What the name is worth, and what it costs to get back.
Licensing a name is the highest-margin thing any consumer business can do and the fastest way to destroy the asset. This page is the argument for doing very little of it, written by people who would earn more by doing more.
The arithmetic that makes this tempting.
A licence typically runs at five to twelve per cent of wholesale, with no manufacturing, no stock, no logistics and no working capital. On a line doing two million pounds of wholesale, that is somewhere between a hundred and two hundred and forty thousand pounds a year for signing a document.
There is no other line on a farm’s profit and loss account that behaves like that. It is why almost every recognisable name in Britain has a licensing programme, and why most of them have one licence too many.
The three ways it goes wrong, in order of how often.
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The product is worse than the name.
A licensee builds to a price, because a licensee is a manufacturer with a margin target and a royalty to pay. The first version is good. The third version has cheaper meat in it.
The customer does not know there is a licensee. They know the name on the front, and the name on the front is now attached to a disappointing thing. The royalty is small. The damage is not.
A licence puts your name on a product you do not control and cannot recall.
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The category is wrong and nobody notices in time.
Names travel badly. A farm name works on food, on drink, on clothing that a farm might plausibly wear, and on very little else. Every licensing programme eventually gets an approach for a category that pays well and fits badly, and every licensing programme eventually says yes to one.
The tell is always the same: the deal is described internally as "a test" and has a three-year term.
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And getting out is much harder than getting in.
A licence agreement is drafted by the licensee’s lawyers around a manufacturing investment they are about to make. It will have a term, a renewal, a minimum guarantee and a sell-off period, and the sell-off period is the one nobody reads.
Terminating a bad licence with an eighteen-month sell-off means eighteen more months of the bad product in the market, wearing your name, discounted, because the licensee has no reason left to protect it.
You can end a licence in a week. You cannot end the sell-off.
What this estate would and would not license.
| Category | Position | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Beer, cider and spirits | Already done, in-house | Hawkstone is not a licence, it is a business |
| Ambient food | Case by case, rarely | The producers are inside sixteen miles and mostly full |
| Clothing and workwear | Possible | It is the one non-food category that survives the smell test |
| Homeware and ceramics | Possible, small | And already partly done through an established maker |
| Pet food and accessories | No | A pub with a dog on the sign is not a pet food credential |
| Toys and games | Limited | A jigsaw is fine. Anything with a licence fee and a factory is not |
| Garden machinery | No | Somebody asks about this every year and the answer does not change |
| Financial products | Absolutely not | The obvious one, and the most lucrative, and no |
| Anything with a five-year term | No | Regardless of category. Three years is the ceiling |
The terms we would insist on.
Term and exit
- Maximum term
- 3 yearsWith one 2-year renewal, negotiated fresh
- Sell-off period
- 90 daysNot eighteen months, which is the standard ask
- Quality termination
- Immediate, no cure periodFor a product that fails a spec test
- Approval of every SKU
- Written, in advanceIncluding packaging and every claim on it
Money
- Royalty
- 5–12% of wholesaleCategory dependent
- Minimum guarantee
- YesBecause a licence nobody works is worse than no licence
- Audit right
- Annual, at our costA royalty you cannot audit is a donation
Control
- Manufacturing site
- Named and visitableSame principle as clause ten of the standard
- Sub-licensing
- ProhibitedEntirely, in every category
- Recall authority
- Ours as well as theirsNon-negotiable, and it is where most talks end
Illustrative terms for a demonstration build. This is not an offer and no licence is available.
Brand licensing would be the single most profitable thing this estate could do next year and one of the three most likely to damage it by 2032. The honest position is a very small number of licences, in categories a farm can defend in one sentence, on three-year terms with a ninety-day sell-off and an unconditional quality exit. Anybody offering more money for looser terms is offering to buy the thing rather than rent it.
The smaller version of the same question.
White label — our suppliers, your name, and no mention of us anywhere.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
No. This is an unsolicited third-party demonstration build, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the businesses it describes.
Public filings, published rankings and press reporting, each labelled on the page as a verified record, a founder claim or a third-party estimate.
