CLEVELAND – The International Collegiate Licensing Association (ICLA) is excited to announce Florida State University (FSU) as the winner of this year's ICLA Synergy Award, presented by 4imprint.

"Congratulations to Florida State for being named ICLA's 2022 Synergy Award winner!," said current ICLA President Karen Dertinger, director of trademark licensing at The Ohio State University. "A prime example of innovative excellence, FSU's licensing office launched several new programs during the continued difficult economic landscape, boosting engagement across all segments of their university and community fan base. I look forward to celebrating FSU and their many accomplishments at this summer's Convention."

Accomplishments of 2021-22

• Expanded an incremental jersey release in its second year by executing a seasonal release in spring 2021 and an expanded offering in fall 2021, which resulted in over $93,000 in wholesale sales.
• Launched an innovative College Vault lifestyle collection resulting in over $100,000 in wholesale sales across four retail partners, who all plan to increase their offering of this collection in 2022.
• Developed and launched a new store exclusively for vintage apparel called The Vault by Garnet & Gold resulting in rebranding a space that was previously used for discount merchandise into a premium experience, leading to over $120,000 in incremental wholesale sales for the College Vault program.
• Delicately navigated the passing of legendary football coach Bobby Bowden through strategic brand protection and promotion efforts.
• Took strong brand enforcement efforts which combated local infringers as well as unlicensed beer and Bobby Bowden merchandise, while entering into new strategic partnerships with outside counsels to manage our trademark portfolio as well as combat online infringement.
• Introduced stronger Recognized Student Organization (RSO) guidelines and implemented an approval process for RSO logos with the support of student affairs.
• Worked closely with the alumni association to introduce new tools to Seminole clubs and chapters which created a consistent and cohesive brand identity, while protecting the IP of Florida State University.
• Worked closely alongside the athletics department to celebrate a national championship and became the first university to release cobranded NIL merchandise celebrating a national championship.
• Aided in the rebranding of Florida State University Schools (a K-12 developmental school based in Tallahassee), which led to their own brand identity while still being a part of the Florida State University brand family. 

Revenue Generation

In 2021, Florida State's trademark licensing program saw a 32% increase in royalties over 2020 and a 6% increase in royalties compared to 2019.

Since reaching its peak in gross royalty revenue following the 2013 national championship, Florida State's royalties have seen a steady decline due to years of lackluster performance on the football field. Since the start of the 2017 season, Florida State has been led by three different head football coaches and has accrued only 26 wins. Following the impacts of COVID and a 3-6 football season, Florida State's royalty revenue in 2020 dropped off nearly 26%. Due to this, the trademark licensing (TL) office began looking for ways to generate revenue that were not directly tied to external factors.

Two new programs the TL office created and launched, the Beach Collection and The Vault @ Garnet & Gold, generated nearly $240,000 in wholesale sales.

Following years of discussion and persuasion, the TL office finally convinced Nike to release Florida State's beloved turquoise basketball jerseys in fall 2020, which resulted in an immediate sell out. Due to that program's success, the TL office worked with Branded Custom Sportswear to launch another wave of products in spring 2021 and then expand the program to include T-shirts and youth jerseys for fall 2021. Over 3,600 total turquoise units hit the market in 2021, accounting for $93,217 in wholesale sales (a 159% increase over 2020). These numbers would have been even higher had the supply chain issues not impacted the production of adult jerseys, which were delayed to 2022. While Florida State advocated for this program and the expansion into other categories, other schools who wear Nike's N7 basketball jerseys were able to participate in the program as well.

Finally, following the passing of legendary head football coach Bobby Bowden, the TL office carefully worked to create a curated line of licensed products celebrating his life and impact on Florida State University. The line produced nearly $200,000 in wholesale sales (over $38,000 in royalties), with half of the royalties going to the family of Coach Bowden.

The program utilized a license agreement and logo previously installed by the trademark licensing office to honor Coach Bowden. The logo was used throughout licensed products as well as memorial tributes on and off the field. BreakingT's T-shirt tribute to Coach Bowden, which the TL office provided specific design guidance for, became their top-selling design of 2021 (and top-selling collegiate product of all time). Outside of graduation-related products, it was Florida State's top selling product in terms of wholesale sales for the year. In addition to traditional licensed product, the TL office worked to execute an agreement with an artist who had painted a portrait of Coach Bowden and sold reproductions to local retailers. This agreement called for marketing support from Seminole Boosters and FSU athletics and has since generated over $5,000 in royalties for Florida State. Collectively, these programs accounted for over $500,000 in wholesale revenue.

