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by Claude Johnson

I had a licensing job at the NBA in 1996, the year they celebrated their 50th anniversary with an 800-page book, which had only three pages about African American teams that played before the league began in 1950.

I was left curious. Because I’d seen many such teams mentioned briefly in other books such as A Hard Road To Glory by Arthur Ashe.

But no one knew anything more about these teams or this history – not even the Basketball Hall of Fame.

So I went to the library to do research myself, by reading old newspapers on microfilm. I devoted all of my free time, and discovered there were dozens of black teams all the way back to 1900.

Each time I found a new team I trademarked the names and logos. Doing this, I created a fine collection of intellectual property and content.

I continued doing this through various management level corporate jobs I held.

Then one day I was laid off.  But I got a severance, allowing me to pursue these efforts full time.

To prove there was a market for this niche, I created my company and sought licensees. When none were interested, I created my own line of vintage basketball jerseys and related merchandise.

I got bank credit, set up Asia production, hired a sales agency, secured a distribution service, and soon shipped to over 250 stores around the country with initial orders of over $600,000.

It was great for a minute — our products got onto MTV and BET and into rap videos and onto famous athletes and celebrities who wore them to parties.

We implemented proper accounting practices such as tracking orders, invoices, commissions, inventories, receivables, payables, and profits.

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