1800Hotline 015 // ABG acquires Lee for $1B, David is now selling tinned cod, and the NFL eats a lot of PB&J

The Lee deal tells you everything about where legacy apparel brands are headed. Plus Hiya launches kids protein, Jams lands the NFLPA, and Gordon Ramsay enters the olive oil aisle.

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Table of Contents

published:

June 19, 2026

Last Updated:

June 19, 2026

Author:

Zach Bingham

Table of contents

Happy Tuesday 1800 Fam, hope everyone had a safe Memorial Day Weekend!

A busy one to kick us off this week.

Authentic Brands Group just made another major move in the licensing playbook, this time with a brand doing $1.5B in annual revenue. David decided protein bars were not enough and launched tinned cod. And Jams just became the official PB&J of NFL training camps.

None of these are slow weeks.

Let’s get into it.

But first, take a second to fill out the form. It helps us connect the right people and surface opportunities across the community.

Connect w/ the 1800DTC Community

This edition is presented by DOSS.

Does your CPG brand need an ERP?

Our team meets with a lot of brand operators from the 1800DTC community, and this has become a common question. We try to respond honestly based on the quick details they share, but the answer’s usually: not the one you think.

Most accounting systems are fine, but inventory is a mess across channels, POs take forever, and there are people jumping in and out of spreadsheets at all hours. These are usually signs that there’s an operations problem a traditional ERP wouldn’t solve.

That’s what makes DOSS interesting. The Operations Cloud they’re building is a platform that sits alongside your existing accounting stack instead of forcing a rip-and-replace. That means inventory, procurement, order management, freight, fulfillment, warehouse management, and demand planning, are all on one adaptive layer that bends as your business changes.

Take Verve Coffee Roasters: they cut manually batched orders from 30% down to 1% and saved 20+ hours a week across their warehouse team. Mezcla doubled their PO processing speed and saved 12+ hours weekly during a rapid growth period. Both kept their existing accounting systems intact.

We’ve shared DOSS and these examples before, but usually just to tell you about them or link out to an assessment to see where you stand. This time, we connected with their Director of Partnerships, Evan, and he gave us his calendar link to share. Grab a slot and talk it over. It’s a great time, too, since he’s a Knicks fan🏀 and they’re heading to the NBA Finals, so he’s probably in a good mood.

Chat with DOSS

Brand Feature: Hiya — Kids Daily Growth + Protein

Kids Daily Growth + Protein is a clean protein powder built specifically for children ages two and up, formulated with grass-fed whey, whole-food and organic ingredients, and developed with pediatric input from the ground up. Not a scaled-down adult formula. Not a sugar-heavy shake. A product that was designed for kids from the start and tested rigorously for heavy metals, certified by both the Clean Label Project and NSF.

For parents navigating the picky eater problem or trying to support a growing kid without reaching for something that reads like a candy label, this fills a real gap. The kids nutrition category has been dominated by products that compromise on ingredients to win on taste. Hiya is betting there is a large and underserved group of parents who want both. Check out their latest launch post HERE.

Shop the New Kids Protein

What We’re Seeing

AI is reshaping how people discover products, but trust is still the deciding factor at the point of purchase. New research from PSE Consulting found that when AI surfaces a shortlist of products, the same signals consumers have always relied on take over: do they recognize the brand, and what are other customers saying about it? AI gets people to the consideration set faster. But brand recognition and review quality are still what closes the sale. For operators building newer brands, this is both a warning and an opportunity. The window to show up in AI discovery is open right now, but showing up without reviews or brand equity behind you is not enough. → Full story

Authentic Brands Group is acquiring Lee from Kontoor Brands for up to $1B, and the structure of the deal tells the whole story. ABG is converting Lee to a licensing model. Kontoor is using the proceeds to double down on Wrangler and Helly Hansen. Lee does $1.5B in annual revenue and the deal implies roughly 0.5x sales, a notable valuation compared to some of ABG’s prior acquisitions. More on this in the Big Story below.
TikTok Shop is becoming a serious discovery engine for brands that know how to use it. Medicube and Crocs are two very different brands making the same bet: that TikTok Shop is not just a transaction layer but a place where real consumer discovery happens at scale. The brands figuring out creator-led commerce on the platform now are building a distribution advantage that will be hard to close later. Worth paying attention to how they are structuring creator relationships and what they are learning about the conversion path. → More

