Episode #23: Licensing Week Virtual, Tips For Toy Inventors!
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This week's episode is fan-requested and is ALL about Licensing Week Virtual and the Las Vegas Licensing Expo. This industry event is known as the go-to destination for the biggest licensing deals of the year, and it's typically an in-person show, in Las Vegas.
But for 2020 due to the coronavirus, this show was moved completely online. So I interviewed Steven Ekstract, the Brand Director of the Global Licensing Group, to talk about both the virtual AND in-person events to find out what it has to offer toy inventors.
In this episode, Steven shares crucial information for first-time exhibitors and newbies to the licensing game. If you're interested in the world of IP, then this is an episode you don't want to miss.
What You Need To Know Before Attending The Las Vegas Licensing Expo
Have a press kit and a PR plan active and in place before the event.
Take advantage of the inventor challenge!
Make efforts to legally protect your ideas, but don’t let the fear of having a concept stolen by a company hold you back from making deals.
A licensing agent may cost you 30%-40% of your profit but they are well worth their fee. Learn why in this episode.
Take advantage of the free Match Making Service that The Las Vegas Licensing Expo provides, this tool will result in high-quality meetings and give you leads which you can convert into sales!
Expect to spend around 10k as an exhibitor to rent your booth and travel to the show. But, you can also just walk the show as an attendee for free.
Take advantage of the educational opportunities, and sign up for the paid courses! They’ve got everything from "Licensing 101" to "How to pitch your product" courses and so much more.
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Contact Steven Ekstract at stevenekstract@informa.com
Sign up or learn more about the business of licensing when you click here.
Register for the next Licensing Expo by clicking here.
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Azhelle 00:00
You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry Episode Number 23.
Intro/Outro + Jingle 00:07
Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you. And now your host a show always.
Steven 00:16
Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. Today's episode is an answer to a question submitted by a listener named June Wong. Joon Wong wanted to learn more about licensing weak virtual so I reached out to the team over there and landed a great interview with Steven Ekstract. Now Steven is the brand director of the global licensing group. Now he's here to talk to us all about licensing week virtual and give us some insights into the licensing Expo which is the Live event that typically happens every year. Now if you have an idea for a podcast topic, then I want you to head over to thetoycoach.com scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click the button that says podcast topic suggestions below that form and your topic ideas will be added to my to do list. Okay, so let's dive into today's interview. Okay, toy people. So today I am joined by Steven extract brand director of the global licensing group and today we're going to talk about licensing week virtual which at the time of this recording has just wrapped up. So I want to say welcome to Steven, welcome to the show, Steven. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm really glad to have you on the show. I actually get a lot of messages asking about all of these different virtual events that are going on right now. So I'm really excited to have Have someone on the show who's a little bit more familiar with all of the intimate details to talk about it? Right? Yeah. So as the brand director of the global licensing group, why don't you just start out and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you and the global licensing group are involved with the virtual licensing week? Okay, sure. So, a little bit about myself. I started in with a career in journalism. And in in the mid 90s, I was working for a trade Hollywood trade paper called The Hollywood Reporter, which reports on basically the entertainment trade, film, television, video games, etc. And I was asked to attend a licensing Expo, which was going to be at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. And I was asked by my people, and I actually read The New York office so the people in LA said, Do you know anything about licensing? I said, I have no idea what licensing is nothing. I have no idea. So I went to this licensing show. And I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. It was the year that they had introduced Jurassic Park. The film The first first Jurassic Park film, and, and universal had this huge, huge booth with all these Jurassic Park. products and services they're offering and then there was all of these other companies there that were doing licensing and I thought, pretty cool. I wonder if there's any publications served this industry. And what I came to discover was there was one publication. At this time, it was actually published by a toy publisher. And so it was very focused on toys, but licensing really represents every area of consumer products. So I thought there's an opportunity to start a trademark magazine for licensing. And so I did, I