From the pages of Images Retail (June 2009)

Adding Animation to Retail
By Palki Hatangadi

While this love for licensees can be quite amusing or exasperating for parents, it is a unique merchandising tool for brands catering to kids. Licensed products or ‘characterbased merchandise’ (CBM) enables a product range to ‘hook’ children and keep them coming back for more.

Market size The kid’s apparel market is estimated to be around Rs.3,000 crore. Within this space, the licensing business has a small penetration of below 10 per cent. The largest brands such as Gini & Jony, Ruff and Lilliput each hover at about Rs.100 crores.

Noteworthy brands that have carried CBM as a significant part of the range are Toonworld (licensee arm of Weekender), which has a turnover of Rs.12 crores, Barbie (shirt company), which has a turnover of Rs.30 crores, and Lilliput’s licensing business, which has a turnover of Rs.6.5 crores. Far East markets of China-Hong Kong and Thailand, which are more akin to Indian market conditions, have upwards of 14 per cent of branded apparel business coming from CBM. Even keeping the volumes relatively stable, there is a huge potential for the penetration of CBM in India.

Licensing model
Companies such as Turner, Disney and Viacom18 create intellectual property or characters that they market through their television channels such as Pogo, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. There are relatively few such examples in the Indian media but some notable examples include merchandise from the movies Kkrish and Roadside Romeo. The sheer marketing muscle behind the global media houses, make their characters available to children through media channels as well as in the form of products.



To read more, subscribe to the magazine.