💥New Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filing - Liberated Brands LLC💥
Licensee of active brands loses licenses and files for BK to wind down.
On February 2, 2025, a CA-based sport, outdoor and lifestyle apparel licensee called Licensed … er … Liquidated … ERRRR … Liberated … yes, Liberated(!) … Brands LLC (“Liberated”) and eight affiliates (collectively with Liberated, the “debtors”) got “caught inside” the wrong side of a wave of retail chapter 11 cases, joining a group of brick-and-mortar retailers that’ve recently filed for bankruptcy (see also JOANN Inc., Party City Holdco Inc., and The Container Store). These cases rode their way into the District of Delaware (Judge Stickles), where — like Patrick’s Swayze’s Bodie in an early 90s cult classic — they hope to catch one last break. And by “break,” we mean a surprise buyer who might otherwise prevent this thing from getting completely (rather than just near-completely) “rag dolled” into oblivion.* What? You’re not a surfer bro? The sport has its own dictionary.
Let’s take a step back.
The debtors license and sell an “impressive portfolio of brands,” including Quiksilver®, Billabong®, Roxy®, RVCA®, Honolua®, and Boardriders® — at least two of which should be familiar to the non-snowboarder and non-surfer RX set.* The aggregation of these brands started back in Q2’19 when Authentic Brands Group (“ABG”) — a well known brand development company that certainly knows its way around a bankruptcy court (cough, cough J.C. Penney, Forever21, Lucky Brands, Brooks Brothers, etc.) — purchased the intellectual property rights of a company called Volcom from French multinational, Kering. Volcom’s former management team formed Liberated and partnered with ABG to oversee Volcom’s product development, athlete marketing, and retail and wholesale business pursuant to an ABG-granted license.
Impressed with Liberated’s sustained success at the helm of the Volcom brand, in October ‘21, ABG conveyed to Liberated licenses for Spyder®, another active lifestyle brand (that those of you who like to go on RX ski boondoggles may be familiar with). The ABG ❤️ Liberated relationship expanded from there and in September ‘23, Liberated and ABG entered into a bigger and broader relationship pursuant to which Liberated became the licensee and the retail and e-commerce operator for Authentic’s newly acquired brands Quiksilver®, Billabong®, Roxy®, RVCA®, Honolua® and Boardriders® in the United States and Canada.**
Armed with the licenses of these well-known brands, the debtors pursued three main sales channels: (i) wholesale, (ii) e-commerce, and (ii) retail sales in (leased) brick-and-mortar locations. Wholesale accounted for 50% of revenue while the other two segments combined for the second 50%.
It all sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, now we enter familiar territory. Things were rocking and rolling for the first several years of the Liberated/ABG relationship. The acquisition of the Spyder® license in July ‘21 was particularly accretive in the midst of the pandemic when everybody including Johnny’s Nana was clamoring for some outdoor time. The old bag even strapped on a snowboard and barreled down Snowbird — it was f*cking awesome. She almost killed someone. And herself. But it was eXXXXXtreme and she was hooked on the adrenaline rush. She proceeded to become a major gearhead — no wonder Liberated’s revenue shot up from $350mm in ‘21 to $422mm in ‘22. $50mm of that was probably on Nana’s Amex. But, obviously, she wasn’t alone. It was the pandemic after all and all of the sudden, everyone, including Nana, was f*cking Vin Diesel.
