As we approach the core holiday selling period, and as seasonal items start to appear for sale at retail and online, it looks like the melding of ugly Christmas sweaters and licensed properties is set to continue for a third year.
The segment has evolved since it hit in 2014, moving beyond the licensed sports and collegiate sweaters from Forever Collectibles that started it all. More companies have become involved and an increasingly diverse roster of items feature ugly Christmas themes. There are licensed sweater shirts from Hybrid Apparel, sweatshirts from Freeze, t-shirts from Fifth Sun, knitted caps from New Era, socks from For Bare Feet, and iPhone cases from a variety of print-on-demand sites, to name just a few examples.
Meanwhile, the number and variety of properties involved in the sector has also expanded. Entertainment licensors got into the trend in a big way last year, introducing licensed ugly Christmas items featuring IPs for all ages, from Sesame Street to Star Wars to the Walking Dead. Musicians such as Wu Tang Clan and Guns and Roses have attached their names to ugly Christmas products. Even Whoopi Goldberg is a fan, designing a holiday sweater line for Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay department stores this year that fits into the ugly Christmas mold.
As with many seemingly flash-in-the-pan developments these days, the popularity of licensed ugly-Christmas-sweater themes has lasted longer than many observers had expected. While the style’s popularity is bound to fade at some point, it is likely that ugly Christmas sweaters will remain a component of some licensees’ holiday assortments in appropriate categories for years to come.
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