Stephen Reily

Co-Founder & Chairman

502.272.2425

sreily@imclicensing.com

Stephen Reily Picture

The term “genius” gets thrown around a lot, but Stephen Reily just might fit the bill. Yale summa cum laude star and Stanford Law grad? Check. Former clerk for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens? Check. Marketing guru, award-winning speaker at leading licensing events, Director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and chicory-and-coffee aficionado? Check, check, check, and check. Connecting his legal expertise with a passion for new products, Stephen co-founded IMC in 1997 and positioned it as a brand licensing agency that nurtures long-term relationships with companies. (You may have heard of some of them — Dole, Valvoline, Kraft Foods, S. C. Johnson.) Stephen says that he inherited his love for consumer products from his great-grandfather, who started a branded food business 110 years ago in New Orleans that the Reilys still run. “Yeah, yeah, but he’s a corporate suit,” you’re thinking. Right? Wrong. When Stephen realized that many people who had paid their debt to society still couldn’t get good jobs or buy houses or vote, he started the Reily Reentry Project, which is responsible for a majority of all expungements in Kentucky over the last two years and has helped give thousands of people the chance to be full citizens again. So, “genius” might not be right. “Person of high intellectual and ethical standards” is more like it. Stephen’s a singular fusion of principled and professional, and he loves meeting new clients over a cup of coffee — with a dash of chicory added to the mix.

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Related Articles

  • Licensing During Disruption: How Licensing Can Serve the Auto Industry as it has Served Others

    Disruption: The Only Constant Did you ever think you would buy toilet paper on your phone? Neither did supermarkets. Did…

    Stephen Reily

    May 1, 2017

  • Donald Trump: How a Presidential Campaign Helps (and Maybe Hurts) a Licensed Brand

    As election year 2016 rolls on, and Donald Trump the presidential candidate delivers a new surprise every day, it’s worth…

    Stephen Reily

    July 11, 2016

  • When Products do the Talking: Volvo Life Paint Says it All

    At this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity only one campaign won two Grand Prix Awards (in Design and Promo/Activation), and…

    Stephen Reily

    July 15, 2015

  • The 5 Hottest Topics at Cannes Lions 2015: Women, Girls, Girls, Women, and Girls

    Last year Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg came to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and boy did she make a difference. …

    Stephen Reily

    June 29, 2015

  • 4 Reasons Why Licensing Needs Digital Marketing

    Five years ago many of our licensing clients (global CPG brands among them) weren’t even using digital marketing and social…

    Stephen Reily

    June 26, 2015

  • Stories Beat Data: And Other Marketing Insights from Cannes Lions 2015

    For all the lessons technology teaches us, did you ever feel like it also ignores some of the most important…

    Stephen Reily

    June 26, 2015

  • 3 Proven Ways to Save Your Brand from the Brink

    FastCompany’s recent story “The Biggest Business Comebacks of the Past 20 Years” shared the stories of brands and companies that had returned…

    Stephen Reily

    May 6, 2015

  • My 3 Lessons from CES: How Tech Makes Great Products Happen

    This year’s CES (bigger than ever, and more interesting than usual) failed to offer one show-stopping piece of technology, but…

    Stephen Reily

    January 8, 2015

  • Do you buy “Charmin” or “Toilet Paper”? Category Managers Know, Even if You Don’t

    When you make your shopping list, do you think about buying a category or a brand? Even if you think…

    Stephen Reily

    November 4, 2014

  • Are you ready to buy a Chiquita-brand orange?

    Chiquita Brands, a former IMC client, found itself in play this year, with competing offers from the Ireland-base Fyffes, the world’s…

    Stephen Reily

    October 30, 2014

  • Private Label Means Growth – Even for Brands

    Only a decade ago, it was not easy to use the terms “private label” and “brand” together. But private label…

    Stephen Reily

    October 13, 2014

  • New channel strategies: Sometimes disruptive innovation is a where, not a what

    Our CEO, Carla Dearing, recently wrote about what makes an innovative product disruptive. Thanks to technology, we assumed for many years that…

    Stephen Reily

    September 4, 2014

  • McDonalds and Starbucks: How Both Get Coffee Pricing Wrong (and Dunkin Doesn’t)

    Kraft Foods recently entered into a license agreement with McDonald’s to deliver McCafé Coffee to a supermarket near you. While…

    Stephen Reily

    September 3, 2014

  • 5 Top Licensing Trends for Restaurant Brands at Retail: Which Chains Should be in Supermarkets Now?

    Licensing restaurant brands into supermarket products is nothing new.  Brands like Marie Callendar’s (in pies and frozen dinners), TGI Friday’s…

    Stephen Reily

    August 11, 2014

  • Consumers Followed Their Noses: How Fragrance Ended Up Everywhere

    Is there any product that doesn’t come in a scented version?  Today you can buy not just scented candles but…

    Stephen Reily

    June 12, 2014

  • The Omni-Product Brand

    For 15 years IMC has been helping the owners of global iconic brands find ways to grow through new products…

    Stephen Reily

    April 3, 2014

  • Backing into Innovation: Capturing New Consumers for Hearing Aids

    While I was at International CES earlier this month I had a chance to meet with leaders of the hearing aid business…

    Stephen Reily

    January 28, 2014

  • CES 2014 – Innovative Partnerships, not Products

    Last week I was one of the 150,000 people swarming around Las Vegas for International CES.  While the show has never…

    Stephen Reily

    January 15, 2014

  • What an Omnichannel World Means for Brand Licensing

    If you want to develop great products that actually sell at retail, you are probably already thinking about how to…

    Stephen Reily

    January 2, 2014

  • Starbucks, Kraft and the $2.7 Billion Divorce

    Last week’s LIMA Bottom Line featured an article I wrote about the recent resolution of a long-running dispute between Starbucks…

    Stephen Reily

    December 23, 2013

  • 7 Most Inspiring Products for Old People are Great New Products for You, Too.