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Big Story: What the ABG Acquisition of Lee Actually Tells Operators About Where Legacy Brands Are Headed

Authentic Brands Group just agreed to acquire Lee from Kontoor Brands for $750M upfront plus a $250M earnout tied to performance. Lee generates $1.5B in annual revenue. The deal implies roughly 0.5x sales.

For context: ABG acquired Champion at roughly 0.6x sales and Reebok at 1.7x. Lee lands at the lower end of that range, which makes sense given where the brand sits culturally right now. It is not a brand with momentum. It is a brand with awareness, distribution, and decades of consumer familiarity that has not translated into relevance for some time.

That is exactly what ABG buys. The company drives over $36B in annual retail sales across more than 50 brands including Reebok, Brooks Brothers, Nautica, and now Lee. Their playbook is consistent: acquire a brand with strong name recognition, convert it to a licensing model, and let partners carry the operational weight while ABG collects royalties and manages brand strategy globally.

Kontoor, for its part, is shedding Lee to focus on Wrangler and Helly Hansen, using the proceeds for share buybacks and debt reduction. That is a clean, focused capital allocation decision for a company that was already leaning hard into those two brands.

The operator takeaway here is not about Lee specifically. It is about what the ABG licensing model represents as a structural shift in how legacy apparel brands get monetized. Building a brand, scaling it, and selling it to a strategic operator who can extract value through licensing is increasingly the destination for brands that have cultural equity but lack the operational engine to grow it. It is also a signal that the market for brands with name recognition but stagnant momentum is real, and the buyers know exactly what they are paying for.

ABG separately announced plans to IPO in the next 12 months after bringing in former Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox. A public ABG will be one of the more interesting consumer brand stories to follow over the next 18 months.

Quick Hits

Jams just announced a licensing partnership with the NFLPA, making it the official peanut butter brand for NFL players during training camp and on game days.

The New York Times reported in 2024 that NFL franchises were going through more than 3,600 PB&Js per week. That is not a small number. Jams already counts JJ Watt and Caleb Williams as investors, and the NFLPA partnership formalizes what was already a natural fit. The brand is now working on what it is calling the "Perfect PB&J" for retail launch later this year. Athlete credibility plus institutional endorsement plus a retail product in development. Stacking the right way. Read more →

David just launched tinned cod.

The protein bar brand targeting $300M in revenue this year decided that bars were not enough and dropped a new product: tinned cod in a can. It is a genuinely unexpected move for a brand that has been defined by its bars, but it fits the same underlying thesis that David is building around. High protein, clean ingredients, no unnecessary stuff. Whether cod in a tin becomes a real product line or a well-executed brand moment, it does exactly what David’s marketing always does: get people talking. → More

Sleep or Die raised $1M from True Beauty Ventures.

Founded by a former PepsiCo and Google exec, Sleep or Die launched in 2025 with mouth tape and is expanding into sleep supplements with plans to build a full sleep wellness portfolio. TBV closed its second fund at $75M in 2024 and typically writes $1M to $5M checks into brands at the $2M revenue stage. Their portfolio includes K18, which exited to Unilever, Crown Affair, and Vacation. An early check from a fund with that track record is worth paying attention to at this stage.

Gordon Ramsay teamed up with Ben and Elle Caring to launch Krude, a premium extra virgin olive oil brand. Cold-extracted to preserve flavor and polyphenols, packaged in metal tins to protect from UV light, and launching with infused oils, a finishing oil, and a cooking spray. The Caring duo previously built Lady A, a premium rosé and red wine brand. Krude is currently UK-only but the category context is strong: premium olive oil has had a remarkable run as a mainstream pantry upgrade in the last two years. One to watch for a U.S. rollout. Read more →