Seltaeb
Byrne controlled two companies: Stramsact in the UK and Europe, and Seltaeb in the USA. He invited five friends to become partners — four of whom were unknown to either Jacobs or Epstein — with each investing around $1,600. They were: Mark Warman, Simon Miller-Munday, John Fenton (a business acquaintance of Jacobs) Peregrine Eliot (heir to the ninth Earl of St Germans) and Malcolm Evans (not to be confused with Mal Evans, the Beatles' roadie).
During the first Beatles' flight to America Epstein was offered numerous samples of products by merchandisers who required a licence to be allowed to sell them such as clocks, pens, plastic wigs, bracelets, and games. Epstein rejected all of them; directing the merchandisers to Byrne instead, who was already in New York ensconced in The Drake Hotel on Park Avenue at 56th Street. Byrne rented expensive offices on Fifth Avenue, hiring two limousines (on 24-hour standby) and a helicopter to fly clients to and from the airport, insisting that only the presidents of merchandising companies were allowed to talk directly with him, or with his partner, Lord Eliot, who helped to promote the company name with use of his title. Eliot would later recall going to the Seltaeb office once or twice a week to draw $1,000 from petty cash.
The Wall Street Journal predicted that American teenagers would spend $50 million during 1964, on wigs, dolls, egg cups, T-shirts, sweatshirts and narrow-legged pants, and the New York Times wrote that the Reliance Manufacturing Company's factories were "smoking night and day... to meet demand", and had already sold products valued at the retail value of $2.5 million. The Reliant Shirt Corporation paid $100,000 for a licence and sold over a million Beatle T-shirts in three days, Remco Toys had produced 100,000 Beatles' dolls and had orders for another 500,000, and the Lowell Toy Corporation were selling Beatle wigs faster than they could produce them, at more than 35,000 per day.
Seltaeb licenced over 150 different items internationally: Beatle dolls, scarves, mugs, bath water, wigs, t-shirts, bubble gum, liquorice, empty cans of "Beatle Breath", badges, and many more. The badges had "Seltaeb 1964 Chicago Made in USA" on one side, and "Green Duck Co., Chicago Made in USA" on the other. (The Green Duck metal stamping company was based at 1520 West Montana, Chicago, operating from 1906 until the late 1960s, making election badges for politicians, as well as memorial spoons). American businessmen saw The Beatles' merchandising as the “biggest marketing opportunity since Walt Disney created Micky Mouse”. The Columbia Pictures Corporation offered to buy Byrne’s share in the companies for $500,000, with the incentives that the money would be paid into a low-tax offshore bank account in the Bahamas, Byrne and his partners would retain 50% control of the companies, and Ferrari cars would be given free to every partner, but Byrne turned down the offer.
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