City Council - Small Business & Professional Licensure Committee Hearing on Docket #0263

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For the record, my name is Brian Worrell, District 4 City Councilor, and I'm Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Small Business and Professional Licensure. Today is November 13, 2025. The exact time is 10.03 AM. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being live streamed at boston.gov backslash city. Council-TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. Rank comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.smallvis.boston.gov will be made part of the record and available to all councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you are interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance of the chamber.

If you're looking to testify virtually, please email our Central Staff Liaison Cora Montron at cora.montrond.boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket number 0263. Order for a hearing to explore the creation of a citywide merchandise licensing program. This matter was sponsored by Councilor Sharon Durkan and referred to the committee on January 15, 2025. Today, I'm joined by my councilor colleagues in order of arrival. Durkan, and Councilor Ed Flynn. And now I'd like to turn it over to the lead sponsor for opening statements and then to the panelists to introduce themselves in their presentation. Durkan, the floor is now yours.

Thank you so much, Chair Worrell, and thank you to everyone who's here today. I'm grateful for the chance to open this hearing on a citywide merchandise licensing program, an idea I proposed when I first came into office. Inspired by what other cities have done, and by a simple question, why not Boston? Even though I'm not from here, I'm incredibly proud to work and live in this city. I've become a huge Boston sports fan and even more a fan of what the city represents. As are so many of our residents. When you fall in love with the city, you want to wear it on your chest. You want to put it on a hoodie, a cap, and carry it on your water bottle. Boston Pride isn't passive. It's something people want to show, celebrate, and claim. Right now, Boston's name, our icons, and the symbols that connect us in our history are an untapped source of pride and potential. At the same time, they're often reproduced or commercialized without coordination or benefit to the city.

We have no system that protects the integrity of our city's identity or ensures that creators and small businesses across our neighbourhoods benefit from the value they help generate. By exploring a merchandise licensing program, we can help safeguard Boston's brand while expanding economic opportunity. Cities like New York have generated significant revenue through similar programs, more than 24 million annually one year. Boston, of course, is its own city with our own brand, but I believe we should explore what benefits a program like this could generate. The conversation comes in a moment when our city is preparing to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Revolution. I secured $100,000, and thanks to the Chair of Ways and Means, in this year's budget to launch a pilot It seems like the city is going to go in a direction of using this for the 250th. So I'm excited to hear what Chief Garces and Ellen Ford have to say today.

and I think we can take a thoughtful and community-centered approach to licensed merchandise. This pilot is not just about what ends up on a sweatshirt. It's about centering local artists and producers and ensuring that the story of Boston is told by people who live here and making sure that any revenue generated flows back into our city and neighborhoods. The goal is simple. When people take home a piece of Boston, whether it be of the public garden, the city seal, it should reflect our values and support our local economy. A licensing framework rooted in our history, guided by our values, and focused on equity and community can make that possible. I look forward to hearing from our city partners who've been working hard on this program, as well as small business owners, artists, and residents who care about how the city presents itself to the world. This hearing is about pride, about civic pride, stewardship, opportunity, and really excited to begin this conversation. And just want to say thank you to the chair for being so easy to work with on this.

I have so many questions, but I'll just get us started with that.

Thank you. Councillor Flynn, any opening remarks?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the administration team that is here. I'm here to learn more about the proposal. I want to support it. I was at a recent small business event at Bowling The Bowling Building at BPS on a Saturday, and it was for small businesses owned by people of color, and a couple of them actually asked me about this program, And one of the things they asked me is there an opportunity for them to also participate in this program if it does become more. And I said, yeah, I think there would be an opportunity. So I'm here to learn about it. I would want to support it, but I would want to see businesses of color also participate in the program as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Councilor Durkan, for bringing this forward.

Thank you, Councillor. I just want to again just thank the sponsor. Thank my colleagues for being here. Also thank the administration for being here as well. And also just shout out some of the small businesses that have submitted testimony for the record, Mathematic Athletics, who's a locally owned women business and then there was another business that gave testimony as well but just shout out to all the Small businesses and local businesses here in the city of Boston, and I look forward to bringing them in. Black-owned BOS, and they also have Boss Shop South End, Jada Turner. who does great work in activation across the city of Boston to support local businesses and also Minority Women Businesses here in the city. So just want to just make sure that when we're having this conversation to make sure that those local owned businesses are interconnected and they also are benefiting off of any program that we stand up.

So look forward to the conversation. Again, thank you for being here, and the floor is now yours.

