The popularity of location-based escape room games—where several friends are locked in a room for an hour and must solve clues and puzzles in order to free themselves—has been on a steep rise since 2012 in the U.S. and since at least 2010 abroad. (The first such game launched in Japan in 2007.) From 2010 […]
Archive | Experiential licensing
Reserving Room for Licensing
The hotel and hospitality industry has been an area of interest for licensors of late, with potential opportunities taking many forms: Branded hotels. Karl Lagerfeld announced in November that he would launch a chain of luxury hotels, with the first to open in Macau in 2018. He joins fashion labels such as Armani, Missoni, Bulgari, […]
Delectable Destinations
Experiential licensing deals continue to accumulate, with branded cafés one of the most common examples of late. Properties announcing deals in the past six months to launch new ventures, or expand existing café chains, illustrate both the variety of properties active in this sector and the global reach of the trend: Characters. Moomin will inaugurate […]
Working Out
Licensors of gyms and fitness brands represent an energetic sector for licensing, launching functional apparel, exercise equipment, fitness trackers, and other product lines closely related to their core mission. Recent activity includes: New licensing programs. Last year, Hard Candy Fitness, a chain of boutique gyms founded by Madonna and named after one of her albums, […]
Science to Go
Traveling science-themed educational exhibits, which live at the intersection of the STEM and experiential-licensing trends, continue to represent an opportunity for appropriate entertainment franchises. Successful properties in this realm are not always educational, or even strongly science-themed, as two of the most recent examples attest. The first is Fox’s Ice Age, which has some loose […]