to licensing, cofounding Hilco Consumer Capital. After a difference of opinion with Hilco’s majority owner, he partnered with Leonard Green and created Authentic Brands Group.

Today, Authentic has amassed a portfolio that encompasses more than 50 brands including Reebok, Brooks Brothers and Champion that generate annual retail sales of $32 billion globally. The addition of Guess by early year will bring that number to $38 billion. But that’s not good enough for Salter, whose goal is to reach $100 billion in sales within the next five years by purchasing brands that have sales of more than $1 billion with global expansion potential while also expanding his reach in the entertainment and hospitality sectors.

Authentic, which is on track to post 7 percent organic growth from its brands this year, now has headquarters in New York, London and Shanghai and offices in Los Angeles, Miami, Tokyo and South Korea. It counts 1,800 licensing partners globally, and its licensees operate 16,000 stores and 29,000 shops-in-shop around the world.

The group is by far the largest of what is a new wave of brand management companies, which are rewriting the fashion and retail landscape in the U.S. by snapping up brand seemingly every week. While it’s a model that first emerged in the U.S. almost 50 years ago, Authentic and the likes of WHP Global, Bluestar and Marquee Brands are now taking it to another level.

Here, Salter talks about his journey, how he’s built Authentic and his plans to pass the reins to the newly named president, Matt Maddox, within the next two years.

WWD: How has the licensing model evolved since you started 15 years ago?

Jamie Salter: It’s dramatically different. When we came into the business, Iconix was really the prize in the industry. It was doing DTR [direct-to-retail] with big retailers, and it was very item driven and category specific. When I looked at the business back then, I always asked the question, “Why don’t they sell home and shoes and whatever?” Well, it wasn’t because they didn’t want to, but they had a DTR [strategy]. So I said, OK, I know they’re doing really well, but that’s not going to work for us. We have to have another angle on how can we do well in the licensing business. So we took a different approach.

WWD: And what was that?

J.S.: Our approach was we’re going to go after wholesalers, and we’re going to do it by category and by territory, and they’re going to have to sell into retailers. That was very different from what Iconix was doing. So you could say we got lucky, or you could say we’re smart. I would say it’s probably a little bit of both. But what it really proved to me was you could actually grow the businesses so much bigger.

WWD: Was there a downside?

J.S.: You could argue our model was more expensive to run than a traditional licensing model, because we had to put a lot of money from the royalties that we were collecting into marketing. In the beginning, we weren’t putting enough into the marketing side of the business, but we learned very early on — when my partner Nick [Woodhouse] came into the business — that we really had to spend money on marketing. But we couldn’t afford it. It was hard.

WWD: But I assume you decided to make the investment?

J.S.: I met a guy named Adam Kronengold who is still with me today. He’s our chief digital officer. He was one of our first employees and in his interview, he asked me how many social media followers I had. I said, “What do you mean? Me? Jamie Salter?” He said, “No, not you, your company.” I said, “I don’t really understand the question.” So he goes on Instagram and says, “You don’t have an account.” This is in 2010, and he said, “Marilyn Monroe has an account. She has 250,000 followers. You know you can talk to people, post stuff and market.” I said, “How much does that cost?” He says, “It’s free. You can put up a post, send your message and tell people where Marilyn Monroe is being sold. You can do whatever you want. It’s your channel.”

WWD: Guess he convinced you.

J.S.: I asked him how Instagram made money and he said it didn’t make a lot then, but their whole strategy was to get everybody on social media and eventually turn it into an advertising platform. I said, “I like free — you’re hired.” So we were one of the very early adopters in the social media world. I think that is really the base of Authentic Brands — we really built the company like a tech start-up. Here we are 15 years after and we’re still like a start-up in the way we think. We’re always on the cusp of what’s next.

WWD: How do you differ from the other brand management companies you compete with today like WHP Global, Marquee Brands and Bluestar?

J.S.: We welcome competition, and we want them to do well, because if they do well, it’s good for us. But everyone builds a niche for themselves. WHP is using the Iconix/Sequential playbook and they’ve transitioned from that a little bit. I think Yehuda [Shmidman, WHP’s chief executive officer] learned some good hard lessons through his experience there and he’s building a pretty good platform [at WHP]. But scale matters now in this business because of the money you have to spend in order to build these brands and keep them relevant in the marketplace. We have a big international platform and nobody else really has that. But where we’re really separate from them is that we have 80 people in the marketing department today, we have 700 million social media followers — that’s 10 percent of the people that live on the planet. We’re on TikTok and WeChat and Instagram and Red Note — we’re on every platform around the globe. We have social media influencers in 150 different languages.

