Authentic Brands Group Lines Up New Licensees for Ted Baker

Don’t count Ted Baker out just yet.

Although the brand has yet to complete the liquidation sales at its U.S. stores and website, Authentic Brands Group, the owner of its intellectual property, has lined up three licensees to relaunch the business. They are United Legwear & Apparel Co., BCI Brands and Peerless Clothing.

“Ted Baker is an iconic high street brand known throughout the world for its classic British designs,” said Jarrod Weber, global president, sports and lifestyle at Authentic. “Establishing a new and vibrant core business in the U.S. and Canada is an essential building block for the revitalization of this brand.”

United Legwear will design and manufacture Ted Baker men’s sportswear, golf and denim categories and be responsible for all wholesale and concession shops, as well as operating the Ted Baker e-commerce site in the U.S. and Canada.

Peerless will design and manufacture Ted Baker tailored clothing, dress shirts and outerwear for the U.S. and Canada. And BCI Brands will take on women’s sportswear, dresses and denim for North America.

The new product is expected to hit the market by the end of this year, at the same time the websites restart, Authentic said.

As reported, in late April, the Ted Baker Group, composed of Ted Baker Canada and Ted Baker Inc., along with OSL Fashion Services Canada and OSL Fashion Services Inc., an Ontario, Canada-based firm that specializes in retail operations, distribution and digital marketing, filed court-supervised restructuring proceedings and appointed Alvarez & Marsal Canada as the “monitor” of the business and financial affairs of the company.

At the same time, the Ted Baker Group filed Chapter 15 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York. That designation is a motion to recognize the proceedings from a foreign country, in this case, Canada. Its staff — 380 people in the U.S. and 280 in Canada — were terminated, its 34 stores started to liquidate. The e-commerce site was also shuttered.

OSL also held the license for two other Authentic-owned brands, Lucky Brand and Brooks Brothers, in Canada, and those stores were also liquidated.

The North American bankruptcies came about a month after AARC put Ted Baker’s U.K. and European retail and e-commerce businesses into administration, the U.K. version of bankruptcy, when its relationship with its partner there turned sour. 

Authentic had signed a partnership deal with AARC in April 2023 to operate Ted Baker’s 120-plus retail stores and concessions, and the brand’s online business. But according to Authentic, AARC failed to meet its financial obligations and was swiftly removed as a shareholder in the Ted Baker business.

Ted Baker was founded by Ray Kelvin in 1987 and for decades was a recognizable brand on the British high street with its quirky, colorful take on the season’s trends. However, Kelvin resigned in 2019 amid staff complaints about inappropriate physical contact (which he always denied), and the company went on to face a series of crises. In the subsequent years, it posted a string of profit warnings and suffered accounting and management troubles.