Dead brands still carry trust — buy the name out of bankruptcy and relaunch it.
Sam explains that get-rich-quick course seller Tai Lopez, via Retail Ecommerce Ventures, is spending $30M to acquire the IP of bankrupt Pier 1 (after earlier buying Dress Barn) to relaunch it as an e-commerce-only store.
“And so he's spending $30 million to buy Pier 1 along with other stuff. And we got ahold of his deck. I didn't even read it, but I read it. I've talked a lot and I've set the stage.”
Shaan lays out the playbook behind the Pier 1 deal: acquire a bankrupt retailer's brand and inventory cheaply, shed the brick-and-mortar liabilities, and run it as an online-only store. Pier 1 did ~$300M/yr in e-commerce on $1B total revenue, making a $30M IP purchase a potential steal.
“they're buying these old retail stores that have a big brand and then they're relaunching them as e-commerce only stores. They're saying, hey, What if we had the brand recognition of a Pier 1, but none of the brick-and-mortar headaches that Pier 1 has? And can we just sell Pier 1 as an e-commerce-only store? Pier 1 was doing about $300 million a year in e-commerce revenue, $1 billion of total revenue”
Steal thisHunt for bankrupt retailers with strong brands and big e-commerce revenue, buy just the IP and database, and relaunch online without the store overhead.
Shaan extends the dead-brand playbook to fitness: buy bankrupt 24 Hour Fitness's brand and active-member database, white-label a workout app like Sweat or Freeletics, and relaunch it as a digital fitness brand riding the existing name and customer list.
“we're going to buy the 24 Hour Fitness IP and we're going to take it to a digital fitness brand. And you basically rip off either the Sweat app or like Freeletics or one of these like workout apps. And you like basically white label the app experience, but you combine that with the 24 Hour IP and customer database.”
Steal thisPair a bankrupt brand's name and member database with a white-labeled app to launch a digital version of a dying physical business.