launched a magazine called license, which is now called license global. And it was successful from from our first issue. So the first issue launched in February of 1998. And we launched it for New York Toy Fair. It was our we were distributed your trade fair. And the company that that organizes licensing Expo approached us, myself and my partners and said, Would you be interested in selling your magazine to us, we want a magazine to support the show. And so we sort of resisted for a while and then we decided that it would be a good idea to join forces, we did a joint venture with them. As the magazine and Expo came together, we realized that we could actually grow together because, you know, one of the things that you can do with with a publication is that you can really You can really cover where the new areas are coming from in licensing, right, you can cover that journalistically. And that really helped grow the expo because as, as we were able to uncover, you know, growth areas and fashion, in sports, in, in video games in all areas of consumer products. We were able to introduce those companies to licensing Expo. And they were able to realize that by by exhibiting licensing, so they could get a lot more deals done. So it really turned into, again, a great synergy for both the magazine and the and the expos. And certainly from the magazines perspective. You know, companies tend to advertise around trade fairs, and we actually launched we launched show dailies in our shows, so it was really good for the publication as well. Now I don't know if I made this clear before we go on I want to make it clear to the to my listeners. Licensing Expo is the in person show that normally happens every year due to Coronavirus this year it was licensing week virtual. But I'm curious now talking to you how when did you guys make that first decision that you realized, Oh, no, we have to do something. We have to make a big change, and we're gonna have to go virtual really quickly. So yeah, it was really kind of we, you know, what happened was, our show was supposed to take place, end of May in Las Vegas. And we realized, you know, we obviously realized relatively early on that that wasn't going to happen that that this Coronavirus is not gonna be over by May. So we, we went to the our venue and we negotiated with them to see if we could move the event which we did. We moved it to August and then probably toward The end of really towards the end of April, we really sort of checked in with one another and said, You know what, this is not looking good. You know, people are not even even if even if the virus is done by August, people are not gonna want to get on planes. And Brian All right, that's right. Yeah. So at that point, at that juncture, we said, we need to really figure something out here because the industry really needed. You know, the thing about licensing and cigarette licensing industry. It's not based on products. It's based on intellectual property. And it's also based on trends. And so the need for a trade show is really it's it's really necessary for licensed tours, licensees and retailers to all come together and understand what are the trends, what are the properties what what are the areas products that that consumers are going to be interested in. And so we realized that we needed to do something. And that would have to be virtual. Had we had a lot of help internally. And so as a result, we were able to really cobble it together I would say from start to finish, literally from the time the we said, we're gonna we need to do this until we until actually just came to fruition, which was last week. This past week, it was about 10 weeks. So Ah, and it looks so good. I looked as though it had been running that way. For years. I was like, This is so well done. Again, you know, what we really had, we have this internal group of colleagues that were just so phenomenal and I cannot thank them enough. They were just incredible. They they loaned us their technical knowledge. They were there with us to help with the recording of all the webinars and we actually did live keynotes. Every day, which I was on edge, because we're like, What if something happens, but they all they all came on smoothly? The booth, the virtual booths were amazing. And the companies, the companies that did the virtual booths, actually were able to decorate them the way they wanted to and drop in a video. And it was really, really amazing. And I have to say, we way outperformed what we expected. I mean, we had
Azhelle 09:28
registered for that event,
Steven 09:29
