Your Favorite Brands Got Worse On Purpose

Pick up a Brooks Brothers shirt and turn it inside out. Look at the shoulder stitching. If it looks like a rat’s nest of tangled thread done by someone who couldn't give a shit, that's the business model working exactly as designed.

Brooks Brothers was founded in 1818, dressed 40 presidents over the following two centuries, and made the coat Lincoln was wearing the night he was shot. For most of that run the name meant one specific thing: quality American tailoring at a price that reflected it.

Now think about Eddie Bauer. They used to sell gear with a lifetime warranty, the kind where you could wear a jacket for a decade, bring it back when it wore out, and walk out with a new one. People built real loyalty around that promise. In the spring of 2019, Eddie Bauer quietly scrapped the lifetime guarantee and replaced it with a one-year return window. Customers found out the way you'd expect, by trying to use the guarantee in store and getting turned away. Then in February 2026, the operating company filed for bankruptcy and the court filings made it official: all sales final, no returns, no exchanges.

Quick note before we get into it: everything that follows is now tracked on The Brand Ledger, the searchable database of every brand I've covered. More at the end.

The same company owns both brands. It's called Authentic Brands Group. They're valued at over $20 billion. CEO Jamie Salter founded the company in 2010 with backing from private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners. Revenue went from $1 million in its founding year to $489 million by 2020, according to their own 2021 SEC filing.

The playbook is simple.

Wait for a beloved brand to hit financial trouble. Buy the intellectual property out of bankruptcy: the name, the logo, the trademarks. Strip out whoever made the thing worth buying. That means the designers and the factory workers and the quality control infrastructure, all of it gone. Then license the brand name to third-party companies who actually make and sell everything. ABG collects royalty checks.

Their own S-1 filing said it plainly; they "generally do not design or manufacture the products associated with our brands and therefore have more limited control over such products' quality." That's a direct quote from a company that owns 50+ brands you grew up with, publicly admitting in a federal securities filing that it does not control the quality of the products sold under those names.

They call themselves "brand guardians." Their words, right there in the prospectus, sandwiched between risk disclosures about licensee bankruptcy and quality control failures. What they guard is the trademark. The stitching, the materials, the workers who made the thing worth buying in the first place are all somebody else's problem.

ABG doesn't just own clothing brands, either. They own the licensing rights to the names and likenesses of Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, David Beckham, and Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq licensed his name and likeness to ABG in 2015 and took equity as part of the deal. He has since stated publicly (and ABG's leadership has confirmed) that he is the company's second-largest individual shareholder behind only the founder.

ABG really doesn't need the stores or the licensing deals to survive, which is what makes the whole model bulletproof. When an operating partner goes bankrupt (and they do, with alarming regularity) ABG still owns the brand, and they just find another licensee.

Brooks Brothers got bought out of bankruptcy in 2020 for $325 million by SPARC Group, a joint venture involving ABG and Simon Property Group. They launched a cheap diffusion line called "B by Brooks Brothers" through Macy's. Retail Dive reported that the new line uses polyester and viscose blends where the original used 100% wool. The flagship stores still carry a higher tier, but the name now covers everything from made-in-USA oxfords to polyester at outlet malls.

The logo is identical across both tiers, but the actual garments have almost nothing in common, and unless you know to flip the shirt inside-out and check the stitching yourself, you won't figure out which one you're holding until it falls apart on you.

Eddie Bauer's warranty death was just the visible symptom, but the design rot started before it. Eddie Bauer made gear you could trust in genuinely harsh conditions. Their First Ascent line was designed for mountaineers, their Guide Pro pants were a staple for backcountry hikers, and their down jackets kept people warm through Alberta winters and Minnesota blizzards for 10, 15, 20 years. When something wore out, you brought it back and they replaced it. That relationship is what built the brand, and ABG bought the name and killed the relationship.

A former Eddie Bauer designer described the turning point: the CEO decided to start carrying footwear and bypassed the internal design team entirely. There was no design work and no testing involved because the shoes weren't being designed at all. They went to a Chinese white-label manufacturer, picked synthetic shoes out of a catalog, stamped the Eddie Bauer logo on them, and shipped them to stores. Nobody designed the shoes. Nobody tested them. They picked them out of a catalog.

This is Eddie Bauer's third bankruptcy (174 stores closing and over a billion dollars in debt this round) and the logo is still going to survive it. ABG has already announced plans to relaunch the brand digitally with a "strategy centered on technical product innovation."

Forever 21 was bought out of bankruptcy in 2020 and went bankrupt again in 2025. Lost over $400 million in three years. ABG's own CEO called buying it "probably the biggest mistake I made." All 350 U.S. stores gone.

