JAG brand sold to Apparel Group A JAG display at Westfield Southland Shopping Centre in Melbourne. Photo: Viki Lascaris The privately owned Apparel Group, which owns Australian fashion brands Sportscraft, Saba and Willow, has acquired the JAG brand from Fusion Retail Brands, subject to the final completion of due diligence. Fusion Retail Brands is the former Colorado Group, which went into administration in 2011 and was later rescued and restructured by private equity duo Ice Canyon and Anchorage Capital. Fusion still owns brands that include Diana Ferrari, Williams, Mathers and Colorado, and its private equity owners are believed to be looking for buyers of the retail business. But it has agreed to sell one of its better known brands, JAG. Fusion Retail Brands chief executive Don Grover told BusinessDay the JAG brand did not fit in the company's fashion portfolio and it made sense at this time to divest it as the group was also looking for a buyer for the whole business that was formerly Colorado. ""I think the main reason is we are trying to find the right partners for our brands and the balance of our brands are all very footwear centric, whereas the JAG brand has less synergies because it is an apparel business,"" Mr Grover said. ""Certainly it was a good part of our portfolio but back in April we announced we were looking to consider the sale of the business, in part or in full, and then it becomes a matter of what interest do we have in the different parts of the business and we have found a tremendous partner for JAG."" Mr Grover said Apparel Group saw great value in the JAG brand. He said it was most likely the remaining brands within Fusion Retail Brands would be sold together. Apparel boss Daniel Bracken said despite significant retail headwinds, Apparel's retail brands had continued to increase their market share, giving the company the confidence to acquire JAG. We are thrilled to be adding JAG to our portfolio of iconic Australian brands. It is the perfect fit for the Apparel Group. We will use our significant experience and infrastructure to build the JAG brand into a key retail destination," Mr Bracken said. He said with the integration of JAG into Apparel Group, the brand would benefit from more than 50 years of supply chain experience. Apparel recently appointed the former chief executive of grocery wholesaler Metcash, Andrew Reitzer, as a director. Established in the early 1950s as a manufacturing and wholesale business, Apparel branched into retail in 2000 with the acquisition of Sportscraft. This was followed by the acquisition of Saba in 2005 and Willow in 2011. Next year Sportscraft will celebrate its 100th anniversary; in 2015 Saba will celebrate its 50th and this year Willow marks its 10th anniversary. Apparel is based in Sydney and has a sourcing office in Shanghai. The group employs more than 1400 people and has about 300 points of sale in Australia, including free-standing shops, David Jones, Myer and an online business.