Y2K tm- Trademark helps entrepreneurs find gold at end of millennium.

By Rachel Beck and Michelle Koidin
The Associated Press

New York – In the early 1990s, Robert Guberman and Ody Demetriadi were making big business decisions about “Year 2000.”

Guberman, a veteran retail executive, secured the trademark for “Year 2000,” giving him exclusive rights to almost everything bearing the best-known slogan of the new millennium.

Ody Demetriadi, 32, owns the right to use “Class of 2000” on T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats and shorts. His trademark applications for more than 100 other items, including jewelry, cigars and bottled water, are pending.

That foresight is paying off. As the turn of the century nears, stores across the nation are filling with “Year 2000” merchandise – from key chains to playing cards to tapestries to leather jackets.

“We were well aware that the millennium was coming and this was going to be big,” said Guberman, president of New York-based Planet Marketing. “Now, the excitement is building, and we are seeing how big it’s really going to be.”

Demetriadi and his partners, who formed Class of 2000, Inc., hope their years of preparation will yield a projected $200 million in sales.

“We’ve benn pushing this ball up the hill,” Demetriadi said from his company’s small office, which is cluttered with “Class of 2000” merchandise. “It’s starting to to roll. It’s going to get bigger and bigger.”

They are producing goods through their apparel companies as well as licensing the phrase to other manufacturers for royalties.

“It’s the great American dream: Coin a phrase and make a dollar,” said Clarke Caywood, a professor of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. “If they can be persuasive enough to large distributors, places like [JC Penny] and Sears, it’s a winner of an idea.

Demetriadi got his idea while a student at San Diego State University. Newspapers were reporting about the end of the century and Demetriadi racked his brain for a way to capitalize on the millennium.

At the time, he was selling T-shirts to fraternities and sororities. He began working on the concept with Rich Soergel, who already was in the hat business.

Demetriadi filed for the trademark in 1994, and it was granted two years later.

Soergel said the company is working with 30 licensees who are making Class of 2000 T-shirts and hats, teddy bears, towels and hair accessories. The partners’ goal is to do business with at least 50 licensees.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued at least 1,500 trademarks containing “2000” and more than 100 including the ward “millennium.” Thousands more are applying for slogans such as “Y2K” and “01-01-00.”

It takes $245 to apply for a trademark, and each class of goods and services, such as clothes, toys and pens, requires a separate application. Planet Marketing owns 19 trademarks.

“Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think that we actually have this trademark,” said Guberman, a 58-year-old New Yorker who has experience in the apparel and candy industries.

Only one other group – American Promotional Events – owns rights to “Year 2000,” and the Alabama-based company can only sell fireworks. That leaves Planet Marketing with the trademark to everything else – from anti-wrinkle cream to Christmas tree skirts.

Many of the offbeat items trademarked by Planet Marketing, like creams for cellulite reduction and electric pencil sharpeners, are unlikely to be produced with “Year 2000” logo. The company decided to get the rights to almost everything thinkable just to prevent conflict with others trying to use the slogan.

About 20 percent of Planet Marketing’s “Year 2000” merchandise will be directed at collectors. The company is making exclusive lines for some retailers, and is offering a limited supply of other items.

“The key to finding success in this business is coming up with a creative program that will give it legs beyond the year 2000,” said Charles M. Riotto, executive director of the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association. “There has be more to it than just selling the slogan.”

But the short life of the “Year 2000” doesn’t seem to faze Guberman. He thinks people will want “Year 2000” merchandise long after the hype fades.

“We’re not about celebrating a one-time event,” he said. “This is the biggest thing that will happen in anyone’s lifetime. ‘It took a thousand years to get here. Now, it’s a phenomenon that will touch every individual across the planet.”

But just in case, he also owns the trademark for “Year 2001.”