Brand Protection

2021 was a banner year in terms of brand protection efforts for Florida State. The TL office has a strong partnership with the office of the general counsel, which has taken a very aggressive stance in brand protection. For the year, the TL office assisted with sending over 20 cease and desist letters (all of which were successfully resolved in the university's favor). This included communication to a local craft beer company that was producing a branded beer called "Warpath" (a popular phrase in Florida State's fight song), Smack Apparel for an unauthorized design surrounding Coach Bowden's passing, and Barstool for the use of an element of the Seminole head within their profile pictures on social media.  

In terms of online infringement efforts, Florida State did the following through its brand protection partnership with CounterFind:  

• Removed 729 ads from Facebook, with an estimated revenue detected of $364,500
• Removed 184 ads from Instagram, with an estimated revenue detected of $92,000
• Removed 1,589 listings from Amazon, which had products valued at over $28,000
• Removed 573 designs from RedBubble, which had products valued at over $14,000
• Reported 593 listings from Etsy, which were valued at over $14,400
• Removed 85 listings from eBay, which had a value of over $1,400

The TL office also oversaw the negotiations of several contractual agreements. The first was a transition to a new outside counsel, Florida-based firm Malloy & Malloy, which assisted the university with the renewal of six registrations and the filing of two new trademark registrations with the USPTO. Additionally, the office filed and received trademark registrations with the State of Florida for "STATE" as well as a vintage mark following numerous issues of infringement with both marks. The TL office also partnered with the office of the general counsel to expand its enforcement actions against international infringers by entering into a new agreement with a California-based firm to pursue litigation against counterfeit merchandise.  

In addition to overseeing the renewal of its outdated content licensing agreement with Catapult, the TL office took the lead on updating the terms of the agreement in place with Bobby Bowden and his heirs following his passing. Specifically, this required coordination between the office of the general counsel, Malloy & Malloy, and the estate and representatives of Coach Bowden. This agreement included the transfer of ownership of the Bowden mark to Florida State University for eventual registration with the USPTO.

Campus Collaboration

Student Affairs
The trademark licensing office worked alongside student affairs and the office of the general counsel to create stronger guidelines for student use, which were implemented in 2021. This included creating a logo approval process where RSOs submit logos to the TL office for approval as part of their recognition process with student affairs. Logos were received from 360 RSOs and revisions were requested on over 15% of the submitted logos.  

Alumni Association
There were three areas of focus with the alumni association, all dedicated to Seminole clubs and chapters. First, the TL office participated in the alumni association's Virtual Leadership Week to help educate Seminole club and chapter leaders throughout the nation on proper use of the university's brand. The TL office then worked with the alumni association to create and implement standardized Seminole club/chapter logos in order to create a consistent and cohesive brand identity. Finally, following a Seminole club receiving a C&D and fine for copyright infringement for use of an unapproved image on their website, the TL office created an image library for their use.

Athletics and Seminole Sports Properties (Multi-Media Rights)
Florida State Football celebrated their 75th season in 2021 and the TL office worked alongside CLC to create a logo that was used on a limited collection of licensed products and concession cups inside Doak Campbell Stadium as well as by Seminole Boosters for donor engagement pieces. Ultimately, Seminole Sports Properties was able to monetize the program and partnered with Chick-fil-A to be the presenting sponsor of the celebration.

Athletics
Florida State had a total of six teams that were all in the hunt for national championships in 2021. This included women's soccer and softball, which were both runners-up for their championships in spring 2021 (women's soccer's 2020 national championship was played in spring 2021), and then again for women's soccer, which won the 2021 Women's National Championship in December.  For each of these potential and eventual national championships, the TL office coordinated the creation of national championship logos with CLC on behalf of the athletics department. The TL office provided the logo to equipment, marketing, and Seminole Boosters for eventual integration into their post-championship efforts.
 
For the women's soccer national championship, product sales through Fanatics were extremely strong. In the first 24 hours post championship, total sales were +190% versus the 2020 champion and +369% versus the 2019 champion and we outpaced our sales for our last soccer national championship in 2018 by 95%. Despite supply chain challenges, the total retail sales for the championship surpassed $42,000.

An additional touchpoint with athletics that also tied into the soccer national championship was NIL. The TL office was part of a small working group of staff members dedicated to navigating this new field. This group ultimately presented to the university's new president and provided recommendations to the university allowing student-athletes to use marks within their NIL deals. Because of heavy involvement with navigating NIL at Florida State, the TL office successfully put together what is believed to be the first NIL co-branded piece of national championship merchandise in the nation.

