Collective Brands, the owner of zombie brands Airwalk, Vision Streetwear, Lamar, and (sadly) Sims, has been purchased for $2 billion by a “consortium comprised of Wolverine Worldwide, Blum Capital Partners and Golden Gate Capital” according to a story on Sports One Source.
Upon closing, Wolverine Worldwide will acquire Collective Brands’ Performance + Lifestyle Group (PLG), which will continue to operate out of Lexington, MA. PLG had revenue of more than $1 billion in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2012. . . Payless will be acquired by Blum Capital and Golden Gate and will continue to be headquartered in Topeka, KS and CLI in Englewood, CO. Payless and CLI had combined revenue of approximately $2.4 billion in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2012, operating over 4,300 Payless retail stores globally at year end.
Guess this means Airwalk, Vision Streetwear, and Sims, get to stay in the Payless family only now they’ll be owned by Blum and Golden Gate Capital. As one of our more astute commenters pointed out to us, this sounds like a great opportunity for Jamie Salter to jump back in and grab a couple more brands . . . again.
[Link: Sports One Source]
Based on this chart, it looks like Airwalk, Vision, Sims, and Lamar are actually part of CLI:
http://www.collectivebrands.com/brands/all-brands
From the sounds of the press release is seems like the CLI part is staying with Payless, NOT Wolverine. So, no Vision x Hush Puppies collabs, I guess.
Maybe, you could dust off those “reporting” (not blogging) skills, and follow up on this. Even get a comment. You better hurry though, because you KNOW Jamie Salter has already contacted Payless about taking those unwanted brands off their hands. The story will have changed before you can even get a statement.
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