Absolutely. Good morning, Councillors. Thank you again for having us here. My name is Santiago Garces. I'm with the Department of Innovation and Technology, and I'm joined by Ellen Ford. So I'll just give some brief remarks, and then Ellen can and many more. Thank you for the generous support that the Council has to our department. We are always thinking about what are our goals and objectives, right? We share those with the council that we want better brand recognition for the city. We want the city to be something that is in people's I think the brand recognition is key. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Some of our thinking goes into being able to produce merchandising requires thinking about who are the people who are designing and coming up with the ideas of what's going to be in these products. In these things, in tote bags, in hats, who's producing them, but also who's selling them. For us, it's also thinking about to what extent are we creating the conditions where we don't want to have an antagonistic relationship with businesses. In some sense, we are promoting business activity. And there's a lot to learn. There's a lot of things that we don't know yet, particularly we

We know that these are trying times and we're thinking not only about what is the revenue that these programs can generate, but also what are the costs to operate the program. Some potential costs include obviously manufacturing the goods, designing the goods, selling the goods. There's a cost to that. But also if we decided to do it where we're trying to protect you know like we come up with a design that's so good that everybody wants to copy then there's a cost to securing and protecting the intellectual property associated with those goods and then going in and defending it so There's a lot of things to learn and to consider, but the exciting thing is we have an amazing team of people that have put thoughts around how is it that we can start learning as much as possible, and we also benefit from having great partners from the community and from our academic institutions that are helping us think through some of these issues. So I'll pass it over to Ellen.

Thank you, Santi. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilor Durkan. We have slides that we're going to be reviewing today. We wanted to be able to give a brief overview. Once we received Councillor Durkan's proposal, we recognized there was a significant opportunity For the Boston brand to step into a new era, but we needed to approach it carefully and with special consideration for all of the factors that Santi just mentioned. So instead of making definitive decisions, We've approached it as a pilot program that buys us the time to be able to do really thoughtful research and make sure that we understand all of the factors on the ground, all of the implications of whatever model we go with for this program. We have an agenda.

We wanted to walk you through an overview of the program that we've proposed, this kind of bifurcated program, pilot program, give you a little bit of backstory on how it will come to life through Boston 250. progress to date, and then outline next steps. So if we wanna go to slide four, We think it's a great idea. We love the idea of making goods and apparel, City of Boston official branded goods, available to the general public. We wanted to be able to move quickly and adopt an agile startup mentality to be able to get something on the ground so that we could gather real-time data. Learn, there's theoretical knowledge based on market research, and then there is boots on the ground actual real data from our constituents, from visitors, from the greater Boston kind of community.

So what we've proposed is using Boston 250 as the way to produce City of Boston designed goods using Boston 250 as the catalyst. It's the most significant opportunity we've had Recently, and Boston is uniquely positioned in this moment in time to be able to leverage our role in the nation's revolutionary history to really invite folks near and far to celebrate with us. making goods available so that we can capitalize on our brand, our role in the Revolutionary War, as well as invite residents, visitors into This feeling of the significance. The bicentennial people still have artifacts from that celebration. We wanna make sure that we're making those same artifacts available now. While we do that, while we are

Producing and making those available, we also wanted to engage in a very robust research phase where we are investigating All of the different models, the different production models. Are we looking to do production on demand? And we choose the partner, we choose the suppliers. We really have very hands-on control of that. or do we want to partner with a quasi external partner to really be facilitating the program? What is the appetite? What can we expect? The costs and the maintenance to be for a program like that for a more traditional brand licensing program as well as thinking through all of the different factors that go into the cost capacity needed

You know, internally, whether that's owning the brand IP, the copyright and trademark protections, whether that's establishing and standing up a program of licensing contracts, legal work. We wanted to be able to do both the external work, the market analysis, recognize the value proposition, and the opportunity for us to really validate the value proposition. while also kind of doing the work to confirm and make sure that we weren't making assumptions. This program is in partnership with the council. Do it. We're working with the Mayor's Office of Partnerships on Boston 250, that tangent. And then we're fortunate to have Boston as a center of many academic institutions and scholarly excellence. So we partnered with BU to be able to do the research track.

We do have a brief breakdown of the $100,000 to be able to kind of represent how that will be utilized Program Facilitation for this year. We are allocating 15,000 for that. The research track, we've allocated 9,950. Design and production, once we choose a production methodology and partners, we've allocated 35,000. And then hard costs, that's any number of materials. Specifically, we're thinking about all of the Boston 250 events where we want to invite all of the small business partners, the women and minority owned businesses to be present and partner with us at those events. So it's not us as a city, making these goods available and there is kind of a fixed and opaque presentation of it. We want there to be partnerships so that if we're having an event

Small businesses can come and take part in the creation of the goods in real time and almost like eventize that production. And we want to make sure that we have the funds available to support that partnership. If we can go to the next slide. And I'll just be brief about Boston 250, why we think this is the right opportunity. A little bit of backstory. Thanks to Councilor Durkan and her team for collaborating with us to do research on kind of a you know comparative analysis of cities across the United States and abroad. What we know is that the cities who do have programs like this typically have had a catalyst. There has been something that elevated the brand that made it more present, that made it more aspirational, that made it something that residents and tourists wanted to own and wear. Boston 250 really is our opportunity to create that moment.