WWD: Is that why you’re often always the first call when a brand is for sale?

J.S.: If you have an opportunity to partner with Authentic versus Bluestar versus WHP, you’re going to partner with Authentic if it’s the same economics, just because it’s a much bigger platform. We can actually pay more because our platform is so efficient. And we can run businesses more efficiently because of our sheer size.

WWD: You swooped in at the last minute to buy Guess even though WHP already had a deal. What happened there?

J.S.: They always say anything’s for sale for the right price. But that’s just not true. [Guess cofounder] Paul Marciano was looking for a partner and unless he got the best deal for his shareholders, he would never have sold the company. So he’s selling 51 percent to us, and the family [with CEO Carlos Alberini] will own other 49 percent. Relationships matter, strategy matters, legacy matters. Paul’s last name is on the door. Look at LVMH: the family is all involved in the business and I think that’s why it’s such an incredible company. They learned from their father and they care — the legacy lives on. My name is on the door too — Authentic is the Salters. My family will be involved with Authentic Brands forever, I hope.

WWD: All four of your sons are in the business, right?

J.S.: Yes. And at some point, Jamie Salter will have to hang up the skates as I get older.

WWD: In January, you brought in Matt Maddox, the former CEO of Wynn Resorts, as president. What is his role?

J.S.: He worked with Steve Wynn for 22 years and for the last four or five years, was CEO of Wynn Properties. Everyone asked me why I didn’t hire someone from the fashion business. Look, we’re in the licensing business, which means we’re effectively a landlord. We buy these great brands, we fix them up, we market them and we rent out rooms. And the rooms happen to be shoes and socks and intimate apparel and home goods. And we do that by territory, by category. Matt understood the retail luxury space, because he has his own mall at the Wynn. He understood that he has to rent out his rooms every day. He has to market. He understood the entertainment business and events and celebrities and athletes. He has relationships with all these. We knew a lot of the same people and were partners with the Wynn through our live events division.

WWD: Sounds like a good match.

J.S.: Matt was offered some of the biggest jobs in the United States and initially he said no to me [when I offered him the job]. I asked him why and he said, “I’ve looked at your business. It’s working really well. You’re doing an incredible job. You’re not going anywhere. You don’t need me.” So I called Steve [Wynn] and told him he had to convince Matt to take the job. He did and we hired Matt.

WWD: What are your ultimate plans for Matt?

J.S.: I made a commitment to Matt that he would become the CEO of the company in the next two years. I will move to executive chairman. And you know, people ask me, “Are you OK with that?” Well, I’m super excited. Matt is 49, he’s young, he’s beyond smart. He’s working incredibly well with the team. He’s working great with my children, which is really important to me. He’s mentoring my son, Corey, who, you know, I ultimately want one day to run the company with his brothers. But I’ve got an incredible partner in Matt, who I believe will lead Authentic to $100 billion.

WWD: The business community is filled with founders who find they can’t actually step aside when they turn over the reins to someone else. Why is this different?

J.S.: Like I told Matt, I’m not going anywhere. But we’ve got to stay young; we’ve got to stay nimble. He understands the loyalty side of the business better than me because they had a big loyalty program at the Wynn. He understands the digital side of the business. He’s doing an unbelievable job upgrading Authentic on the process side. And if we do decide to go public over the next year or two, he’ll be an excellent CEO that the Street can rely on. I’m excited to just continue doing what I’m really good at, which is building great relationships around the world and working on the M&A side, and I have a great partner in Matt to run the day-to-day.

WWD: Sounds like hiring someone from outside the fashion industry is working out for you.

J.S.: I’m a big believer in hiring outside the industry — not that we don’t hire inside the industry, because we still need merchants and great marketing people. But if you really look at Authentic, the average age here is about 35. And they come out of the digital space, the legal space, the finance system. Authentic is a big marketing department, a big legal department, a big digital department. So, we’re hiring people from Meta and Google and Microsoft and Amazon. You still need merchants to touch and feel and make great product, because you can have the greatest digital team and the greatest marketing team but if don’t have good product, then it doesn’t work. But at the end of the day, data is everything.

WWD: What do you look for when you’re hiring people?

