HRP’s head of brand licensing and business development on looking at different types of opportunities and collaborations.
The museum, heritage and institutions sector has endured its own challenges throughout this year’s lockdowns – including venue closures, key exhibitions put on hold and social distancing measures to incorporate.
All of this means the importance of licensed products is higher than ever.
LicensingSource.net catches up with some key names in the sector to find out their views on the year to date.
Today: Emma Saunders, head of brand licensing and business development, Historic Royal Palaces.
“At the start of the year, we were meeting new potential licensees, then when COVID-19 hit, most of these discussions initially went on hold, but we are now picking up on these again. We are also looking at different types of licensing opportunities and collaborations, including digital, character and entertainment brands.
Lockdown initially affected our ways of working, but we have adapted well and have maintained continuous contact with all our licensees and have still sought new business conversations where possible. We have been able to continue to develop licensed ranges with our existing partners and are gradually moving forward again with negotiations on new deals.
Following the success of the first Tower of London coin series with The Royal Mint, we launched a second series of collectable coins this year. This partnership has been one of our fastest growing licences to date. We are also about to launch a new collection of wallpapers with Cole & Son (pictured), while Flame Tree Publishing launches two new calendars for 2021 in August.
In Q1 2021 we will be launching a range of fine jewellery with our licensee Clogau. As a key licensee that’s been especially profitable for us over the years and although they have also been hit by the pandemic, they still see our licensed ranges as key to invest in and the new collections will be one of their first launches in the new year.
We have also started to work on a completely new collection of coins to launch in AW 2021 and are about to start working on a number of new homeware collections to launch in SS 2022.”
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2020 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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