It's our kind of defining anthem of our hometown pride and our role and really introducing Boston or reintroducing it for anyone who is under outdated stereotypes of what Boston is and how we live and are in community here. Because of the significance of it, because of the city's Community engagement and also investment in making sure that we are, you know, kind of drawing people, you know, from the tourism angle, creating economic opportunity. We felt like this was a well-substantiated opportunity to leverage. It also happens to have the benefit of a very dynamic consumer facing brand that we felt set us up for an even Bigger opportunity in terms of presenting the brand and making it engaging and aspirational for people.

We want them to feel like they want to wear it and it looks like something that would belong on a Nike or Converse sweatshirt The same way it's aspirational for other elements. If you can go to the next slide, we can show all of the different ways that we are designing and executing on the Boston 250 brand. So we have map elements. All of it is through this really kind of visually engaging and show-stopping presentation of design. making sure that everything we do, we're showing up and showing off all of the different facets of Boston's 250 years of history, not just a fixed point in time. If we can go to the next slide. We've made a couple mock-ups just to show some of the assets we can imagine making as part of Boston 250. That includes all of our out of home campaign, the awareness campaign.

Relics, like coffee table books. We also are working on signage for our markers program. But if we go to the next slide, this is where you can start to see the way that we're exhibiting our pilot program for brand licensing. many different iterations all of them designed to be you know kind of create that limited edition drop effect where if you're going to go to a neighborhood event, if you're going to go to a block party, you want to go to all of them because you know That's your chance to get one of these custom limited edition sweatshirts, t-shirts, tote bags. And that's where we're looking forward to truly the innovation and creativity of our community members, artists, small business members to partner with us in the design and production of these assets.

If we can go to the next slide, actually two slides. We also wanted to give a quick update on our progress to date. The first thing we did was embark on our research partnership. We have Pete Howard with us today from B.U., the Center for Action Learning, and the Quaystrom School of Business. We have a team of graduate students working with us really to expedite and facilitate the research that gives us the ability to do social listening and sentiment measurement, to do the before, what is the level of brand awareness for the City of Boston and the Boston 250 Initiative, as well as measure throughout really being able to see on the ground in real time what are these assets doing? How is the brand awareness increasing? And then do one more final look after our pilot study is over to be able to give us a very definitive

Conclusion on where we go next and how we go about standing up a brand licensing program. Our partnership with the team from BU includes a market analysis. It does include a kind of comp study of both the cities here in the US as well as some abroad who have brand licensing and merchandising programs investigating what are the details, what are their goals in New York City We know they are kind of generating revenue. In other cities, it's more about charitable giving. What are the goals that make the most sense for us? What are the opportunities that we can capitalize on? We're also having the team do a thorough research and analysis of e-commerce platforms, different configurations, distribution,

Points thinking through, are we looking at production on demand and e-commerce solution? Are we only making these available in person at specific events? What is the opportunity and the cost of holding inventory? We really want to make sure that we have a thorough and robust understanding of all of these different factors because there are lots of different ways that we can facilitate this program and we want to be lean and smart about what approach we move forward with. We also want to look into testing and validating the purchase intent of both constituents and visitors. It's undeniable that there is a tourism opportunity both in attracting people by You know, someone who is already wearing one of the sweatshirts goes back home or goes, you know, travels to another part of the country. Someone sees it and it introduces Boston as a different, this is a different representation of this city that I wasn't expecting.

I need to go maybe I need to go visit Boston again soon. We want to make sure that we really do understand kind of all of the ways that we can take advantage of the purchase intent. And then some of the things that we're thinking about internally are really thinking about, you know, right now, the city doesn't own any copyright or trademark protection for our brand, both the primary or the Boston 250 initiative. So what would it take for us to own the critical elements as well as any initiative specific assets? What is the investment and capacity necessary from legal, from small business, from the various different departments, are we thinking through enforcement? So the team from BO is going to help us make sure that we're not, we haven't lost sight of anything, there aren't any gaps in our knowledge base, and we

have been able to make good use of the resources so that we can be working on multiple tracks at the same time. If you go to the next slide. Coming from advertising and being at the city for now two and a half years. Brand management is a universe I'm very familiar with. And I'm also familiar with the pitfalls that you can encounter. when you are licensing your brand or exhibiting it in new and different ways. There is a benefit to innovation and being the first to have a brand expression that is new and different and sometimes if you're moving quickly there are production you know kind of points that you know there's oversight we want to make sure that the City of Boston doesn't encounter any of those pitfalls that We've seen brands stumble over not infrequently.

Some of that involves the selection of a production partner. Are we thinking union? Are we thinking, like I said, production on demand? How are we confirming the construction of t-shirts? and making sure that we are really thoughtfully considering the entire production pipeline. If we go to the next slide, our next steps are to build that test environment. So one of the things that we know is that if we do want to go with an e-commerce as a method of distribution, That's something that we want to think through. Is that something we want to be available on Boston.gov? Or is that something that we want to leverage in a partner that already has e-commerce capability on an existing site?