we had over 8000 registrations, like 1240 registrations, which is just we were amazed. It just shows the pent up demand that that these companies had. But one thing we found we discovered is that that the industry really needed a place to sort of come together, figure out you know, one of the solutions, you know, so a large part of licensing, we work With our education program, where we really put together a lot of really good sessions to help people understand, you know, where's, where's the future of the business going, you know, one area that we really focused on was e commerce, because it's one area that's been kind of weak for our business. Typically, you know, with with companies that are manufacturers, licensees, you know, Dell, they have relationships with with brick and mortar retail, and they those relationships took many, many years for them to build. And so when they have those relationships, they don't want to they don't give them up easily. Right. And but I think what they realized is that with those with those retailers shut down during this during this time, they really needed to have an e commerce strategy, you really need to have any commerce strategy, right. And so so that that was came to the forefront. So that was one of the areas that I think was really positive is being able to communicate that to the industry. I'm curious, did you hear a lot of comments from people that maybe thought like, Oh, I actually liked licensing, we'd virtual even better than having to run around the floor. I'm curious what people's responses have been to you. You know what? So people were the responses that I got. I got a lot of calls all week was that it was great. They enjoyed it. And we have we have something we have a matchmaking software that enables registering to set up meetings. Yeah. So there was there was like, almost 4000 meetings that were set up over those five days. Yeah. That between between virtual virtual meetings that were set up. Yeah. But one thing that that really came out was that as much as It was, you know, sort of important and something that people wanted to do. The need for wanting to do do something live is still there. And, and, and it's because it's a trust factor. It's very hard if you don't know. So if you're doing a virtual meeting with someone you've never met before, and it can be a zoom meeting, it can be over video, but you really need to have when you're interesting your IP when you're when you're, you know, licensing is about licensing out intellectual property. So when you're entrusting your IP to another company, you really need to build a relationship and trust, have a trust factor, and mesh very hard to do virtually, it's really something that needs to be done in person. There are you know, there's just, and maybe one day as we become more of a virtual World it will be but I think, you know, this was for us this was the first time ever for the industry. It was the first time ever, and so I think people really do still want that live interaction. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the actual the real in person licensing Expo because, you know, now that you know everybody's all my listeners are hearing how many people are showing up at these events? They're probably gonna want to be involved. Next year. Your next show is set for I think, may 25. And 2021. Okay, yeah.
Azhelle 13:36
Okay, so how big are you expecting that show to be?
Steven 13:38
So typically we have about 470 exhibitors. And but but over a very large space because we have a lot of exhibitors to take very large booths particularly you See it with the Hollywood Studios. So we have everything from Disney to Warner Brothers to Sony Pictures. Lionsgate Netflix. I mean pretty much all of the entertainment company, universal, NBC Universal, all of the major entertainment companies and brands take very large space because they're licensing out their IP. And they also are very promotionally oriented. So they have massive, massive, massive lists. And you also see it with a lot of the toy companies so companies like Mattel, Hasbro and Spin Master and mga and what they're doing is they're not showing their toy line. They're showing their IP that they own that they're licensing into other categories. You know, so for example, with Hasbro nerf is a huge license for them. My Little Pony has been a huge license for them. They now They actually bought entertainment one which is an entertainment company. Peppa Pig is the big kids property. They own Power Rangers. The Power Rangers franchise. So and Hasbro doesn't consider itself a toy company Hasbro considers itself an entertainment company. Yes. Mattel You know, when you think about what Mattel Mattel and Barbie yes which they've had a huge slice they've done so much licensing for Barbie over the years you know they own Hot Wheels there's just so much ice Dale and Thomas the Tank Engine they own all the hit entertainment properties Bob the Builder. So, and the company like mga which again is they own little tykes, which they do on license, but they also own lol, which has been a huge huge licensing huge successful licensing program for them in so many different categories. So, so you see this. It's a show where companies are showing what their IP is. And then the visitors, the visitors are manufacturers. So what we call licensees, companies that want to license other companies brands to sell more products. You also have retailers who are looking for, you know, what is the hot? What are the potential hot properties or what can they get that might be exclusive for them. You also have promotional partners, like quick service restaurants, McDonald's and Burger King to do Happy Meal type stuff. And then you have a lot of like your constituency of inventors who have inventions that they've that they've come up with or ideas, and they're looking to actually license them to bigger companies, right. So this is a place for all of those people to meet up. Absolutely and and So and we actually create activations for all of those people in all those companies. What does that mean? So what what I mean by activation is so if you're