Properties of all types have gotten into the face covering game in a big way since just after the start of the pandemic, with cloth masks, gaiters, balaclavas, and other protective facewear quickly becoming a standard category for licensing. Meanwhile, the pandemic has also given rise to other new opportunities related to avoiding the COVID-19 […]
Archive | Licensing
Sleep Aids
More than 108 million, or about 30%, of Americans suffer from sleep deprivation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Several collaborative initiatives in the U.S. and U.K. over the past year have put a spotlight on the role of sleep as an important part of overall health and wellness: Eve Sleep, an […]
An Extra Scary Halloween
Halloween, coming up this Saturday, is naturally forcing consumers, marketers, and retailers to adapt their approach for the COVID era. How will that impact sales of Halloween-related products? The National Retail Federation predicts overall spending for the holiday will fall 8%, from $8.8 billion in 2019 to $8 billion this year, although those who do […]
Experiences To Go
Organizers of location-based events are experimenting with new configurations to give their fans something of the original real-life experience in a safe way during the pandemic. Typically this has meant taking the event virtual in some form. But several marketers have gone the physical route recently, by boxing up real-life experiences and shipping them to […]
Getting Out the Vote
By Karen Raugust on October 19, 2020 in Design and content themes, Licensing, Politics/social movements
Every four years as the U.S. Presidential election comes around, licensors, licensees, and retailers create products and promotional initiatives highlighting themes tied to voting. Historically, these have been mostly focused on merchandise featuring vote-related graphics, primarily as a way to offer some fresh and timely designs. This year, however, marketers (many with ties to the […]
K-Pop Culture
K-Pop has been growing in popularity in the U.S. for the past few years. In 2019, BTS—the bestselling K-Pop act globally and the biggest K-Pop brand in the U.S. and most other markets—tied the Beatles as the only other group to have three albums hit number one on the Billboard charts in a single calendar […]
Spiked Seltzer Deals Bubble Up
Consumers in the U.S. purchased close to $1 billion in hard seltzer from March 7 to May 30, 2020, the first three months of the pandemic, compared to $1.5 billion for the whole of 2019, according to Nielsen. In the week ending June 6, the start of the summer season, hard seltzer sales—which have been […]
Teaming Up for CBD
Sports leagues, teams, and events, as well as athletes, have become active players in the CBD industry, with many of their efforts focused on pain management. In fact, athletes and sports licensors account for 19.2% of IP partnership deals done in 2019 and 2020 in the cannabis space, second only to musicians, who have been […]
Here Come the Bridal Designers
High-end bridal designers who got their start specializing in wedding dresses, and remain well known for their creations in this space, have been expanding their licensing activity recently. Some are poised to get into licensing and collaboration in a significant way for the first time, while others are adding to a long list of existing […]
Resale Circles Back
When the pandemic first hit, many observers thought retailers’ resale initiatives, which offer quality second-hand and slightly imperfect apparel and home goods at a deeply discounted price and had been on the rise prior to the lockdown, would be placed on hold for safety reasons. Consumers, they thought, would potentially be concerned about the merchandise […]