One partnership. Thirty years of building.
A Lafayette girl who headed for New York and built her own career on the other side of the lens and the gym floor, working as a model and as a personal trainer. Discipline, presence, and a real eye were the through lines, and all three showed up later in everything the family made.
Born in New York City, raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, UConn class of '91. He went straight into the licensed sports apparel business after college and spent the nineties learning the fundamentals: know the product, know the buyer, build relationships that outlast a season.
Two different maps, fifteen hundred miles apart, converging on the same gym in New York City.
They met at a gym in New York City in 1997. Late twenties, both of them: she was modeling and training, he was working his territory in licensed sports apparel. Neither one was looking for a business partner. They got one anyway.
She worked the lens and the gym floor. He became the youngest head rep at Pro Player, handling the New York & New Jersey territory for one of the biggest licensed apparel manufacturers in the United States. Date nights ran on film cameras and restaurant candlelight.
They married in May. And in 2000 he bet on himself: a thousand dollars, a streetwear label called Madsoul, and a booth at MAGIC in Las Vegas. He designed the logos, built the tech packs, and landed an exclusive deal putting New York Knicks gear inside Madison Square Garden. Inc. Magazine wrote up the guerrilla marketing.
Madsoul was not just one of the era's early streetwear brands. It was one of the first to land a collaboration and long term license with Disney, creating Madsoul for Disney.
They went home to Norwalk and raised two daughters at a kitchen table, the way most families are actually built, one ordinary decision at a time.
When Madsoul's run ended, Marc took the relationships he had built and started Level 4 Collective, his own agency in New York. That is the business that connected him to Mitchell & Ness, the heritage throwback brand now backed by Fanatics, Jay-Z, and Meek Mill.
Then the internet found them. What happened next could have been a moment. Marc and Heidi treated it like a business. He ran the partnerships, the companies, and the decisions that turn attention into something durable. She stepped in front of it when it counted, including three seasons of The D'Amelio Show on Hulu from 2021 to 2023 and a run on Dancing with the Stars in 2022.
One rule held through all of it: protect the person, build the brand, think in decades.
Now they are building the house they always wanted, together. A family run management company, a consumer brands company, a voice first AI platform, and the agency that started it all, still on the road every season.
Co-founded by Marc and Heidi, a family run talent management company. It exists because they learned the job the hard way, on their own family, before anyone was paying them to do it for someone else. They are brand builders rather than brokers. The work is personal and long horizon: build the person, then build the business around them.
The consumer side, home of D'Amelio Footwear and Be Happy Snacks. A billboard over Sunset, a store at The Grove, pallets in Costco.
Six dogs, one account: Belle, Rebel, Cali, Codi, Moody, and Pickle. Daily chaos with a rescue heart, holding down dameliodogpack.com and stealing every scene they walk into.
Different categories, same instinct: find the opportunity, build something real, and stick with it.
They build things they would put their own name on. They already have.