Seltaeb - Aftermath

Aftermath

At the time, very few managers of pop groups knew about the income music merchandising could generate, as very few artists survived long enough in the pop domain to be a viable investment. As far as Epstein was concerned it was merely good public relations, and any revenue that arose from the sale of Beatles-endorsed products was regarded as merely extra money that supplemented the Beatles' individual incomes from live performances and record sales. Epstein had not recognised an industry which had grossed $20 million for Elvis Presley in 1957 alone. Alistair Taylor (Epstein’s assistant) later admitted that financial mistakes were made: "We did our best; some people have said it wasn't good enough. That's easy to say with 20/20 hindsight but remember that there were no rules. We were making it up as we went along."

In America Epstein had met the well-known divorce lawyer, Nat Weiss, whom Epstein later asked to take over the merchandising affairs of the Beatles and NEMS. Weiss would later state, “The reality is that the Beatles never saw a penny out of the merchandising ... Tens of millions of dollars went down the drain because of the way the whole thing was mishandled. Even after the judgement was vacated, you could smell the smoke from the ashes, that’s how badly they had been burned.” Beatles' memorabilia, licenced by Seltaeb, is still sold at Beatles' conventions and on the internet.

Lennon said years later: "On the business end he ripped us off on the Seltaeb thing." McCartney also said: "He looked to his dad for business advice, and his dad knew how to run a furniture store in Liverpool." Richard DiLello later wrote about the financial mistakes made by The Beatles themselves in The Longest Cocktail Party: An Insider's Diary of The Beatles, Their Million-dollar Apple Empire and Its Wild Rise and Fall.