Content area
Full text
After several dismal years, the sun is shining within the entertainment licensing business once more. As industry players polish plans for this month's L!CENSING 2003 International, show organizers report an increase in the number of new exhibitors by more than 125. At press time, registration for the show had been tracking at a record rate. The business, say insiders, is clearly on the upswing again. "I think the licensing industry is preparing to have a strong comeback. We're finally coming out of a bit of a malaise and into a period in which there's a renewed sense of optimism," says David Jacobs, senior vice president of HIT Entertainment. "The business has sort of dropped off over the last couple of years, but I think it's beginning to experience a fairly dramatic turnaround," agrees Al Ovadia, executive vice president of Sony Pictures Consumer Products.
Despite This Newfound Optimism, Conditions At Retail Remain Daunting And Exacting.
"If you look at the marketplace, you see that there are many more licenses out there today," points out 4Kids Entertainment chairman & ceo Al Kahn. And, he says, this scenario of supersaturation is further aggravated by the fact that the number of retailers in business today has diminished considerably due to consolidation and economic fallout, therein reducing the number of slots available to entertainment licenses. "With space tight, retailers have taken a step back and said, `look, we're only going to pick up the very top properties from each genre,"' explains Timothy Rothwell, senior vice president of Universal Studios Consumer Products Group. "The business is clearly becoming focused on fewer and fewer properties, making it extremely tough to get shelf space at retail today," adds Ovadia. Licenses not of the `creme de la creme' class are, therefore, forced to seek out alternative points of entry.
And, once shelf space has been secured, in no way can licensors become complacent with the stewardship of their licensed properties. "Retailers look from year to year and constantly reevaluate their portfolios," says Kahn. "It's a `show me' and `prove to me' type of situation. Retailers today tend to look at only what the impact of a particular property will be on their business in the short term, whereas we as licensors look at...