an inventor, if you're a train mentor, for example, we have, we have, we put on something that enables inventors to submit their ideas. And we have we called pitch to brands right? And so they can submit their concept or invention. We have a committee that judges them. And then we pick nine of them to actually pitch in front of Google judges, he comes from, you know, are either major manufacturers or come from the invention, copyright area to their attorneys or whatever, and they will help choose one property that that sort of becomes winner. It's very much like a shark tank point. Sounds like it. Yeah, and we get we do that in our license theater and we get a tremendous amount of visibility for that. And so it's great. There's also a lot of folks that come in their exhibitors, for the first time, they take a small, you know, take a small little booth, and they have an idea or they have a concept in illustration, or, or a kid's book or something that they've come up with. And, you know, one of the interesting things is that it's not just manufacturers that are walking around looking at properties, it's also Hollywood talent, Asian producers who are looking for content. So oftentimes you'll have people coming through or looking specifically for something that they've never seen before. Something that's that's unique, something that's new, because you know, that you know, right now content is king, right? You think about all of the video on demand services out there that are all competing with each other. Right? And they're all looking for content desperately looking for content. So certainly, you know, coming from children's books is a big area of content. Right. Okay. But But any any concepts? I mean, there was in 2018 we had a company exhibiting something called feisty PACs, which is I know feisty pet right. So so they hired a YouTube you know, it's a cute little YouTube videos, right? Yeah, they were doing these cute little short videos and a licensing agency took them on. And we, you know, we also did a contest there for that for that and we we saw that we were like, this is fantastic. So and we chose them as our as our sort of property to watch one to watch. So we do we do that as well we do something called one to watch that our magazine license global will will be added editors are licensed double look at all the new properties that are coming into the show. And they choose the one to watch. And there's a number of candidates that come in, we can only choose one but but we narrowed it down to you know, maybe four semi finalists and then main winner. But, you know, over the over the years, we've discovered a lot of really cool property that way, you know, books, illustrations, videos video, so we really try to democratize the show. So it's not just it's so it's not just about the Disney factories, right? Because Disney, everybody. We all know that Disney kind of rules the world when it comes to entertainment, right? But there's so much out there. There's so much new there's some new new new properties, and you just never know what's gonna, what's going to be a big hit. Right? Yeah. When you think about, you know, Shopkins, right, which was, you know, sort of was this, you know, came from an Australian toy company, right? brought Shopkins to the US, and it became such a huge, huge, huge hit. Right. Yeah. And that just that just happens, right? That, that that's, you know, and it's because the consumer, in this case, children decided that they loved it, right. So you really never know, you know, there's companies that can put millions and millions and millions of dollars behind the marketing or something and it can fall flat. And there's, there's properties that can come out of nowhere, that somebody came up with, you know, came up with the idea, put it on paper, executed somehow whether to an illustration or to an invention or something and it becomes, you know, the next big next big trend Yeah, so I'm hearing from what you're saying that this is a good show for toy inventors, maybe entrepreneurs who have ideas for IP. But I'm just curious now it say I am a joint venture and entrepreneur and I get a booth. How is your show organized so that they can hopefully have some walk by your scheduling meetings? Most of the time? Yeah. But I feel like some people at the show are kind of hoping for that opportunity that the right person walks by, and they get to interact with them and pull them into their space. Right. Yeah. Well, so one of the great things that we've done in the last five years is we've introduced this matchmaking service which really takes a lot of the guesswork out of hoping that somebody walks by right. Also, that's not new for the virtual show. That was something you always did something we always did, but and we included in virtual but yeah, and we've been doing it for about five years and we've been perfecting the software's been really getting perfected now. So what we find is and We really try to help new companies, new exhibitors and new attendees as well. So you know, you don't need to be an exhibitor to use that the matchmaking you can be an attendee as well. But we really try to help educate folks ahead of time, particularly if they're an exhibitor. Because we know that they've invested, you know, a good amount of money, and we want them to get return on investment, right. And