About

General counsel Johan Harrysson leads the 35-strong MF Brands Group International (part of the Maus Frères group) legal team, which is responsible for a number of highly respected and notable brands: Lacoste, GANT, Aigle, recently acquired The Kooples and tennis and squash brand Tecnifibre. The team contains two main teams both overseen by Harrysson focused on intellectual property, with specialist IP director Zeeger Vink attached, and corporate and commercial. The team’s workload has increased in recent years due to ‘new and growing challenges from online counterfeiting and increased sophistication in the transportation of counterfeits’, but there is also a more positive explanation for this – a number of acquisitions have been made by Maus Frères recently which the team has been instrumental in supporting. In 2019, the team has – among other things – worked on the acquisition of French fashion brand The Kooples and the buy-back of the Lacoste joint venture in Mexico. Transactions in 2018 included the buy-back of the Lacoste joint venture in South America and finalising the acquisitions of the Lacoste and GANT exclusive distributors in Spain and Germany respectively. Several highly visible Lacoste deals have also been handled over the last two years, such as the renewal of Roland Garros French Open tennis partnership, and co-branding and collaboration agreements with the International Olympic Committee, Disney, Supreme and Keith Haring. Managing to deal with this has been due in large part to the ‘positive and professional’ mindset that prevails in the team. ‘We give members of the team responsibility and visibility in the company’, says Harrysson. ‘Providing meaning, both by sharing relevant company context and making sure everyone knows what the other team members are working on, is key to getting good results, as is taking pride in what one does. It is also important to celebrate a little once in a while’, he concludes.