Marquee Acquires Stance

Offered on the Stance website: Star Wars | Stance Crew Socks, $19.99; Poly Boxer Brief , $21.90.

Marquee Brands has acquired Stance, the sock brand founded in 2009, and it also announced “a new partnership” with United Legwear and Apparel Co. (ULAC), which becomes the brand’s core global licensee, managing operations across all territories apart from China, covering the segments of socks and underwear across men’s, women’s and children’s products. Stance’s early celebrity investors basketball player Dwyane Wade and actor Will Smith, were joined  by venture capital firms in injecting $50 million into the firm in a 2015 funding round designed to build the business.

Also founded in 2009, Marquee Brands is a holding company which owns several prominent consumer brands. Its portfolio includes Martha Stewart, Laura Ashley, Sur La Table, BCBG, Ben Sherman, Body Glove and Dakine among others. and claims overall retails sales, now including Stance, of “$4.5 billion USD.”

ULAC, founded by Isaac E. Ash in 1998, has “distribution partnerships with Scotch & Soda, Hurley, and Ted Baker. The company is also a licensee for leading brands including PUMA, Skechers, Van Heusen, DKNY, Levi’s, Champion, Prince, Arrow, and Weatherproof,” and owns the Pro Player and Lemon brands. The company claims its products are “sold in 42 countries through more than 1,100 U.S. wholesale accounts, e-commerce, international distributors and mono-branded retail stores.”

According to the announcement, Stance’s collection includes “longstanding partnerships with the NBA, MLB, Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Warner Bros. Discovery, and prior collaborations with leading artists, athletes and cultural figures, including Billie Eilish, Dwyane Wade and the Estate of Basquiat.”