The other thing that we want to do is really kind of have real data on the different items. Is it hoodies? Is it t-shirts? Is it tote bags? Really kind of in real time looking at that so that we can make determinations and continue to test and iterate as we go. and seeing what is the pipeline that we need to put in place to draw people's attention to an e-commerce environment. So is that an awareness campaign? How are we targeting people to generate interest? What is the click-through rate? How can we optimize that? to really make sure that we are both investigating and making sure that our assumptions are airtight, as well as capitalizing on learning opportunities. At the end of the Boston 250 initiative in July 2026, that's the moment we'll have to really thoroughly sit back, evaluate all of the data we've gathered through the Boston 250

Thank you. Thank you. well-researched, well-documented recommendations for how to go about establishing a brand licensing or branded merchandise program that makes sense, is lean, efficient, and strategic for the city of Boston. I've given a quick moment just to go over a lot of what we've already talked about in terms of capacity needs. Next slide. Oh, next slide, sorry. Thank you, Santi. We've really talked about most of this. It's just we're doing our due diligence to make sure that we've built in

Time and a process to consider research, investigate, and draw conclusions about the internal and external capacity necessary to have a really successful brand program here at the city. You can go to the next slide. If, at the end of that, we do want to move forward with additional City of Boston designed, produced, and distributed goods, That, I think, is the point where we would love to think about the pilot program in its phase two, where instead of Boston 250, now let's investigate more of a pure city of Boston program. and again, continue to do the testing and iterating to evaluate the appetite and purchase intent of those items. And the next slide, we will rest and take questions.

Thank you for your presentation. And if there's any samples of anything here lying around and you need someone to just test it out Public, please. I am here. I'll now go to the lead sponsor for our first round of questions. Councilor Durkan, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Chair. So you've answered some of my questions already just with that presentation. But obviously, the fact that we don't own any of these Logos is a huge potential issue depending on if they're being used online and I just did a quick Google on my way over here and Obviously, our brand is already being sold online, even on Amazon. This is a Boston fire department. There were 15 different options for things that you could purchase from the Boston Fire Department that are not from the Boston Fire Department, including the City Seal. So I know that one of the issues when I first brought this to the forefront was

was that we didn't want potentially people wearing or representing our city departments And so I just want to say that you can already represent our city departments. You just have to go on Amazon. And I don't want to bring up there are some other local companies selling things with the city seal. There are other city, obviously, going around the Faneuil Hall area, going around some of the tourist shops nearby. obviously those are folks that we have to include in this conversation folks that are already selling this but I just thought that was the most egregious of examples because clearly I don't it doesn't benefit the Boston Fire Department doesn't benefit the City of Boston for Thanks to these being sold on Amazon. So and so I think my first question is answered. We do not own any of our logo and branding. I just wanted to ask the question of how the city would think about what images

and what trademarks and what logos we want to own and how the city might weigh that. I mean, particularly for me, I think that this is one of the most important. And obviously, we only have to worry about owning something if we think People are either selling it in a way that we don't want or if we are going to incorporate this into a design that then will be sought after and then replicated. These represent city government, so the fact that These logos can be sold on merchandise right now without our say. To me, I would say those are the first order of business. The second is I really want...

I really wanted us to be selling, this is my initial goal with this hearing order, was I really wanted us to be selling, obviously our Parks and Recreation Department, I believe that Our parks don't get enough funding and one of my initial thoughts seeing what New York was doing is they were sending back a portion to their parks department so that was my initial But now I've realized there's a whole world of things that we could be doing. And having just purchased my first MBTA holiday sweater, I realized that other companies nearby are already doing this. That was an interesting experience because it was a pre-order. and there's no way to purchase it now. So I do think there are ways for us to do limited drops of city merchandise knowing exactly how much we're going to need to create and what sizes.

So just any comments on sort of how we would prioritize what we want to own.

I think, again, there are multiple different ways we could approach that. And it's a spectrum of right now, We own none of the brand elements. We could go to the opposite end of the spectrum in the pendulum and say we're going to own every single thing. I think is the most time and cost intensive, certainly for the legal department. and then we step into the environment where if we own it now we have to enforce it and so really thinking through what are the critical elements we know we want to own that we want to protect both for the integrity of those representations. Brands, if nothing else, are emblems of significance And so for the city seal, to the councilor's point, that is really supposed to be reserved for very serious, you know, kind of like serious or official city business.

