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Brands & Merch Business News Labels & Publishers
EMI buy LoudClothing
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 17 December 2009
EMI, like Universal, are very interested in expanding their merchandising operations, and they have done so by buying Loudclothing.com, Europe’s largest independent music merchandise distributor. So that’s nice. Terms of the acquisition have not been revealed, though given EMI’s current financial performance, they presumably promised the firm’s previous owners, Leicester-based Completely Independent Distribution, a few buttons and some fluff they found down the back of Guy Hand’s sofa.
EMI began boosting its interests in the music merchandising sector earlier this year by striking up deals with the merchandise divisions of live music congloms Live Nation and AEG Live, deals which mean they now distribute the two live company’s merchandise products to non-venue based retailers and etailers. Most of the majors have shown an interest in the increasingly lucrative merchandise (and especially t-shirt) market in recent years, Universal buying the mess that was the Sanctuary Music Group mainly to secure ownership of its primary success story, the Bravado merchandising company.
Confirming the Loudclothing.com deal, EMI Music Services boss Ronn Werre told CMU: “Expanding our merchandise capability is a key part of EMI Music’s strategy of providing artists and labels with a range of services that deliver real value. Combining the great team and assets of Loudclothing.com with rights from Live Nation and AEG Live gives EMI a stellar product range and a world class, full-service retail merchandise business that delivers first rate services to consumers, retailers and our artist and business partners”.
As part of the deal, Loudclothing.com and CID founder Nic Wastell will run EMI’s European merchandising operations. He said this: “We’re very excited to be joining [the merchandising] team at EMI. They have successfully built a strong merchandise operation within a major music company, a textbook case of how to develop and scale up this capability alongside other music services. With this new partnership we have created a competitive new player in this important market and have the finance and resources to grow and develop our business”.
I’m a bit confused about what the acquisition of Loudclothing.com and the appointment of Wastell to a role within EMI means for the future of Completely Independent Distribution. Seemingly Wastell will continue to head up that company too, which will continue to operate independently from EMI, though it will provide services to the major as well as, presumably, continuing to run its second main business Bandstores.co.uk. Either way, given the alliance with major music firm EMI, I’m not sure CID can really claim to be ‘completely’ independent any more.
