Fossil

Shinola: a shoe-polish brand reborn as a luxury label

Sam tells how the founder of Fossil Watch bought the old American Shinola brand (originally a shoe polish, tagline 'you don't know shit about Shinola'), kept the logo, and turned it into a watch-and-goods company now worth roughly half a billion dollars.

“And it originally was a shoe polish business. But Shinola, it had the coolest logo, and so he bought it, the logo and the brand, which I don't know what bought mean, like I don't know what there was to buy. Um, and then he turned it into a watch company, and at this point they make watches.”

Steal thisBuy a dead brand with a great name and logo for cheap, then re-launch it in a higher-margin category.