Similarly you know like that's something you often see when the mayor is you know it's like this is this is a mark that is significant and important and we want to make sure that we're protecting that. I think there's lots of different design solutions for the question of are people going to be confusing someone who has a fire sticker with an actual representative of the Fire Department. I think there are design solutions that we can implement to be able to protect that, whether that's in a kind of apparel guide for uniforms, So that there is consistency, so that everyone who is a representative of fire safety, any kind of critical service is always wearing their

You know, kind of like it's positioned in one way or it's on a certain color of material that then frees us up to be able to use other elements like the primary logo or the secondary logo. Primary is the longer one and the secondary is the is the B. so that we can partner those with the visual identities of special initiatives like Boston 250. We're not denying that there will be capacity and cost

I mean, I have really charged to be conservative about what we can do initially because I know there's a certain cost Related to... to owning our brand. But I also know, I mean being conservative also about, it's easy to look at New York and say, oh, they're making this much money a year. but we are at the very beginning of this process. And so I think the best that we can hope for in my opinion is to break even and continue to build our brand. But I'm just curious from your perspective, how do you rate the success of what do we want to see out of this pilot program? And would you measure success based on revenue or participation? Building the City's Brand, or all of the above?

I think it's a little bit of all of the above. We were just talking with the team from BU yesterday about what are our KPIs for this research and also this program. The brand opportunity, the brand awareness opportunity can't be understated. This is a moment where next summer we will have more visitors than we've had in recent years. you know kind of all eyes on opportunity we want to leverage that absolutely. Beyond that we really want to think through Are we looking to introduce people to things like parks? If those are elements, like in New York City, they have probably two of their most recognizable brand components are FDNY, and NYPD. For us, I think there's an opportunity to visualize and make visible some of the other programs, departments, programs, initiatives that already exist within the city.

and help other people, help more people know about them and become participants in them or supporters of them. But it is largely our opportunity is awareness in the initial stages and then Depending on the model that we choose, we think there will definitely be revenue that we can use to offset costs.

And Chair, I have some additional questions, but if you wanted to go to our colleagues and then I can come back.

Yeah, we'll have a second round.

Okay.

Thank you, Councillor. The chair recognizes Councillor Flynn. Councillor, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was listening closely to the conversation and just want to follow up on Some of the questioning Councilor Durkan was mentioning. And just to clarify, and maybe you can provide a little bit more information. Would this be for Boston to try to make a profit off of this, or would this be for Boston to try to tell people its story through the sweatshirts that we see where people might come to visit, spend their money here, or I would assume maybe it's both, but just wanted to see what your thoughts might be.

Yeah, I can jump in. I think both. We definitely but again, this is where we want to at least not lose money. If it generates a surplus of revenue, then that'd be a good thing to then have to think about where do we use those funds. But I think the baseline is it needs to increase the brand awareness. and then on the economics. A lot of these things are depending on the model that we use to produce the goods, like the cost and how much money we hold in inventory, where does it get sold, does it get sold online, does it get sold here, So how would Boston lose money on this?

Would you hire a dedicated city employee in a particular department to oversee this, pay them a salary, pay their staff, and then they would in turn Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. We're not asking for an additional FTE in the pilot. We're using the $100,000 to, as Ellen kind of broke it down. So some of it is some research and initial work. But there's also going to be a production, so we're going to try to make some goods and sell them. and initially in the pilot, we're not going to have like additional staff. I think that this is where contingent on the findings of the pilot, like if we decide to have like a, I think that our initial thoughts is that it would primarily be online sales. which means that it's actually we don't have to secure inventory we don't have to have stuff here which is less expensive and less complicated but

Those are the kinds of decisions that we need to make over the next few months. And obviously, we'll have to run a competitive process to identify the partners in compliance with Chapter 30B. Depending on who bids and what are the capabilities that they offer, those are the things that we'll have to consider.

Would this project be contracted out in terms of Boston kind of overseeing the the product but in reality someone outside of city government is is putting the sweatshirts in a bag mailing it out looking at the um Looking at the mail order, sending it out. So is it basically contracting out to a third party?

We're waiting to see exactly what comes back from a competitive process, but that model minimizes the amount of risk for the city, and then the city would just get a cut out of the sale. But that's what we need to figure out. And again, there's going to be competition because the point about not protecting the trademark is people are able to do other products like this, and we would likely not go after them. Initially, at least, unless we start to trademark and going after them. That would suppress sales. Initially, our thinking is that having some just in time production with a partner would be the thing that makes it the least expensive for us to operate and then we're just capturing a piece of the money that gets sold plus including the cost of design and kind of management that our team

Would you use union labor in terms of producing the product? And would you ensure that the product itself, whether it's a sweatshirt, is made in the United States?

That's certainly our one of our primary concerns is making sure that we're thinking through that full spectrum of union labor balancing The production method that's going to be cost effective. So production on demand means that nothing gets made until someone orders it. That protects us from having to hold inventory. and finding a partner who can fulfill production on demand as a pipeline that also uses union labor that can also qualify that the goods they're using, the blanks, the t-shirts, the hoodies, are made in the US. I think there's a list of stipulations and considerations we want. We're kind of investigating. And whatever model we go with has to check off the boxes, all of them.

