With new licences on board, an industry-leading creative team in place and a can-do cultural mindset, Brand Alliance is pursuing fresh opportunities across both adult and childrenswear. Commercial and licensing director Rob Broadhurst gives LicensingSource.net the lowdown.
Well on its way to its fifth consecutive year of growth, licensed and private label fashion specialist Brand Alliance is clearly doing something right. But according to the company’s commercial and licensing director Rob Broadhurst, the best is still to come.
“One of the things that attracted me to Brand Alliance was its ambition,” he says. “I could see how much they’d done already, and I could also see how many untapped areas there still were. And I thought, if you’ve reached this level already, just imagine what we could do next!”
Over recent months the company has undergone structural change, with Rob joining from Aykroyds to strengthen the senior team and work alongside joint ceos Kirk Hannaford and Simon Hills. The company has also pivoted in terms of its output, with licensed product overtaking non-licensed by a significant margin.
“The split is now about 75/25 in favour of licensed,” Rob explains. “However, we are still a fashion business at heart, and that gives us advantages in the market. We have 30 or so incredible designers, with their finger on the pulse of trends, and our teams that work purely on fashion and those working purely on licensing feed into each other and are constantly exchanging ideas.”
“Creativity, creativity, creativity,” is Brand Alliance’s USP, Rob asserts.
“It’s not just in the designs we produce, it’s in the way we present, how we take things to market, the use of technologies such as AI … I truly believe we can set the standard in the industry for design.”
The company’s creative is certainly award winning. At this year’s B&LLAs, Brand Alliance won Best Brand Licensed Adult Apparel for its 2023 Coca-Cola Motorsports range for Primark. It was also shortlisted for the first time for a Licensing Award, for this spring’s smash-hit Primark Hello Kitty collection.
“We have a wonderful relationship with Primark,” Rob says. “We were privileged to be a huge part of their recent Hello Kitty activation, and we’ve also worked with them on other campaigns, including The Grinch at Christmas.”
Delivering “wow” moments in-store is another of Brand Alliance’s strengths, Rob believes. “There is obviously 365 business working directly with the different departments, but what really gets our retail and licence partners excited is when we present entire collections and activations. We are able to deliver a holistic creative vision including in-store concepts, marketing ideas and cross-category integrations; we act almost as a creative agency in that respect. This is a service we want to roll out to more of our retailers, both here in the UK and in Europe.
“Not every in-store activation can be a platinum level one, but we can show retailers how we can give a brand the same sort of treatment but on a smaller scale, developing elevated capsule collections that really stand out. We love to make things ‘pop’ in store.”
With a view to further growth, over recent months Brand Alliance has significantly bolstered its licensing portfolio, adding new properties to an impressive roster of entertainment, lifestyle, collegiate, automotive and F&B brands that includes Coca-Cola, Paramount, Hasbro, Universal, Yale and Harvard, NASCAR, VW and Jeep. Recent portfolio deals include Netflix, Warner Bros. and Mattel, as well as brands in the kids’ space such as Pip and Posy, Roald Dahl, Bing and Pinkfong’s Bebefinn.
The extended licensing portfolio has many major trends covered. “Americana is red hot right now, which involves anything automotive, sports and music,” says Rob. “Next year we’re expecting big things for Stranger Things, but also for brands that are affiliated with the show – such Dungeons & Dragons, Coca-Cola and, again, music properties. Looking further ahead, Universal is bringing Shrek back – which we’re really excited about – and there’s a live-action Monopoly movie in the works. However, we can strategise all we like but we also have to be ready to jump on opportunities as and when they arise. Things like TikTok have changed the game in terms of how quickly trends come and go. We’re not in control of the brands and how they land with the consumer, so it’s much more important to be reactive and agile.”
Changing consumer tastes aside, Brand Alliance is in a strong position for anything the future might bring. “We’ve got the positioning, which is our retail relationships; we’ve got the toolkit – which is our expansive suite of brands – and we’ve got our secret sauce, which is our creative execution. Now all those things are in place, we can make anything happen,” says Rob. “We all have the same end goal in our sights. We still debate exactly how we should get to that point, but we’re all facing the same direction, and when one of us has an idea, the rest of us say, ‘Why not?’. That sort of cultural mindset allows creativity to flourish.”
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2024 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
