The creative part of a licensed character programme is the smallest part of it. What decides whether the programme works is whether a park can satisfy a licensor who is allowed to withdraw it. Most of what that takes is administration: constraints written into the agreement, submissions made in a fixed order, and sales reported against the terms that were signed.
The four constraints
Every licence agreement sets these four terms, and each of them limits where the product can go, what it can be, and how long it can be sold. They are worth reading against the retail plan a park intends to run, well before artwork is commissioned.
- Territory: the markets where the product may be sold, which is not always the set of markets a park sells into
- Channel: gate shop, online and wholesale, and whether each of those is licensed separately
- Product category: a licence covering apparel does not cover plush
- Term: the licence period, including any sell-through rights that apply once it ends
Sell-through is the term that catches an operator holding stock at the end of a licence period. A licence that expires with no sell-through rights attached leaves the remaining inventory unsaleable from that date. The write-off covers stock that has already been paid for, freighted and put on the shelf.
The approval sequence
Approvals run as separate submissions: concept, artwork, pre-production sample, and in many programmes a final production sample as well. Each submission carries the licensor's own turnaround, and those turnarounds belong in the production schedule as a real line, not as a formality tacked onto the end of it.
The workable defence against approval delay is submitting fewer options with a stronger chance of clearing. A supplier who has worked to a licensor's style guide before will not put forward concepts that were never going to clear. Every round trip avoided at concept stage is time that stays in the production window instead of the approval queue.
Licensed programmes we supply
We have supplied Qantas, the world's second oldest airline, for many years, and their official licensing programme runs on work of this kind. We are also the Australian distribution partner for Pearlfrost on Sanrio licensed product, a programme that runs through the same approval and reporting steps set out above.
Licensed work rewards suppliers who have run a programme before, and the reason sits in the paperwork more than in the making. A range built to a licensor's guidelines is manufactured the same way as an unlicensed one. What a repeat supplier brings is a sense of where each submission sits in the calendar and how long the licensor is likely to hold it.