OCTANE 5
Questions answered by Mike Dunn, Co-President. Tell us some background to your business – when you began, what led you into this sector etc as well as an idea of staff and offices that you have? My brother Matt and I started Octane5 back in 2009 after a long history of running another software and security marks company. We wanted to build a company from the ground up that would completely support the needs of licensing management for a wide variety of licensors. In the early days, it was just Matt and I spending much of our days working at a Starbucks in the morning and a sports bar in the afternoon because both had free wifi and outlets! Today our team numbers more than 40 with offices in Atlanta, London, Los Angeles and Indianapolis. Can you give us some information about the services that you offer in terms of contract management, product approvals, contract approvals and royalty reports? To build the vision of our service portfolio in those early days, we coined the term ‘contract to consumer licensing lifecycle management’ and that vision is still very true today. We want to support licensors from the time they start
TOTAL BRAND LICENSING
contract discussions with a licensee until the consumer interacts with the product at point of sale. So yes, we have contract workflow and management, digital asset management, product approvals, royalties/forecasting but much more. We also help brands manage their audits, protect their brands and talk to their consumers. We help brands do the back office work they are simply not staffed to perform. What other services does your system offer eg audit tracking, data management? One of the things that makes Octane5 unique is our team of licensing professionals and the great collaborative relationship we have with our client brands. Through both of these key stakeholders we’ve continued to build out additional features that go far beyond the basic licensing systems in the marketplace with other providers. One of those features is our audit management tool which provides the ability for auditors to upload their docs and the brand to review and manage corrective actions on an ongoing basis. Another feature unique to BrandComply is our licensee scorecard. We’ve streamlined and automated the hard work of doing licensee reviews and made
it customizable for each brand owner. This is some of the magic that comes from having a team of licensing professionals! In addition to software, you offer brand protection programs. Why did you decide to get into brand protection? We have long been concerned with helping brands protect their IP. In fact, Matt and I are patent holders on brand protection technologies going back to 2005. While counterfeiting is always an important issue, it’s really exploded recently due to Covid 19. The criminals are taking advantage of the shift to online shopping and the need for critical supplies and it’s a dangerous combination. Europol recently released a study speaking to this growth, and underlining that counterfeiting is not a victimless crime. In fact, many may not realize that counterfeiters aren’t small time operators – most are large enterprises and they use their illegal profits to fund terrorism, slavery and other human rights violations. It’s nasty business that the average shopper doesn’t think about when buying a ‘harmless’ knockoff Gucci bag.
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