And ideally, this maximizes the economic impact to the city. So it'd be things that are ideally produced in Boston and whatnot. But we will follow the rules of chapter 30B and make it competitive and follow those rules.

Mr. Chair, I know I'm out of time. Could I ask one more question? Yes. OK. Thank you. So how could Boston lose money on this? How could Boston lose money on this even though we are selling a product in promoting the city where tourists come in and spend maybe $1,000 at a hotel and a restaurant? Are you balancing that aspect of it in even though there's a likelihood that you could lose money on selling a t-shirt?

We're thinking about the different ways we can approach this. and that is one of the most significant considerations. Like we talked about that kind of spectrum of we own none of the brand IP or we own all of it and then we also enforce and police it. We want to find the sweet spot in the middle where we are creating opportunities and maximizing engagement and brand awareness without unnecessarily committing internal capacity and resources to managing brand management, licensing, enforcement, When we haven't done the beta testing to understand and confirm the purchase intent of the constituents. Go for it.

Yeah, I was going to say, if the cost to produce these goods exceeds the revenue, then we would be losing money. Initially, with the pilot that we have, we think that it's a good amount of money to try this out, that we think that we will be able to recover the customer. But how do we lose money? We lose money if someone else is producing similar goods for a lower cost and people decide not to buy the goods. If we end up having inventory that never gets sold, we lose money. We lose money if the cost of producing and distributing the good exceeds the cost of developing. We are in a pilot stage. We are able to do this with the staff that we have. But obviously, if it scales, that is one of the things that New York City has invested in large amounts, Staff to be able to hold those levels of revenue.

So our team would probably be very unhappy with me if this grows and is very successful and then we only because we have other duties and whatnot. So that's the thing that I think that as we approach the budget process, we'll like to check in and see based on our understanding of where things are in the pilot, do we need to add capacity because We're even on the design side of things like whenever we're designing a tote bag or a hat, it's time that we're not designing Boston reeds or like something that we, you know, like one of the many programs that we have that are important.

Well, Mr. Chair, thank you for giving me an extra minute.

I appreciate the time. A special thank you also to a friend of mine in the audience, Kerry. It's good to see you, Kerry. Thanks for the great work you are doing as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councillor. I guess one of my questions is around Because you go around town or you're online and you see so many different designs on Boston. Do we have an idea how much money is being generated currently off of Boston, the name Boston or Boston logos? How many businesses in this area?

We won't be able to exactly quantify that because we don't have access to other people's books. We have information on all of the kind of data and reports from tourism, from the work in economic opportunity with small businesses. We can reach out and leverage those partnerships You kind of ascertain as much as we can possibly know. We're also, that is part of the market research that we're doing is to look writ large in a more abstract general sense What is the tourism? What is the revenue that's being produced? There are different partners that we can tap into their knowledge base of tourism and purchase intent for

and I'm assuming because we don't have that number yet, type of revenues we could produce. I know New York is saying $24 million, but far larger city than us, a lot more residents, also just a lot more brand awareness around New York as well. whether it's like TV shows or right but do we understand like how much we could generate yet?

Not at this time.

Okay.

Yeah, we don't know at this time. And again, I think the model that we've been thinking so far is we would prefer not to have to trademark and then license So there's a source of revenue under which we would hold the trademark and then license other people to generate things based on that. So we get a cut because we own the design, but then we have to Fight all the people that are using the design without proper licensing. But that is what we're excited to find out is how much do we sell? And to some extent, it's like, From the Councilor and from a number of people, I think that this is an idea. There's a lot of excitement. People love the city. So we hear that there's signal and desire to buy these things and then That's what we will find out and hopefully by budget season we can get back to you all and say this is roughly what we think.

And when it comes to brand awareness, I just want to shout out a lot of social media content creators that are pushing Boston forward. and you know very reflective of you know what Boston is like made by Mojo you have Dart Adams just some individuals to think about you know when we're looking at creating brand awareness and getting the information out there on this program. People who are currently doing it and are having major impact and engagement around their content.

Absolutely. We think that's a huge opportunity. The Content Creators Summit we recently, the mayor's office had in partnership with Gupta Media. That really was such a show of how vibrant and thriving the creator community here is in Boston. We want to partner with those folks who are already doing that work. Collaboration, limited edition drops, that's part of the culture of social media and consumerism right now. We want to absolutely use that to our advantage.

Awesome. And I know next year is also Tall Ships and also the World Cup. Any thought around merchandise around those two other events?

This is where we have to be a little bit careful with brand management of other brands. We want to make sure that we're showing up in the right ways and representing Boston's expression. So whether that's, you know, and so on. And then there's the soccer football watch party where there's apparel or goods that really kind of elevates the partnership Boston has with these organizations without running into conflicts with Other Brands IP. But it absolutely is something that we want to think about. We can do subliminal design elements that acknowledge soccer ball, nets, that kind of thing, without running afoul of FIFA. Awesome, awesome.

