Sinking Ship Entertainment’s Marilyn Kynaston talks expanding brands such as Odd Squad and Dino Dana, and making the move into new territories.
From Belgium to the US, LicensingSource chats to a selection of licensors and agents based outside of the UK to find out their takeaways from 2021, what they see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for licensing moving through 2022, their aims and what word they would use to describe business in both the year just gone and the current one.
Today – Canada: Marilyn Kynaston, head of sales and distribution, Western Europe, Sinking Ship Entertainment.
“We found 2021 challenging, but better than we had hoped. The LBE arm of our business was delayed earlier in the year due to institutions being closed during Covid. However once locations like museums in the US opened up, we were able to launch our successful Dino Dana experience at institutions like the Museum of Science and Discovery in Fort Lauderdale and several other locations. This then drove our book sales (Mango Publishing) and toy sales (Safari) for Dino Dana brand, and is continuing to grow in 2022.
In 2022 we are focusing on continuing to expand our internal brands like Odd Squad and Dino Dana, as well as newer external brands like Alma’s Way. We are looking to add new categories to both the former brands, as well as work with more international licensing agencies.
We’re looking forward to working with new partners in various territories including Fryday Brands in the UK, Exim in Mexico and WP Brands in Australia. We are also turning an eye to China to see how we can expand into that territory, with Odd Squad now with Tencent there. My word for 2021 is ‘challenging’ and for 2022, ‘renewal’.”
This feature originally appeared in the spring 2022 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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