so, waiting, you know, in the old days, you know, 10 years ago, you go to a trade show, and maybe you advertise, maybe you didn't, head of time, and you kind of were in your booth, and you were hoping that people would walk by and you've seen this at trade shows when you go to trade shows, you know, there are personalities that are out there, and they're, they're like, hey, come talk to me. And then there's other folks who are introverts and they don't, they don't they, they sort of are sitting at their booth and just hoping that people come over and talk to them, right. So the matchmaking takes the guesswork out of it. It's like You can like you will type in exactly what you're looking for. If I if I'm, if I'm a manufacturer, I'm coming to licensing Expo, I'm looking for kids properties, let's say zero to five or five to 10, or whatever the age range is, I'm looking for something that worked for toys or books for whatever. And and that will match up with who the companies are that are exhibiting right. And then I can ask for an appointment with them. So the companies were that that are using matchmaking are finding an amazing, they're setting up, you know, they're managing to do in in three days because typically our licensing Expo is a three day show, though the 80 meetings in three days. And these are really high quality meetings. These are, you know, the meeting with major retailers and meeting with major manufacturers. And what what we hear from so many of these companies is that in those times Three days, most, most of the business that they're doing happens in those three days. It either starts with the conversation, you know, the deal that deals don't get done necessarily, but the conversation gets started, or, or continues, right? So, which is why there's such a demand for this show, and which is why it's been so successful. I'm curious what tips you might have for some of our first time attendees, there's listeners to my show that think they might have something special, what tips would you give them? So a couple of things? Obviously, it depends on budget, right? I think PR public relations is really important, right? shows getting publicity ahead of time and it doesn't really cost anything to to, if you can, you can actually, you know, go online and and get a tutorial on how to write a press release. yourself. You don't need to hire a PR firm. I am sure the PR firms out there If you can write a press release yourself, which is, you know, basically who, what, when, where, how, right. You know, if you have a new a new product or a new idea, you want to get press. So, you know, certainly, you know, we have we have a magazine called license global. We try to cover everyone that we can. There are other licensing trades as well. So getting pressed before the show is really important because you want to sort of get people interested in that matchmaking tool. They're like, I remember that logo that right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, or whatever name or whatever it is, right. So but but again, the matchmaking if you're gonna if you're gonna spend the money on a booth, right? Even if it's a small booth, take advantage of the matchmaking. Well, it's free, it costs you nothing. Take advantage of it set up as many meetings Because you can, you know, some may not seem like oh, that might not seem like but you never know what when something's going to turn into gold, right? You just never know. And you never know who someone knows that they could take a liking to you and say, you know what I like you, we may not be the best partner, but I'm going to introduce you to xy and z. And don't be afraid to one of the things that I've always seen with, particularly with people of new properties is the fear of someone stealing their ideas. Yes. Oh, yes. Talk to that. Go ahead. Okay. So So, you know, getting people to sign non disclosure agreements is fine, but you know, it's only as good as the papers written on if they're going to steal your idea. They're going to steal your idea. And and you're going to so so if you can either trademark or copyright depending on what when it whether it's an invention or whether it's a concept illustration, right, do what you can at least, at least start the process right. So that when you're talking about These meetings, you're making it clear to these people that yes, I've already started the process. Most most serious manufacturers won't even talk to you. Unless you've done that. The other thing to be aware of is not everything is going to resonate and and manufacturers and retailers don't want to take chances. So, you you need to think about, like, you really need to hone in on what is your demographic? What what are you where, what exactly, you can't say, Oh, this property is good for everybody, right? Because that's just, that's not gonna fly with most people. You really need to get your pitch down, right. And, again, you can do that there's YouTube tutorials that will teach you how to do you know, our elevator pitch? Yeah, I'm actually I have an elevator pitch on my website, and I also in a couple of my episodes, explain to my listeners that it's so simple To know who you're talking to before you pitch them. Right? Right. So unless inventors, typically our Creator, our creative folks, right, they're not because they don't tend to have that