Coming to a store near you: Bob Marley video games, shoes ... snowboards?
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 since the Jamaican superstar died of brain cancer in 1981 at age 36.
The Marley name, look and sound are estimated to generate an estimated US$600 million a year in sales of unlicensed wares. Legal sales are much smaller — just US$4 million for his descendants in 2007, according to Forbes magazine. The Marleys refuse to give a figure.
The family has hired Toronto-based Hilco Consumer Capital to protect their rights to the brand. Hilco chief executive officer Jamie Salter believes Marley products could be a US$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 popularized the Rastafarian credo of oneness with nature and marijuana consumption as a sacrament.
But Lorna Wainwright, who manages a Kingston studio and music shop called Tuff Gong, Marley’s nickname during his slum boyhood in a nearby slum, 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.”
A representative of the Bobo Ashanti order, a Rastafarian group, also expressed support.
“Bob Marley was and still is a stepping stone for many around the world who seek Rastafari roots and culture,” said the Rasta rep who identified himself as the Honorable Prophet Moambeh Acosta in an e-mail. “We can only hope and pray for the [family’s] success ... as the task seems insurmountable due to the years of piracy and counterfeiting.”
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.
“You’re never going to stop the guys in the streets, flea markets ... but you try as much as you can,” Salter said.
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 the middle of next year.
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 Carolyn Cooper, former coordinator of the reggae studies unit at Jamaica’s University of the West Indies.
But the Marley family is absolutely right to emulate the estates of other pop heroes in protecting the trademark, Cooper said.
Marley’s lyrics promoting social justice made him an icon. His One Love anthem woos tourists to Jamaica on TV spots featuring white-sand beaches and swaying palms.
Most of Marley’s heirs are also musicians, including his widow, Rita, and son Ziggy, who won four Grammys with the Melody Makers, a band that included another son, Stephen, and daughters Sharon and Cedella. Son Damian has won three Grammys.
The family says it cares less about moving merchandise than about preserving the patriarch’s legacy in such efforts as the Marley organic coffee farm, whose product is dried, roasted and packaged in bags emblazoned with song titles such as One Love and Mystic Morning.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS