Last week the news came out that Lifetime Brands would be launching a licensed home goods program based on its BUILT brand of insulated lunch bags, soft coolers, hydration bottles and tumblers, food storage products, and travel accessories, with agency The Brand Liaison assisting it in that effort. Target categories include kitchen textiles, outdoor and […]
Are NFTs The Cat’s Meow?
By Karen Raugust on June 6, 2022 in Collectibles, Content, Design and content themes, Digital, Licensing
In the early days of social media memes and YouTube, cat videos were one of the first categories of content to go mainstream. The same phenomenon seems to be happening to a certain extent with NFTs, as the number of cat-related NFT collections is large and expanding, and several have broken through as success stories. […]
On-Screen Representation
Children’s entertainment properties, particularly television series, are increasingly including characters with visible disabilities—that is, they use wheelchairs, leg braces, or crutches—as part of the main friend group portrayed on screen. They are shown living their everyday lives and participating fully in the group’s activities, modeling inclusion and normalizing disabilities for young viewers. Some examples: MixMups […]
New Territory for Chef-Based Licensing
Recent deals for frozen and packaged foods have centered on chefs who hail from Africa, or have African roots, and are known for the African influences in their cooking and/or for promoting African flavors and recipes. Chefs of West African heritage have been particularly active. Such celebrity chefs, recognized from their TV appearances, cookbooks, and/or […]
Breaking Out of the Metaverse
New deals are revealed almost every day to bring licensed IP into the metaverse, with the partners creating branded virtual goods, storefronts, events, or other implementations, especially in popular gaming worlds such as Roblox. Conversely, several games that originated in Roblox have lately started to break out as licensed properties in their own right. They […]
Homegrown Hits
Individual teams that are members of the leading U.S.-based pro sports leagues have increasingly been pairing with local fashion labels—mostly of the streetwear genre—for clothing collaborations available only in their home markets. Clubs in all five of the major leagues have served as examples of this phenomenon: National Football League. The Cincinnati Bengals paired with […]
Celebrities As Licensees
Celebrities are well known to be active property owners, extending their personal and brand names in a variety of ways. One of those is to launch their own companies to market their products, in lieu of signing licensees, which gives them more control over their signature or branded merchandise. And, as they become product marketers […]
One for the Books
Self-published authors have historically not been sought-after by manufacturers and retailers looking for licensed IP to feature on their products. But things have changed. Self-published authors can generate significant sales and awareness levels publishing independently online, catching the attention of consumers and eventually potential licensees. In addition, manufacturers and other partners are increasingly comfortable working […]
Fresh Air
The outdoors sector was one of the beneficiaries of the pandemic—at least in terms of financial performance—as consumers returned to favorite pastimes and tried new ones, and as the great outdoors was particularly appealing as a safe and isolated, but still enjoyable, space. It would not be a surprise to see outdoors specialists’ financial results […]
In Fashion At Home
Well-established fashion designers often eventually enter the home goods space, but it can be a challenging business for them, whether they extend their labels through licensing or some other business model. As a result, expansions of this type tend to be cyclical. Currently the technique seems to be on the upswing, if the number of […]