    IMC’s hometown hosted the Louisville Innovation Summit last week  Aging care is a growth industry for Louisville (headquarters for companies like Kindred,…

    Stephen Reily

    November 18, 2013

  • Licensing at Tiffany’s: Not a One-Way Street

    On vacation this summer I needed to get my sunglasses repaired.  While waiting, I was surprised to look in the…

    Stephen Reily

    September 16, 2013

  • What does the Local Food Movement mean for Food Licensing?

    In my hometown of Louisville – a city proud of its food culture in a state proud of its farming…

    Stephen Reily

    August 8, 2013

  • Licensing by Litigation: A Bad Business Plan

    Two large-scale lawsuits in the licensing world have recently been stopped by injunctions.  After spending millions of dollars on legal…

    Stephen Reily

    August 1, 2013

  • Paula Deen and Food Licensing: Why Didn’t She have More to Lose?

    Paula Deen, as a brand with great licensing potential, seems almost beyond repair.  While I can imagine strategies that would…

    Stephen Reily

    July 30, 2013

  • What’s Your Innovation Reality?

    What’s Your Innovation Reality? I was recently reviewing some notes from a talk I heard almost two years ago –…

    Stephen Reily

    July 24, 2013

  • What Do Pet Owners Want Next?

    The pet industry is one of our favorites, and not just because most of us at IMC have pets of…

    Stephen Reily

    June 5, 2013

  • What Makes Martha Stewart Such a Bad Partner?

    I’ve read lots of articles about Martha Stewart’s recent bout of litigation, but none of them addresses why someone would…

    Stephen Reily

    March 21, 2013

  • A Tale of Two Cracker Barrels

    When I saw that Cracker Barrel, the southern-fried restaurant chain, had recently licensed its brand to John Morrell Group, a…

    Stephen Reily

    February 6, 2013

  • A Primer on Licensing

    Wherever industry regulars gather, they’re sure to discuss the world’s largest licensor; the world’s citizenry buys more than $23 billion…

    Stephen Reily

    July 27, 2012

  • Beyond Royalty Revenue: Measuring ROI from Licensing

    In recent surveys senior marketing professionals say that accountability for marketing services is more important than ever, and that they…

    Stephen Reily

    September 16, 2009

  • The Licensing Professional – Not One Size Fits All

    I cannot count the number of times I have heard companies talk about whether they should hire a “licensing professional”…

    Stephen Reily

    February 19, 2008

  • Licensing Agency Compensation: The Inside Story

    One of the needless mysteries of the licensing industry is the topic of agency compensation.  Although talented professionals neither gain…

    Stephen Reily

    February 19, 2007

  • The Bankruptcy Clause: Comforting but Useless

    An experienced reader of license agreements would know exactly where to find what I call the “bankruptcy clause” (about three…

    Stephen Reily

    March 1, 2003

  • When Trademark Licensing looks like Franchising: Avoiding Legal Risk

    If anyone doubted that trademark licensing has become an essential part of brand management, the recent Annual Meeting of the International…

    Stephen Reily

    September 8, 2002

  • The Risks a Licensor Poses to a Licensee: How Can They Be Limited?

    Most form license agreements assume that licensees pose greater threats to licensors than the other way around.  Aside from the…

    Stephen Reily

    August 8, 2002

  • Licensing to Preserve Trademark Ownership

    As all IP counsel know, registration of a trademark depends on that trademark’s use.  A trademark cannot be reserved indefinitely…

    Stephen Reily

    July 9, 2002

  • Trademarks Around the Edges

    Many years ago, companies that made a branded consumer product thought they did only one thing: make that product.  Their…

    Stephen Reily

    March 9, 2002

  • Watch What the Licensor Does, Not What it Says

    Hiring the best trademark counsel – and getting them to draft the best possible license agreement – will not alone…

    Stephen Reily

    March 9, 2002

  • How Accountants Will Change the Face of Trademark Licensing

    As the licensing industry frets about whether the biggest event of the year will be the performance of Harry Potter…

    Stephen Reily

    November 9, 2001

  • License Agreements: Partnerships Worth Getting Right

    Whenever you see a licensor and licensee in litigation with each other you should assume that something has gone wrong…

    Stephen Reily

    September 9, 2001

  • How Many People Does it take to Screw in a Trademark Licensing Agreement

    Because so many brand owners fail to appreciate how important licensing can be for their brand, many of those who…

    Stephen Reily

    August 9, 2001

  • Developing Branded Consumer Products like Consumer Products

    Last month I described how companies find themselves distributing or authorizing branded products that either weaken the protection of their…

    Stephen Reily

    July 14, 2001

  • Why Most Companies Have Too Many Licensors

    If you looked to a corporation’s internal licensing department for evidence of trademark usage and enforcement, as well as development…

    Stephen Reily

    May 20, 2001

  • Licensing Corporate Brands and Trademarks: Knowing What it Should Cost

    As someone who runs a licensing agency for the owners of brands and trademarks, I can be expected to argue…

    Stephen Reily

    February 19, 2001