In 1983 Ugg Boot inventor Shane Stedman sold the rights to his footwear brand to Deckers for £10,000. It was the best thing he ever did, according to a story on News.com.au.
If I had wanted to make my Uggs the number one brand, I’d have had to move to the US and work my arse off in a suit and that’s just not me,” Mr Stedman said. . . “I’ll never give up Sydney and surfing. It’s my life.. . “So I was happy to let (the business) go.”
Stedman put his kids through five years of private school with the money and still gets three free pairs of boots a year. Can’t say we blame him for that. The boots, however, is a completely different matter.
[Link: News.com.au]
This article is factually untrue.
1. Fact -Shane Stedman did not invent “Ugg boots” as there was widespread use in Australia for many years prior to 1973. He was however a manufacturer of what was a very popular style.
2. Fact – Stedman trademarked “Ugh-Boots” in Australia which was his brand name for his company.
3. Fact – Stedman sold his Australian trademark to “Brain Smith: not “deckers”
4. Fact – Brian Smith traded in the USA as “Original UGG boot UGG Australia”.
5. Fact – Smith sold his company to Deckers in 1995
6. Fact – Deckers trademarked “UGG” in 1996 in the USA and began to buy, lease and register the name “UGG” all over the world.
7. Fact – in 1996 the Stedman trademark “Ugh-Boots” was removed from the Australian trademark registry due to non use.
It is very scary that newspapers will print the claims from a “Surfer dude” verbatim without doing some “fact checking”!
This is from the Wall Street Journal and quotes the founder of Deckers, Douglas Otto: “Otto’s interest in UGG sprang in large part from his unique proximity to the niche sheepskin boot market. A graduate of the University of Santa Barbara, he grew up surfing the beaches of Southern California, where Australian sheepskin boots—advertised simply as “ugg boots”—began showing up in surf magazines as early as 1970.
During the mid-’70s, Otto and his wife, a native of Sydney, made numerous trips to the beaches of Australia. Surfers there had been pulling on ugg boots when they came out of the water in winter since the ’60s. By that time, the boots had become a cold-weather staple—a comfortable but style-free necessity that was gratefully tossed under the bed at the first sign of warm weather. So when an American surfer named Brian Smith began showing up selling ugg boots at surf-wear tradeshows in 1978, Otto took notice.”
http://magazine.wsj.com/features/behind-the-brand/the-golden-fleece/tab/print/
Shane you “Bloody Liar”
Comments on this entry are closed.