High-school uniforms, then league licences.

Starter was founded in 1971 by David A. Beckerman to make team uniforms for high-school athletic programmes, according to the International Directory of Company Histories (1996); Nike’s 2007 announcement of the brand’s sale also gives 1971 as the founding year. The company was based in New Haven, Connecticut, Wikipedia records.

The next step came in 1976, when, the Directory says, the company signed non-exclusive licensing agreements with a number of professional sports leagues, paying royalties for the right to make and sell copies of professional athletic apparel. Its retail business began with jackets carrying the insignia of Major League Baseball teams, and it soon added headwear, activewear and accessories.

Satin came next. In 1979, the Directory records, Starter agreed to make satin jackets for players on Major League Baseball teams, and it carried the design into streetwear. By 1983 the company had licensing agreements with the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League and the Canadian Football League. As cable television widened coverage of the national leagues, the Directory says, Starter’s bright team jackets became status symbols among children.

The Directory says Starter sought exposure on the field and in the locker room: in 1986 the company made NBA locker-room T-shirts, worn on television by the Boston Celtics, and that it won a contract to make the parkas coaches wore on NFL sidelines. For shops it designed the “breakaway jacket,” a pullover that closely resembled the coaches’ parka. According to the Directory, Starter set out to represent a link between the fan and the team, and its 1993 annual report spoke of turning fans’ enthusiasm for sport into demand for sports-related products.

A logo on the sleeve and the back of the cap.

Starter put its own mark beside the team’s. The International Directory of Company Histories says the company built loyalty to its own name by making its “S and Star” logo a prominent part of the design, embroidering it on jacket sleeves and on the back of baseball caps. When a cap was worn backwards, the Directory notes, the Starter logo was seen before the team insignia on the front.

By the mid-1990s, the Directory says, the licensed business was split into two lines: “official apparel,” carrying the names and logos of league teams and of colleges and universities, and “authentic apparel,” a close copy of what players and coaches wore in games. The goods were sold through sporting-goods, specialty and department stores.

The jackets changed shape through the early 1990s. Wikipedia says the baseball jackets gave way to a hooded design with a side zip and then to a padded half-zip pullover, and that Starter moved beyond team clubs into styles such as plaid. An advertising campaign featured hip-hop artists including DJ Jazzy Jeff, Wikipedia says. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in April 1993 and used the proceeds to grow in Europe and the Pacific Rim and to launch “Brand Starter,” a line of its own sportswear without team logos. In 1994, the Directory records, it opened a Hong Kong office to coordinate its relationships with manufacturers, and Beckerman stepped down as president while keeping the posts of chairman and chief executive, with John Tucker becoming president.

The original company did not last the decade. The New York Times reported in August 2004 that Official Starter Properties and Official Starter had acquired the assets of the bankrupt Starter Corporation in 1999. In August 2004 Nike bought those two businesses, which owned and licensed the Starter, Team Starter and Asphalt brands, the Times reported; Nike placed them in a new unit, the Exeter Brands Group, and the purchase put Nike brands in Wal-Mart and Kmart stores. The deal also brought Nike the Shaq and Dunkman brands of clothing, footwear and accessories, the paper said.

Athletic apparel and sneaker brands.

The brands in this group are athletic apparel and sneaker names. On a sneaker, a brand’s identity is usually carried by a handful of small, repeated places rather than by one large surface: the mark stitched or printed on the side panel, the label sewn to the tongue, the heel tab, the insole print and the box the pair is sold in. Each of those places is small, and each is seen at a different distance — the side mark from across a street, the tongue label from arm’s length, the insole only once the shoe is in the hand.

The box is a design surface of its own. It carries the name, the colours and often a lid graphic, and for many buyers it is the first piece of the brand they hold. Names in this category also change hands, move into licensing or return after a gap, so the same mark can appear on very different shoes over the years.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the brand, who owns it now, how its marks and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Nike to Iconix.

Nike sold the brand on after a strategic review. On 15 November 2007 Nike announced a definitive agreement to sell the brand to Iconix Brand Group, saying the decision followed a strategic review of its Exeter Brands Group, of which Starter was the main business, and that Starter was then distributed mainly through Wal-Mart in the United States and through licensees abroad. SGB reported on 17 December 2007 that Iconix had completed the purchase. Iconix has owned Starter since 2007. SGB reported in December 2025 that Iconix International, parent of Danskin, Pony, Starter, Ocean Pacific and Umbro, had been taken private in 2021 together with Lancer Capital, and that it was retiring a securitization facility so that its North American brand rights would again sit within one operating structure.

Wikipedia records several moves under Iconix. It says that in 2009 the quarterback Tony Romo became Starter’s brand ambassador, and that in March 2013 Starter announced a relaunch of its satin and pullover jackets through Foot Locker and Sports Authority in the United States and Canada, made with G-III Apparel Group, which helped the brand regain licences from the major leagues and the NCAA. Wikipedia also records that Starter supplied on-field apparel and uniforms to the teams of the Alliance of American Football in 2019, and that in November 2019 it announced an agreement with Coca-Cola to make apparel bearing the drinks brand’s logo.

For a design guide, Starter shows how a maker’s own logo can ride alongside a team’s badge: a star on the sleeve, a small S on the back of a cap. Compare Pony, which Iconix also owns, and Nike, Starter’s owner from 2004 to 2007. For this guide we use satin black, star silver and a team royal with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Starter’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.