business. And it's very rare when you find the two that come together. But, but you can then you know, find someone who can represent you from the business perspective. In our business in the licensing business. The business is really driven by agents. There's so many agents that exhibit licensing Expo that so an agents are basically just a middleman there are business people who have great, great contacts, right. And they put the deal together for you. Now they get a pretty good percentage of that deal. Typically, it's anywhere from 30 to 40% of the royalty which sounds which sounds like a lot of money and it is, it is a lot of money, but the work that goes into these deals It's significant. It requires talking to manufacturers negotiating with manufacturers requires getting the retailer sold, the deal can take anywhere it can go, it can take about 18 to 24 months to get done. So that's why agents charge as much as they do. It is negotiable. You know, if somebody has a really hot property, and an agent really wants to represent it, they'll negotiate. They'll take, you know, less than their 40%, they'll take 30%. But, you know, do keep in mind that the agents are working hard to make this happen. They don't get paid unless deals get done unless products get sold at retail. So they're going to do the best possible deal they can for you. But at the end of the day, if you're the property owner, if you're the inventor or property owner, it's up to you to decide if that's something you want to do, right. So you need to need to make those decisions and and then you need to Kind of dictate to the agent, exactly what it is you're envisioning, and then discuss it right. And the agent, the agent, will the agents been in the business for a long period of time, they know what sells and what won't sell, they will help you greatly. So I can't stress enough if you can get an agent to represent your property, it's going to take a lot of the stress off your life. Yeah, you're not going to have to worry about trying to do the deal. You can actually focus on what you're good at, which is, you know, creativity and coming up with new inventions and new ideas and new concepts. So let let an agent who's really a business person, do that for you. And, and, and take that stress off you and look, you know what? It's tough to say, Well, I'm giving up 30 or 40%. But that means you're still getting 60% of something versus 100% of nothing, right? Right. do be aware though, do be aware that There are some folks out there that represent themselves as agents. And they will ask you for upfront fees. Right? I would say, Be very careful about that. You know, and you know, you can, and you can always reach out to someone like myself, you know, I'd be happy to provide my email. Oh, that'd be great. reach out and ask, you know, this person has proposed steel to me, what do you think I'm happy to comment on it? You know, I, I, because I've been in the business for 22 years, I kind of know who the legit folks are and who we're kind of not so. Not so, honest players are, you know, there's a few bad apples in every industry and you have to watch out for them. Right. But typically, you'll know, you know, you'll know. If they're, you'll have the sense if they're asking you to get to provide them with upfront collateral. I would just say no. Yeah, saying most of the people I've heard or their motto is I don't make money unless you make money. So yeah, yeah, exactly. So what is the cost of attending? Let's say you're going to rent a small booth because your first show, what could you get in at, essentially, you can get all in for about $7,000. So the rental of this the way the way that we work as a expos, we rent you raw space, okay? You then have to get a table and chairs and you know, depending on how complex your an app that you're losing, you need to rent a the equipment if you have to, you have video that you want to show. All of that you have to do through the venue that's not done through us. So if you're just looking for a basic small package, we can sort of provide you with a turnkey package for about $7 laws which would be, you know, 10 by 1010 feet by 10 foot foods with carpet and then table and some chairs. And then you would do your own backdrops if you will. Right, right. Which could be posters or whatever, whatever it whatever I say throw $7,000 but also do keep in, keep in mind that there's travel expenses because yeah, okay. So, you know, if you want to stay on site, in the hotel that's on site with Mandalay Bay, it's not inexpensive about $220 a night, however, just down the street, you can stay at one of the other hotels and literally, you know, just down the street for, you know, 50 or $60 a night. And then, you know, build in the fact that you have airfare and meals and everything else. So, you know, all in you're probably looking at $10,000 for a basic, you know, to fly from wherever You are in the US, right? You know, get your hotel room, take your taxis back and forth to the airport to the show and pay for your meals. You know, and then of course, it's going to go up from there. So I would say, yeah, so all in about 10,000, which would include your airfare, your hotel, I mean, assuming you're coming from domestically in the US, right? You know, the nice thing about Las Vegas is it's, it was made for conventions, right? So it's very easy once you get off the plane that literally the airport is 10 minutes from the strip. And you can get a hotel room on the strip for you know, 50 or $60 a night, right, which is, you know, then it's a quick, quick taxi ride or Uber ride down to Mandalay Bay, which is where our, you know, Mandalay Bay is at the end of the strip, which is where the shard takes place. So You know, and you know, you know, unless you're entertaining now if you're entertaining people that can get expensive, right? Because they are expensive restaurants in Vegas and shows and everything else. So if you're interested in just attending the event for the first time, if you're like, I want to see what this is all about, what is the cost of just attend the event? cost? Nothing. Oh,