Champion was acquired from HanesBrands in October 2024 for $1.2 billion. At the time of the sale, Champion's U.S. sales were already tanking, down 23% in Q4 2023 alone. Anyone who wore Champion reverse weave hoodies in the 2010s and remembers them lasting years should pay close attention to what comes out under the name next, because ABG has already announced plans to convert the brand to a licensed model.

Dockers was sold to ABG in February 2026 for $311 million. Levi Strauss used the proceeds to buy back its own stock.

And this is far from a complete list. ABG also owns Volcom, Quiksilver, Billabong, RVCA, Roxy, DC Shoes, and Element, all acquired in a single $1.25 billion Boardriders purchase in 2024. If you’re like me and you grew up skating or surfing in the 90s or 2000s and spent real money on any of these brands because they seemed different from the generic stuff your friends wore, every single one now sits on one company's balance sheet and is subject to the same licensing treatment I've been describing.

Volcom jeans were well-made, Billabong board shorts lasted a decade of salt water and sun, and I've personally seen RVCA tees from 2008 still intact with no holes, no warping, better fabric than almost anything on a rack today.

DC Shoes fired all of their snowboard boot designers and moved the work to a footwear division in Florida run by someone who had never designed a snowboard boot. They also cut Travis Rice from their team around the same time, and he went to a competitor, Union, to help them develop a better one.

ABG also bought Sports Illustrated for $110 million in 2019. The magazine that defined American sports writing for half a century, handed off to a brand licensing company.

Under ABG's model, the publication was passed to operating partners to run. And in November 2023, Futurism reported that SI was publishing articles attributed to fake authors who didn't exist. The bylines belonged to fabricated people with AI-generated headshot photos you could buy on stock image sites. Faces that were never real, attached to bylines on one of the most storied publications in American media.

SI blamed a licensed content partner called AdVon Commerce and terminated the partnership. The Sports Illustrated Union called the report "horrifying." Most of the editorial staff was eventually cut when Arena Group, the operator, lost its license in January 2024 and all staffers were laid off. ABG relicensed the name to Minute Media.

This is what happens when a brand management company owns a media property. The journalism becomes an expense to be minimized, and if AI-generated slop under fake bylines can fill the page cheaper than paying writers, the model says do it.

ABG's retail operating partner for several brands is an entity called Catalyst Brands, formed in January 2025 from the merger of SPARC Group and JCPenney.

The shareholders of Catalyst Brands, per their own press release: Simon Property Group, Brookfield Corporation, ABG, and Shein.

Shein. The ultra-fast-fashion company accused of labor violations, IP theft, and environmental destruction at industrial scale. The company that helped accelerate the death of brick-and-mortar retail for an entire generation of these brands is now part-owner of the entity that operates Brooks Brothers stores. The brand that dressed Abraham Lincoln is partially owned by the company that sells $4 polyester dresses on an app. One of those facts that sounds like it can't possibly be true but is right there in the SEC filings and press releases, verified by Bloomberg, Retail Dive, and every other outlet that covered the merger.

One of the most common questions people have when they see this pattern is why so many of these brands show up at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Costco, and outlet malls.

TJX Group, the parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Sierra, admits on its own website that "some of our merchandise is manufactured for us." An NBC Washington investigation went further, finding small "TJX" labels hidden inside what appeared to be designer clothing, confirming those items were manufactured specifically for TJX stores through licensing agreements with the brand names on the tags. A retail expert told NBC that the quality and fit you expect from a designer label may not be what you get from a licensed item.

The "retail prices" on their comparison tags are also suspect. TJX settled a class-action lawsuit for $8.5 million in California over its "Compare At" pricing, which plaintiffs called "phantom markdowns". An ABC News reporter walked into a store, found a Michael Kors purse tagged "Compare At $328," checked the price at Macy's and Neiman Marcus, and found it selling for $278 at both. TJX's own website admits the "Compare At" number is just their buying staff's "estimate" of what a comparable item "may have been sold" for somewhere, at some point. That disclaimer is buried at the bottom of their site. The price tags in the store say nothing.

This doesn't mean every item at TJ Maxx is garbage. Some locations carry legitimate past-season goods. But most of the model runs on cheap product made specifically for the store, with a fake 'original price' on the tag.

People who've worked inside these companies describe an even messier picture. One person who worked for an ABG brand licensee described a split system: their company makes high-end product with quality fabrics for specialty retailers, while a completely separate licensee of the exact same brand makes budget product for Costco and Sierra, and there's no way for a shopper to tell from the outside which version they're looking at because both products carry the same brand name, sometimes with slightly different logos, but the quality and construction have nothing in common.

What's maddening about all of this is how invisible it is at the point of purchase. There's nothing on the tag that says "this is a licensed product made by an entirely different company than the one that built this brand's reputation," and unless you've read the specific trade press coverage of the specific licensing deal for the specific brand you're holding, you genuinely cannot tell from the outside which version of the product you're about to buy.