J.S.: When you’re hot, you attract great talent. When I’m hiring someone, the first question I ask is, can AI do this job? If the answer is no, the second question is: is that person smarter than you? And we’re a loyal group, so if you’re really good, you’re going to be here forever. But Authentic is not for everyone. Do not come here if you’re looking for a 9-to-5 job because we work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We’re a global company, so we’re always working. With the globalization of the world, the internet, social media, the news cycles and staying ahead of trends and culture, you always have to be on.

WWD: You also have other components to your business beyond brand management.

J.S.: Yes. Twenty-five percent of the platform is entertainment. [Our competitors] don’t have an entertainment business. And entertainment, in my opinion, drives fashion culture. The entertainment business is really music culture and sports culture, which is where we have a big edge. The other 75 percent of our turnover is rooted in the lifestyle space.

WWD: How do you evolve the company going forward, where are the opportunities?

J.S.: We think we’re just scratching the surface. I know people think that’s kind of crazy with a business that has about $32 billion in annual retail systemwide sales. But we think we can be about $100 billion within the next five years. It’s not as crazy as you think when we pull off deals like Guess, which does $6 billion at retail. There are lots of other brands that are in that $6 billion to $10 billion range that we could buy. And we really, truly believe that we will crack those opportunities. Over the next five years, we’ll do another four or five big deals and that’s another $50 billion. This year alone, and the year is not over, we added almost $7 billion in revenue.

WWD: You were close to going public a couple of years ago and then decided against it. Are you revisiting the idea?

J.S.: Authentic is a very different model. We trade like a tech company because we are a tech company. Think about it. When you have 75 percent margin, 99 percent cash conversion and virtually no capex, you trade like a software company. So could we be public? The answer is yes. Should we be public? I don’t know. There’s no need to be. Why is SpaceX not public? It doesn’t need to be. We trade at a very high multiple; we have 36 percent growth in the company. We’re low levered. We took our first money from Leonard Green in 2010 and the company has been self-funded since then.

WWD: But you have other investors including General Atlantic, BlackRock, CVC Capital Partners, Simon Property Group and Brookfield, among others.

J.S.: True. There’s been $9 billion of secondaries in the last three years, but that’s just one shareholder selling to a new buyer. There’s been no need for investment from outside. We actually just bought $1 billion of stock back and retired the shares, so the company’s very flush with cash.

WWD: A lot of the brands you buy are distressed. Is that what you look for?

J.S.: The brands aren’t necessarily distressed, the companies are. Reebok wasn’t a bad brand. Adidas just wasn’t putting the effort into one of the greatest athletic brands in the world. Their focus was on building Adidas. They milked Reebok as far as they possibly could, and they didn’t need it anymore. We’ve owned Reebok now for a couple years and we’ve almost doubled the business. We still have lots of work to do, but Reebok is a $6 billion business and our ambition is to grow to a $10 billion business over the next three years — and we feel very confident we’re going to get there.

WWD: So what is the criteria you use when exploring a purchase?

J.S.: A good brand but a broken business. Champion wasn’t broken but Hanes needed liquidity. Truth be told, I spoke to Gildan before we bought Champion. I said, “Let’s go buy Hanes together. I’ll take Champion. You take Hanes.” We ended up buying Champion. They ended up buying Hanes, which is interesting. We could have done the deal together. Anyway, our model is to license by category, by territory, to best-in-class partners. So you get the best underwear-maker, you get the best sock-maker, you get the best sportswear-maker. It means the business grows much quicker. But we have to unwind the overhead so we can run these companies much more efficiently. People always say, “When you buy a company, all the jobs go away.” It’s not true — lots of new jobs are created. When we look at our portfolio, I would say that probably 75 percent of the jobs either stay or new jobs are created. So maybe people lose their jobs in California, but there are new jobs in New York, and it’s more efficient.

WWD: Where do you see the growth coming from in the future?

J.S.: Entertainment and kids’ animation. Those are two really big areas for us. We believe entertainment really does drive lifestyle. So we’re going to continue to drive that. And when I say the kids’ space, think Disney, think Mattel, that type of stuff. And with Matt’s background, we’re moving into the hospitality business. We’ve done multiple deals now for hotels and condos. We have the Barneys hotel. We have Sports Illustrated resorts, we have Eddie Bauer lodges. We have Nautica condos going up in Mexico. Our hospitality business is bigger than you would think. Also, beauty. Our beauty business is over a couple billion dollars today, but there’s big opportunity there. And you’re going to see us do more deals like David Beckham and Shaq.

WWD: Speaking of Beckham and Shaquille O’Neal, neither of them has been playing for a while. And you also own the rights to Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, who are dead.

