Licensing is basically making money from someone else’s success. If you have children, you’ve probably walked through the toy store and stared in amazement at the toys with movie tie-ins: there are so many and it’s not just action figures; there are licensing opportunities to print those characters on children’s clothes, on pillowcases and bed sheets, on bicycles, on lunch boxes and on just about anything else you can possibly imagine.
But it’s not always about licensing something that is popular on television or in a movie. Consider the famous Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. They were just dolls, then became very hot products. Or, think about the Pet Rock, Hula Hoop, Slinky, Yo-Yo, or any other fad. Those fads equal licensing opportunities.
Licensing children’s products is probably one of the most well-known forms of licensing. After all, children are great decision-makers when it comes to family expenditures and when a child loves something (like a comic book character or a superhero or doll) they want to own everything that has to do with that character.
One way to start licensing is by setting up distribution networks for toys or other products then contacting companies like Disney or Warner Bros. and letting them know that there are licensing opportunities available on the products you have. If you’re not sure about what types of products you can license, consider contacting manufacturers or packaging companies to see what their role might be in licensing an image.
Licensing is a complex industry and the players who already have a foot in the door definitely have an advantage. By looking around on sites like www.alibaba.com for products (probably toys or novelties – like the Pet Rock) you just might be able to uncover the next big thing.
Remember that interests come and go and things tend to come in waves (for example, there are a number of superheroes out right now but we’ll probably see military toys and cars become popular again for little boys… and My Little Pony recently made a come back for little girls).
Another way to license is to work at your current small business for a few years to make it successful and master a process. Once you have the process down, you can license it out – in the form of a franchise. People want to start businesses but not everyone wants to start from scratch. Many are willing to pay large sums of money on an ongoing basis to buy into a business that has a successful system already in place.
Licensing toys might be a murky world to make your way through if you have no contacts or experience so creating and franchising a successful business might be the better option for you. The secret is in finding a system and working out the bugs so that other people can buy it and start it and enjoy success fairly quickly as a result.
Licensing is about enjoying the success of other people: whether that is you licensing products to piggy back on the success of a popular toy or other people licensing from you to piggy back on the success of your business.