External Collaboration

Garnet & Gold
Despite being seven years removed from a logo update, Florida State fans and alumni are still passionately loyal to their old logos, which are now housed in the College Vault program. Over the past five years, the TL office has worked strategically with local retailers to build better assortments of College Vault product to meet fan need and in 2020 proposed the idea of a dedicated store to local retailer Garnet & Gold. Understanding the potential of a dedicated space to house this product, Garnet & Gold immediately got on board, but then the pandemic hit. The TL office restarted conversations with the retailer in spring 2021 and quickly secured their commitment to carving out a dedicated space for this product line.

The location assigned to the space was previously dedicated to moving closeout and discounted product. The TL office worked with CLC to design the space then worked directly with a local company on tweaking the design and execution to meet Garnet & Gold's needs. The TL office also worked directly with College Vault vendors on picking out the right color product for the assortment (Florida State's vintage colors are different from its current colors) to ensure the use of a consistent color pallet across the space.

Despite challenges with supply chains, the store had a soft launch alongside opening weekend, and product sales were strong throughout the fall with minimal promotion (due to the concern that product would sell too quickly with limited opportunity to chase).
From July through December 2021, licensees shipped a total of $133,375 in wholesale product to the store. The total buy for all of 2021 was $140,953 from Garnet & Gold. For context, Garnet & Gold purchased $14,098 (+846%) in College Vault merchandise in 2020 and $19,364 (+588%) in merchandise in 2019.

Florida State University Schools (Community)
Florida State University Schools (FSUS) is a developmental research school sponsored by Florida State University. FSUS has traditionally used the same branding as Florida State University but did not necessarily follow brand guidelines and had a conflicting athletics sideline partner. FSUS approached the trademark licensing office seeking assistance with rebranding a secondary mark, and the TL office used the opportunity to discuss the benefits of a complete rebrand that would create marks that fell within the Florida State brand family but were unique to FSUS. The TL office partnered FSUS with CLC to create these marks, which were released before the start of the 2021-2022 academic year. The ultimately adopted collection of marks allows FSUS to operate under the Florida State brand family but with marks that are not registered and owned by Florida State University. This also allows FSUS to use the marks with a completely separate sideline provider and no concern for impacting any other partnerships in place by Florida State University.

Crafters Program (Licensees/Community)
After years of not having a solution for makers of handmade product, Florida State was one of the first schools to opt into CLC's Community Connect program for crafters. In 2021, it welcomed seven makers to this program, including a local artist, an alumni photographer, and an alumni author.

Meet the Florida State University Trademark Licensing Team

Katie Pugh, Director
Katie joined her alma mater as director of trademark licensing in September 2016. In her role, Katie is responsible for maximizing royalty revenues through innovative and proactive retail marketing strategies while protecting and managing the integrity of the Florida State University brand. Prior to coming to Florida State, she spent over seven years working for CLC, where she served as a coordinator and manager in the apparel department and as the director of licensing operations. Katie was appointed to the ICLA Board of Directors in 2021 and also currently serves on CLC's steering committee for marketing and College Vault, the ACC NFT Taskforce, and Florida State's NIL working group.

Garrett O'Connor, Assistant Director
Originally from New Jersey, Garrett grew up a Seminole fan in West Palm Beach, Florida and eventually moved to Tallahassee in 1993 to attend Florida State University. Working collegiate retail full time through undergrad and graduate school sparked a passion that would lead to trademark licensing in 2006. Since then, Garrett has been tasked with protecting and promoting university marks and facilitating trademark use for campus departments, internal groups, and Seminole clubs.

---

Florida State will be recognized as the 2022 ICLA Synergy Award winner during the 2022 ICLA Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada later this month.

About the ICLA Synergy Award: The Synergy Award is given annually to an exceptional "team" on campus or from a conference that has demonstrated extraordinary commitment to collegiate licensing over the course of the past year and directly contributed to the betterment of the industry and their institution or organization. The team must also have made significant contributions to the collegiate licensing industry through innovative or new ideas during the current academic year, played a vital role on campus and in the industry through their leadership, and demonstrated teamwork/involvement from multiple components in the licensing process.

About ICLA: ICLA provides educational and networking opportunities, enhancement of acceptable operating standards and ethics, and establishment of the overall prestige and understanding of the profession of collegiate licensing. For more information on ICLA, please visit www.iclanet.com. ICLA is administered by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), which is in its 57th year. For more information on NACDA and the 18 professional associations that fall under its umbrella, please visit www.nacda.com.