New York Giants Great Carl Banks On Why He Revived The Starter Brand In Sports

New York Giants great Carl Banks is making quite the impact off of the field the way that he did on the field.

While football fans are most familiar with the former linebacker for playing a key role on the Giants’ two Super Bowl-winning teams of the late 80’s and early 90’s, Banks has re-invented himself as a successful businessman and entrepreneur during his post-playing career.

In recent years, Banks — who serves as the president of G3 Sports, a US licensing firm that creates apparel for the four major pro sports leagues — has partnered with Starter, the iconic apparel brand which was prominent in the NFL, NBA and MLB during the end of the 20th century. As a result of the partnership, Banks has revived the iconic sports apparel over the past decade after a period of time in which Starter stopped making sports apparel after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1999.

Banks — who actually served as one of the Giants’ ambassadors for Starter during his playing career — explains why he wanted to revive the brand after it was dormant in the sports world for a number of years.

“It's not just people who grew up in the 80’s,” says Banks about people who buy Starter apparel in a one-on-one interview. “I have 20-something year-olds talking to me about starting or discovering it in a closet at their parents’ house and rocking it. Or stories of them going to Madison Square Garden or going to their favorite sporting event and getting another one. It speaks to the power of the brand.”

Up until 10 years ago, Starter was making non sports-related apparel as a retail direct brand for Walmart. That all changed once Banks made a call to IP holder, Iconix, about bringing the well-known brand back into the sports realm.

“Years ago, sitting with one of my designers, I said we should do some iconic jackets from the movies, right? I was like, let’s do ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ let's do ‘Coming to America,’” says Banks. “This was all around sports, right? It would be really dope if I could get the license to start, so that I can make it official. This had to be about 10 years ago. I called the NFL about wanting to do this ‘Coming to America’ pack. It would be great if I could get the IP for starter. They told me that they don’t do sports anymore, but I'd be happy to connect you with the folks at Iconix — that's the IP holder.”

That’s when Banks was able to seal the deal as far as bringing Starter-licensed apparel back into the sports world.

“I had a conversation with our guys, I'm like, ‘I'd like to take the brand out of Walmart and reintroduce it into sport,’” said Banks. “The NFL said that if you can get the license or buy the IP, we'd love to have Starter back in sports. They said let's talk about it. We got the deal.”

When reminiscing about the heyday of Starter apparel — the satin jackets were often worn by managers in MLB dugouts, seen on NBA courts and worn by celebrities — back in the 80’s and 90’s, Banks points out how Starter was the team uniform for sports teams.

He singles out how the Las Vegas Raiders’ jacket — which was often worn by popular rap group N.W.A. in the late 80’s and early 90’s — and the Miami Hurricanes — the dominant college football team of that time period — are some of the best-selling and most in-demand jackets to this day for Starter.

“People thought I was crazy when I said I can bring it back out of Walmart,” said Banks. “The people are like, ‘the brand is dead.’ But the intellectual property as it relates to sport was clean. The IP — even though it was in Walmart as a retail direct brand — it was still clean. It was never trashed, and that was the beautiful part about it. I knew with the brand in sport, because I was one its first endorsees, so I knew that there was a connection, and there were some timeless pieces in there that would continue to resonate with people.”

Banks further argues Starter’s legacy in the sports apparel world, saying there’s only one other brand out there — Nike — that transcends sports culture.

“The brand continues to gather more and more momentum, because when you look at sport, there's only one other brand in it,” says Banks. “There’s only one brand other than Starter that can really transcend sporting culture or mirror sporting culture, and that's a shoe brand called Nike Nike . There's no other apparel brand that's been able to do what Starter is currently doing and has done. That's kind of a unique position that we have with the brand, because it's a heritage brand. And because there's an emotional connection to the brand, to its silhouettes, to the moment in time. There's always a Starter story.”

Banks singles out the NBA and MLB as specific leagues where he’d like to grow the Starter brand the most. He wants to continue to “grow” the brand and also mentions the idea of growing Starter in the hat world.

“I want to be in every category, and I want to be able to compete in every category,” says Banks. “To get Starter to where it was, I would need to be able to exploit those categories to really open up my ball, because we have such a vast amount of style that really defined how sports was consumed by fans. I literally have a ball full of vintage starter apparel from every sports league. In hockey, you're going to start to see us really spread our wings there. We introduced some things and you're going to see some really fun stuff on the NHL side. In the NFL, we're doing the same thing.”