Collaborative efforts

14 May 2009
Combining your brand with someone else’s can be an excellent way of leveraging your brand into a new market, and expanding your customer base.

Co-branding allows you to take the benefit of someone else’s existing expertise in a different industry, as well as their established manufacturing and distribution network.

The synergies that result from combining your brand with someone else’s successful brand and business can result in a much stronger co-brand. The co-brand is able to penetrate new markets faster, more effectively, and at less cost than if you were each to branch out into these new markets on your own.

The potential co-branding opportunities available to fashion designers are endless. A strong fashion brand can easily transfer into other “fashionable” products such as home ware, children’s toys, cars and technical products.

For example, Italian fashion house Prada recently teamed up with mobile phone company, LG to produce a Prada mobile.

Closer to home, Karen Walker is an example of a successful fashion designer who has collaborated with Resene Paints to produce the Resene Karen Walker paint range.

Adidas has also teamed up with Porsche to produce a range of footwear, and with Stella McCartney to produce yoga mats.

Before entering a co-branding arrangement, there are many issues that brand owners must consider. The aim of the co-branding arrangement will be to develop a co-brand which is greater than its two component brands. However, each party must ensure the co-branding arrangement does not dilute their own brand and image.

You need to be careful that you are not giving the other party any rights in your brand, or designs, which could limit the way you do business, or how you brand your products in the future.

Before entering a co-branding agreement, it is important that your intellectual property rights are all in order. You should ensure that your own brand name is protected with a trade mark registration.  That trade mark registration should cover the goods and services you currently deal in, as well as those goods and services which you may branch into in the future under a co-branding arrangement. 

If, for example, you have only ever made women’s clothing, then a trade mark registration that covers “clothing” will also protect you if you expand into children’s clothing. However, your registration won’t cover you if you expand into sports equipment.  You would need to seek additional trade mark protection.

A co-branding arrangement should also deal with who will own the copyright in your fashion designs if these are used under the co-branding arrangement.  If the arrangement ends, you may want to ensure that you can continue to use your most valuable designs, and the other party can not.

Co-branding agreements should also contain suitable controls and guidelines on how each party is permitted to use the co-brand.  You would not want to see your co-brand applied to a product that would damage your image or reputation.  Given this, it may be necessary to come up with a new style-manual devoted to the quality controls you want put in place before the co-brand can be applied to new products.

Ultimately, co-branding presents fashion designers with many opportunities for diversification and increased brand exposure.  If you’re considering co-branding, make sure you get legal advice first to ensure your business and your brand are adequately protected.

An edited version of this article was published in Apparel, May 2009.

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