Seltaeb was set up in 1963 by Nicky Byrne to look after the Beatles merchandising. The name Seltaeb was derived from spelling “Beatles” backwards.
Brian Epstein needed to find someone who could manage the overwhelming volume of merchandising requests on behalf of The Beatles. Epstein’s lawyer, David Jacobs, suggested Nicky Byrne. Byrne asked for, and received, a whopping 90% of the cut, which left only 10% for The Beatles, Brian Epstein and NEMS to split. Jacob’s told Epstein: “10% is better than nothing”. Brian would later regret agreeing to such a lopsided deal and he renegotiated a more reasonable commission of 49% in August 1964. He decided he could not tell The Beatles about the original bad deal that potentially lost them millions of dollars, so he never told them.
