The Licensing Playbook: How to Turn Your Brand Into a Revenue Engine
By Bryan Smeltzer Most brands are sitting on their most profitable growth lever — and never pulling it. I've spent 30 years building consumer brands, and if there's one engine I keep watching companies underuse, it's licensing. Done right, licensing turns your brand equity into revenue without the capital, the headcount, or the risk of building every product yourself. Done wrong, it's a discount rack with your name on it. At TaylorMade/adidas Golf, we build a team and took the licensed soft goods and accessories business from a $10M base to nearly $50M over a three year period. When I inherited it, the program was a collection of deals — some good, some coasting, none of them part of a system. Nobody owned the bigger picture, so nobody was building one. The category changed. The playbook didn't. Here it is. 1. Audit the equity before you sell it. Before you sign a single licensee, get brutally honest about what your brand actually stands for in the consumer's mi...