The head of publishing and licensing talks signing up an agent and being a largely untapped source.
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: Declan McCarthy, head of publishing and licensing, The Ashmolean.
“The single most significant event was signing up Start Licensing as our exclusive agency partner at the start of 2020. We also launched a very high-end box set of facsimile Raphael drawings with one of our Italian partners, exclusively for their domestic market.
Lockdown was extraordinarily challenging. We had just opened our major spring show – Young Rembrandt – two weeks before we had to close the doors. This has had a major impact on our income in retail, catering, events and ticketing. We had reopened to the public on August 10, with social distancing measures in place and mandatory mask-wearing.
I think all our licensees were affected to one degree or another, and for some we have agreed deferred royalties. One of our partners produces an Ashmolean Gin (The Oxford Artisan Distillery), and with restaurants and bars closed, their ability to sell significant quantities was severely impacted. In a nice twist however, they turned to making hand sanitiser for the NHS and local hospitals.
We are talking to as many people as possible, in as wide a market as we think would be relevant. We know we are not as big a name in the heritage licensing sector, so it felt futile to try standing ‘toe to toe’ with the bigger names. We are looking for some of the less obvious options, but we also have a huge plus in that we are largely an untapped source at present so there are a huge number of possibilities for licensees to consider. This was always going to be the approach with Start, so we see no reason to adjust significantly. We are also nurturing our existing licensees and promoting their products wherever we can.”
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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