39 years ago, Jimmy Buffett won a lawsuit that inadvertently sparked a $1.5 billion business

Jimmy Buffett was flattered to see people in Key West wearing Jimmy Buffett t-shirts.

He was also upset because he hadn't produced or sold the t-shirts.

"Not only did they rip me off," Buffett said in this 1998 Washington Post article, "they misspelled my name!" So he and a friend built a store using some wood they found under his house.

For obvious reasons, he was planning to call the store "Margaritaville".

Then he discovered that the restaurant chain Chi-Chi's had trademarked the word "Margaritaville" for a special drink. Even though the song titles can't be trademarked – it's hard to imagine Van Halen getting a trademark for the word "jump" – Buffett still sued, arguing that the song name was synonym of his.

"I had to make a deal with Chi-Chi's to use the name of a song I wrote!" Buffett said.

Then he realized that someone else had trademarked the title of another of his songs, "Cheeseburger in Paradise."

"There was a demand there," Buffett said, "and everyone was tapping into it except me! So I started taking care of business."

The first step? Mark "Margaritaville" on as many assets as possible. The t-shirt shop in Key West. A chain of small cafes. In 1999, a restaurant license agreement with Universal Studios in Orlando.

And in 2010, a Margaritaville-branded hotel in Pensacola, Florida.

Today, Margaritaville Holdings – owned solely by Buffett and his business partner/CEO John Cohlan – includes more than 30 hotels and resorts, and 150 restaurants, bars and cafes. It also distributes Landshark Lager and Margaritaville Spirits.

While it falls far short of the Kiss brand extension level (there is no "Cheeseburger in Paradise" coffin), the company sells a wide range of products.

The result? $1.5 billion in sales in 2019 alone.

But does Jimmy Buffett feel bad about not living the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle?

No, he said.

I'm not going to apologize for being a good businessman. Too many people in music have ruined their lives because they weren't. I'm not a great singer, and I'm just a mediocre guitarist. I started leading the band years ago because no one else could, and I turned out to be good at it.

"Good at it" included launching his own record label in 1999 to capture a larger percentage of retail sales. This included building its own tourist buses; Buffett estimated that it cost five times more to rent than to own. And then, when he was not on tour, he rented his equipment to other groups.

"It's up to you," Buffett said in this 2018 New York Times article, "how to take advantage of it or how to handle whatever you're going to do." p >

Of course, Buffett knows how to leverage a brand. But he also understands that customer experience, especially for a lifestyle brand, is paramount.

"If you like what I do in goods and services," says Buffett, "if we help you feel better after a hard day's work and you want to come blow off some steam...I'll give you get what you pay for and have a great time doing it."

Most importantly, he spotted a request that he was the only one capable of fulfilling.

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