Well, thank you again. I'll turn it over to the lead sponsor for second round of questions.

Thank you so much, Chair. This is such an exciting conversation. And I think some of Councilor Flynn's questions were incredible because it sort of got me thinking to when I was first filing this because obviously there are a lot of other places that have chosen to run Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Director of the BPDA, Arthur Jemison. One of my jokes for him was, watch out, you're going to be the head of merchandise licensing. So I just want to be very clear that We do have some agencies, quasi-governmental agencies that work within the city, Boston Water and Sewer.

Obviously, the planning department is now underneath the city, but there obviously are still remnants of the BRA and BPDA that exist. So I'm just curious if sort of what you're investigating will sort of go into some of the nuances of who should be doing this work. The other thing is, obviously, I mean, my initial interest in this Because the city has actually gone through, essentially like the pilot we're doing is not a new thing. The city actually did something with Faneuil Hall that ended up being a flop. The reason that I wrote my hearing order the way that I did was because I really didn't want the city to hold merchandise. I wanted there to be some external entity given that we we know that there are huge opportunities for our brand especially in this upcoming year

I think there's always huge opportunities for a brand. I think there have been on top things that have happened that if we had had this program stood up already, there would have been opportunities to commercialize What the city is doing. And I think the landmarking of City Hall would have been a huge opportunity to sell branded merchandise. and so on. I just wanted to give you an opportunity to chat through some of those nuances of what the city will be It's incredibly important that we don't count out that this could be, I mean, NYC Tourism, which is the group that does that in New York, is wholly independent, but they do go to a government body to approve the actual iconography and IP.

And I think that ultimately, if this is to scale to What I would like to see it scaled to. I really don't see city government as the only entity that would touch this work.

Yeah, I'll just say I know that Ellen and the team have been reaching out to a number of external partners and I think that that's partially a part of the research process like who else is already doing things in this area or like adjacent who has an interest like would benefit from having and more, you know, like if the program is successful. So I think that, and we're working closely with the team and the partnerships office to go out and figure out, so again, for us, If this makes a lot of revenue and it actually generates profit, it generates money that is not used. We're a nonprofit as government, so we will use that to support something that is valuable. Regardless, we want to see the program be successful and have more people be aware of the city to promote economic activity at the city. So I know that Ellen and the team are working closely to figure out who could be interested. And that might be the outcome.

in a year when we get closer to the budget hearing we say we found a long-term home for this and this organization is very interested and what we've done is incubated something and then we can continue to partner with them we can continue to help support After the 250th anniversary, we'll soon be celebrating our 400-year birthday as a city. So there's a role that we can play even if there's other groups that are managing and owning the program.

Yeah, thank you for that. And I think it's just really important too that we, I know at least with the New York test case, It really was that there were certain businesses that were very small and now like only in New York that have become very big. and so I really think of this as the opportunity to scale a local business from small to big and to invest in local people and to invest I think the other question about Breaking even and making money versus not making money really comes down to It comes down to inventory. It comes down to how many are sold. I mean when I talked to New York, it was clear that

It was clear that some of the things that like you would see at a tourist shop that were cheaper were sold in mass and that was where all their resources came from where I think the thing that drew me to this issue to begin with was the Nike collabs and like sort of the fancy stuff. And so I just want to read into the record that this is really about numbers. It's about how many units sold. And sometimes the splashy thing might give us The brand awareness that the city is doing this, but the actual, it comes from the person who is walking on the Boston Common, says, I want that City of Boston licensed hat. and it's $15. It's not a $45, $55 special collab with a designer.

And so having done some more research on other cities, I think you know what drew me to the issue is like there's a lot more going on here and there's definitely an economics to it and I just want to thank I know the Questrom School is partnering with you on different issues but I want to thank The Questrom Business School class that worked with our team, they did a great job. And I think the one thing that I felt like was different from the report that we got from Questrom which I will give to the chair for the record. The one thing that I felt like was different was that if it is run by the city there are a certain amount of benefits to there already being people doing adjacent jobs in the city of Boston. So there's not like, oh, you might have to hire some people, but you don't have to hire potentially the whole team of folks that and so forth. I don't think a quasi-governmental agency would have to.

But I think there's pitfalls and there's benefits. And so that's definitely something I'm looking in the pilot to be investigated. I do think that some of the business owners just wanted to speak to some of the testimony that we had been talking to since we filed this. We're a little scared to go on the record because they didn't want anything they said about the program to end up impacting. If they were submitting for an RFP. So I just wanted to share that there definitely is a lot of interest from local and especially regional businesses, but some of them were worried about because they are aware of the laws associated with St. Louis, St. Louis, St. Louis, St. Louis, St. Louis, St.

