Tag Archives | licensing

West Meets East

U.S.-based licensors of classic characters are making inroads into the Chinese market by forging deals with fashion-forward retail operators. Three examples announced in the last month illustrate the trend: Twentieth Century Fox paired with Her-Chain Clothing, a multibrand retailer, and HongFang Group to open Simpsons flagship apparel stores across the country. King Features and its […]

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Some Like It Hot

Hot sauces have long been an active area of interest for licensing, with properties from chefs to celebrities to colleges dabbling in the category. Recently, hot sauces’ availability for outbound licensing is expanding a bit as well, especially in the food and beverage category, as the brands and their licensees take advantage of an ever-growing […]

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It’s Raining Cats, and Now Dogs

The cats of YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms have long played in the licensing arena, with examples ranging from Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat, Nora the Piano Cat, and L’il Bub to Henri, Maru, and Venus the Chimera Cat. More recently, a number of pups have been added to the list, […]

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Made by Hand

A trend in the world of commercial art and surface design—and, by extension, in the world of art licensing—is an affinity for imagery that is hand-created. Even when digitized for production, the hand-made qualities, such as brush strokes, show through and give the work a singular look. A couple of the artists and art studios […]

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Swimming With The Stream

One of the most notable new wrinkles at last week’s Licensing Expo in Las Vegas was the presence of the major streaming platforms, with YouTube, AwesomenessTV, and Amazon Studios all first-time exhibitors. They were talking to attendees about the potential for financing and distributing content, as well as providing a showcase for the licensors of […]

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Lending Star Power To Playthings

Celebrity licensing, which has become so prevalent in apparel, accessories, home décor, beauty, and other categories, has not touched the toy industry much to date, aside from the occasional endorsement deal or signature doll line. But the landscape is starting to change. More celebrities are not only lending their names to toy lines, but becoming […]

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