Brands Licensing Africa 2024, billed as the first-ever licensing trade show on the continent, recently took place in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The event reflects an interest in Africa—as both a licensing market and a source of intellectual property—that has been building slowly for many years. While the North African region and the country of South […]
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Asian Retailers Expand Reach
Retail chains from Japan and China that specialize in affordable, stylish merchandise, especially home goods, gifts, and stationery, are expanding quickly on a global scale. Known for their Asian design sensibility—which has become popular worldwide—they turn products over quickly to encourage return visits and give fans new surprises each time. They are often open to […]
Better Together
Licensors have over the years become more flexible in how their IP is integrated into licensed merchandise, as they look for ways to keep their properties and products fresh and embrace ideas from their licensees on how to do so. A relatively new manifestation of this trend is some licensors’ openness to redesigning their corporate […]
Fast Forward on Phygital Fashion
Fashion and lifestyle brands, especially in the luxury and athleticwear spaces, have been active experimenters in the use of NFTs. Many of the initiatives to date have focused on using NFTs to enhance consumer engagement and reward fans with exclusive content or experiences. Increasingly, however, fashion labels are trying to tie NFTs with physical products […]
Seeing Eye to Eye
Eyewear remains relatively unimpacted by the pandemic when it comes to the pace of deal making. (Industry players say sales declined dramatically at the beginning of the crisis before rebounding to pre-pandemic or better levels in the fall of last year, according to a report in WWD.) Several key fashion, footwear, and luxury labels have […]
Mother-Daughter Design
The “mini-me” trend in high-end fashion—in which the design of children’s apparel, even for toddlers, emulates the look of adult pieces—goes back more than two decades. But it has been gaining traction over the past five years, driven in part by social media shots of celebrities’ and influencers’ children and their fashion-forward style choices, as […]