J.S.: We don’t call them dead — they’re icons, and with AI coming into play, Marilyn Monroe is going to be on fire in 2026, which is her 100th anniversary [of her birth]. We’ve done an enormous number of deals around Marilyn Monroe. And don’t be surprised if you see her in movies again. And look at what’s going on with Elvis Presley. There was the movie and we now have an immersive theater production, Elvis Evolution, at the 02 in London.

WWD: But how do you appeal to young people who don’t know Elvis and never saw Shaq or David Beckham play?

J.S.: Shaq has never been bigger — no pun intended. Shaq’s business is 10 times as big as when we bought it in 2015. And David Beckham‘s business has doubled since we bought it. Now, we’ve only owned David’s business for a couple years — Shaq’s we’ve owned much longer. I’m not going to say live celebrities are better, but there are bigger opportunities than if they’re not with us anymore.

WWD: Let’s talk about the Authentic Luxury Group. Can you explain what that is and how it’s working?

J.S.: ALG is a joint venture between Saks Global and us. We own 51 percent of all the IP and they own 49 percent. Richard [Baker, executive chairman of Saks Global] has had a bit of a bumpy road. He is a total optimist and a great visionary, but he needs to prove to the world that financially, he’s set up properly. It seems he’s on the right track now but we’re going to continue to be careful. We’re going to continue to build the affordable luxury — or premium — side of our business. Luxury is a word you have to be careful with. LVMH is luxury, Kering is luxury, Prada is luxury. Vince is premium, Brooks Brothers is premium, Hugo Boss is premium. We’ll continue to play in the premium space in a big way, because it’s the next level from where we are today. We have the full support of Saks, Neiman’s and Amazon, because that’s the joint venture, and we’ll fully support Richard and his journey. But we’re going to be careful.

WWD: Are you still looking to buy Marc Jacobs?

J.S.: I can’t really comment on that. What I will tell you is we will continue to look at companies in that space, like Marc Jacobs, and we’ll see where it goes.

WWD: Let’s talk about the whole department store and retail space where you have a lot of partners. It’s not easy out there.

J.S.: We have to go where the customers go. If T.J. Maxx is a winner, we’ve got to sell them. if Burlington, Target and Walmart are winners, we’ve got to sell them. The consumption is the same as it was a year ago — people aren’t buying any less product. They’re just buying from different places. So we continue to go where the customers go, and that’s really been our model. We think independent retailers, or omnichannel retailers like Lucky or Brooks Brothers, are actually important to building these brands. It’s tough, but it’s important to the model. Today, we have about 6,000 licensed full-price/outlet stores around the globe. And then there are another 24,000 shops-in-shop. So when you really look at our portfolio, half of our volume is done through stores that have our name above the door, and that’s a big investment. It’s going to take a long time before Kohl’s and JCPenney and Macy’s are not here anymore. But they’ve got to continue to reinvent themselves. Great retailers survive. Look at Harrods: it’s packed wall-to-wall all the time.

WWD: Why do you think that is?

J.S.: It may be the model: a department store made up of all concessions. It doesn’t matter what concession [shop] you go into, one’s better than the next one — they’re all just amazing. Take food: you can’t just have a food hall anymore, you have to have restaurants. Look at David Simon [head of Simon Properties]: everyone asks why his stock is so high. It’s because he reinvents himself all the time. He never gets stale. So when you go into a Simon mall, it’s busier than everyone else’s because he’s constantly looking at the best brands and reshuffling things. I don’t think the mall is dead. I think the mall is very alive — if you’re in the right malls. And I don’t think the department store is dead. It just needs to be reinvented. Now, are we over-retailed in America? The answer is yes. That’s why going online is critical. If you want to be in this business, you’ve got to go where the customers go.

WWD: There’s a lot of criticism about the licensing model. Why are you so enamored with it?

J.S.: There are two types of licensing. One really comes out of the animation business. Look at Disney: it’s the greatest company in the world. And what do they do? They make movies. They make TV shows. Then they have the parks where they sell you a lot of merchandise. I’ve got that same attitude. Authentic has content and experiences and if we continue to do that, we can license our brands and be successful. If you’re just brand slapping and there’s no meat behind it, I think you will die a slow death. You have to treat your brands like your children. You can’t give them back. If you don’t constantly maintain your brands, you’re not going to win. And I think that’s where licensing gets a bad reputation. Disney has done an unbelievable job — we think they’re the best of the best of the best. They’re number one, we’re number two, and they’re way above us. But we’re working hard every single day to continue to make this a better place.