In my opinion, it should be driven by the local businesses that we seek to scale and support and cherish as part of this larger goal of bringing tourism to the city and owning our brand and So I'm really excited. And this is the only time I've been on a national brand. I've been on a national merchandising podcast. So so I know This might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think we have the chance not to give a little Boston mention. But this might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think it's both a way to raise revenue, to bring tourism, and to invest in our brand. in a way that we already see other cities doing. And so why not Boston? I don't know of any city more iconic and more historical and obviously more full of culture. My district has Fenway Park and TD Garden, which I know my colleagues are sick of me talking about.

But knowing all the sports teams and all the merchandise that's being sold, I would love to have a corner in the team store. I would love to have a corner. in TD Garden, selling what is our brand. And I think it's not about recreating the wheel. It's about, you know, it's about... It's about the folks selling on the Boston Common. It's about the areas in which people are already selling. So I think I would like to do the Ritzy collabs, but I also know that it's really going to come from people stopping By a pushcart and saying and Faneuil Hall and saying, Oh, I want to grab this thing that's official City of Boston merchandise. And I do think for it to be official, it doesn't have to be licensed, but we do have to think about that licensing as a big part of this.

Because I think holding inventory as what in the last time that this was tried, you know, that was the issue. And I'll just end with this. I obviously have already petitioned the mayor on this particular issue and so I want to say that she's very interested in a store But I don't think we're there yet. I think we need merchandise to put in the store. So I think we're definitely on the right vein. But you got to think big. So thank you, Chair. I really appreciate your time and really appreciate all the work that your teams are putting in to make this possible.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. And again, thank you for being here. Just also just want to give a shout out to all the local brands that have been promoting Boston. There's a pop-up that's going on today, Greek Town in Dorchester. And a lot of his apparel and his design is promoting Boston. And also Madrugada. They had a pop-up a couple weeks ago, but I'm going to get myself in trouble because I know I haven't shouted out There's a lot of pride in Boston, whether it's the Sitco sign or the gas bubble. We have a lot of pride, and that also dives even deeper into our neighborhood. When we're looking at expanding this program, maybe even there's a neighborhood brand that we can also take a look at as well. So thank you, Chief Garces.

Thank you, Chief Ford. Thank you to your entire team. Thank you to the BU class for helping on with this research. Thank you to IGR central staff. Again, all the brand content creators also that are out there that are helping create an awareness for the city of Boston. and also just thank you to Councilor Durkan for putting this forward. And any, do we have a second panel, no? No, okay. And no public testimony. So with that said, okay. So we're going to go check to see if we have anybody signed up for public testimony. So it looks like we, nope, nope, all right. All right, so we do have public testimony.

So when your name is called, please come down to one of the two mics. State your name, neighborhood, and or organization affiliation. Please speak into the microphone and please keep your comments to two minutes. So we have, yeah. Is it Mareed?

Mareed. Mareed. Yes.

The floor is now yours.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Mairead Pitcock, and I was born and raised in Medfield, Massachusetts. Almost two years ago, I came across Councilor Durkan's ASI article about the proposal for a licensed Boston merchandise program. And as the operator of Beantown Brand Apparel, The idea resonated with me immediately. Beantown is part of a family-run company that has been decorating apparel since 1988. We manufacture a proprietary line of garment-dyed t-shirts, sweatshirts, and upcycled bags, as well as other products that serve as a canvas for brands and souvenir retailers to tell their stories. Our collections pay homage to Boston and New England with color names like Medford Moss and Mystic River Blue, each designed to capture the spirit of the place we call home. I felt compelled to support this citywide licensing program because I've seen the impact of a simple souvenir t-shirt. It's much more than a shirt.

It's a tangible memory of a trip, a feeling, an experience you want to hold on to. Durkan said, when you fall in love with this city, you want to wear it on your chest. Through my experience in apparel manufacturing, I've learned that the product your brand is printed on matters just as much as the logo itself because the garment tells a story before the graphic ever does. The fabric, the fit, and the people who make it should live up to the legacy being printed on it. We have the opportunity to honor that process and ensure what we create reflects proper ethics and environmental consideration. When you place a brand, or in this case the reputation of Boston, on a product, its quality and craftsmanship must mirror the care and the pride this city is known for. A wide open licensing model may seem appealing, but without proper vetting it risks diluting Boston's reputation. That's why this initiative feels so powerful. It's a chance not only to generate revenue for the city, but also to build civic pride, to make sure the products representing Boston are made with intention.

Done right, they become more than merchandise, they become a reflection of Boston's legacy. I was genuinely really excited when Holly told me about the approved pilot program. It feels like a very serendipitous time to test a program like this in Boston, so congratulations to everyone involved. I would love to help in any way I can. Thank you for your time and for the opportunity to support a program that honors Boston's history while also building something meaningful for its future.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Again, thank you to everyone involved in this hearing on document number 0263 is adjourned.

Thank you.