Outlet stores work the same way, and this one is well documented: brands like Banana Republic and J. Crew have dedicated teams whose entire job is designing lower-quality product specifically for the outlet channel. These stores haven't sold overstock in years. They sell cheaper-to-produce versions of the same goods, manufactured for outlet from the start.

ABG is the biggest player but this is an entire industry now.

WHP Global owns the trademarks for Toys "R" Us, Babies "R" Us, Rag & Bone, Express, Bonobos, Joe's Jeans, Vera Wang, Anne Klein, Isaac Mizrahi, and Lands' End, among others. Bonobos started as a direct-to-consumer brand that people loved for the fit and the quality. Sold to Walmart, quality dipped. Then the brand moved to WHP Global and now it's a name on a website. Joe's Jeans, once known for some of the best premium denim you could buy, has been spotted at Sam's Club for $9.90 a pair.

Marquee Brands owns Martha Stewart, Sur La Table, Emeril Lagasse, America's Test Kitchen, BCBG, Ben Sherman, Dakine, Body Glove, and more. A source who worked inside Marquee described a corporate culture completely disconnected from the actual products: marketing teams fired and replaced twice, licensees cycled through and bankrupted, brands relaunched with new operators, nobody at the top caring about what was being made or who was making it.

The brand licensing industry generated $369.6 billion in global retail sales in 2024, up from $356 billion the year before. Brand licensing is becoming the default way entire product categories work, and if you still assume the name on the label tells you something about the product inside, that assumption is costing you money.

This is the part everyone wants, so here's what I can actually verify.

Patagonia is the gold standard. I spoke with a 20-year ski industry veteran who says they're the only brand he's seen maintain quality across his entire career. They repair or replace your items at no cost. They've sent customers links to secondhand listings of their own discontinued products rather than push a new sale. The Patagonia math only pencils out at a company with nobody demanding quarterly returns, which Patagonia became in 2022 when Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership to an environmental trust. There's nobody left to squeeze.

Darn Tough still makes merino wool socks in Vermont with a lifetime warranty they actually honor. No asterisks, no 30-day window, no fine print that voids the promise.

Barbour has been family-owned for five generations since 1894 and still makes its wax jackets by hand at the same factory in South Shields, England. They re-wax and repair over 60,000 jackets a year. Queen Elizabeth reportedly wore the same Beaufort jacket for 25 years and turned down repeated offers to replace it.

Duluth Trading Company has become a go-to Eddie Bauer replacement for a lot of people. Workwear-grade construction at reasonable prices.

Carhartt's workwear line (not the WIP fashion line) is still built to take real abuse. Family-owned since 1889, still headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan.

Solovair for anyone mourning Doc Martens. They're the original factory in Northamptonshire that made Docs before production moved overseas. Same facility, same craft. Different name on the box.

Red Wing has been family-owned for four generations since 1905 and still manufactures its Heritage line in Red Wing, Minnesota. Privately held, no outside investors, two domestic factories. One of the few remaining owner-operated American shoe companies.

Pendleton is a sixth-generation family-owned business that still weaves its wool in the original mills in Pendleton, Oregon and Washougal, Washington, both of which have been running for over a century. Some finished apparel is sewn overseas, but the fabric itself is woven domestically, and the blankets are made start to finish in the Pacific Northwest mills.

The common thread: look for companies that still own their factories, still employ their own designers, and aren't backed by private equity or brand management firms. If you can't figure out who actually makes the product, that's your answer. If the brand shows up at Costco, TJ Maxx, and a flagship store all at the same time, be skeptical. If it went through bankruptcy in the last decade, look up who bought the name before you buy anything with it on the label.

What ABG does is reputation laundering. They take the trust a brand earned over decades of actually making good products and they convert that trust into royalty payments, cashing it out quarter by quarter until there's nothing left. Then they find the next name to strip.

Forever 21 went bankrupt twice under this model, Eddie Bauer three times, and in every case, the logos kept going while the factories closed and the workers lost their jobs and the products turned into garbage.

A $370 billion industry built on the bet that you won't notice.

Forward this to the person in your life who buys this stuff and wonders why it keeps getting worse. That's the single best way to support what I'm doing here.

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And if you've watched a brand you loved decline from the inside, I want to hear from you. Hit reply. Confidential by default. No names used without permission, ever. The best reporting comes from people who were in the room when the corners got cut.

Every brand named in this essay (ABG, WHP Global, Marquee, and the ones still making their own stuff) is tracked on the Brand Ledger.

→ See ABG's brands on the Ledger

→ Brands to Avoid across every category (the ones actively being extracted)

→ Approved brands — the ones still making their own stuff (Patagonia, Darn Tough, Red Wing, Pendleton, and more)