Azhelle 36:23
no, I already knew that. I just wanted to hear you say,
Steven 36:25
yeah. register register online register online as long as you as long as you are, you know, within the within the industry, right, right. Of course, license or licensee, retailer, whatever, enter inventor, right. And I would say you know, come to the show for the first time. Come sign up for licensing University, which is our education program. Yeah. takes place all four days of the show. guys put on it's put on by our industry association which is licensing International. I have to The content is amazing. And you will if you want to, you really should learn about the business before you try to get into the business. Right, right and learn so much about you'll learn license based. They have a great licensing one on one course, which basically teaches you an overview of business. They have attorneys that will walk you through, you know, what, what it takes to drop a contract or what's involved in contracts, what royalty rates are, how you track royalties. I mean, it's, it's really it's, it will, it will really open your eyes to, to what licensing is all about to just take this license university courses, I think it's roughly about $250 to sign up for the whole four days, of course, and it's so worth it. So we're now I think that would be really worthwhile and I think if any inventors are thinking about showing Their IP or their product at the show, it would also just be good to see what a successful or a high traffic small booth looks like, just to see what that extra investment might be beyond the cost of the booth of chairs and table like, are you putting up big posters and backdrops? And are they having how many employees are working at each booth? I think all of that would be great to see before you dive in. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So because you had this really successful virtual event, but you have a very successful in person event. Are you thinking about having more virtual events maybe leading up to the main event or including a virtual component to your main event? in the future? Yeah. So absolutely. And, you know, so we actually do events all throughout the year because as I mentioned, when we first started the interview, we have shows around the world so we have our next show coming up is in London. In October, right now it's scheduled to take place physically. However, one thing we know for sure is that is that it most likely will not be as global as it has been in the past. So it originally started 21 years ago as a local UK licensing event, right? Because actually, the UK is the second largest market in the world, believe it or not for licensing. And so it started as a local event. And then when we, when our company bought it, and we, we really started focusing on building the European attendees. And we were lucky because because London is very easy to get to from the rest of Europe. It's really a hub. It's got there's four, four airports that go into London and it's relatively inexpensive. For European for flying to London, they can fly in and out. So if you're flying in from Prague or from Madrid or from Paris, you can literally fly in and fly out the same day. And so we were able to build into a pan European event. Of course, our concern for this coming October is will other European countries be able to come to London, right? Will there be travel restrictions? We certainly know that probably less folks from the US and Asia are going to be fine. So right now, we're in the process of figuring that out. The things that we talked about doing is doing a hybrid event. So while we would have a live a live event for a local UK folks that could come. We would then also offer virtual virtual meetings and virtual education sessions for folks from Europe, and from the US and Asia and Latin America that weren't able to attend. So that's interesting for us in that, you know, how do you figure out how do you do a hybrid? Right? So we're, we're learning and I have to tell you, it's really, you know, it's a brave new world out there. Fun, it's a lot of fun. So we're having fun while we're learning. And, and yes, we will be doing more virtual events because we see there's a real pent up demand and need for it. Yeah. So if, if we get to, and we're going to make some decision in August. So when we get to August, early August, if we see that, that travel in and out of the UK is not going to be feasible, we most likely will will make it virtual only. But we're you know, right now, there's a lot of positive signs we're seeing. UK is certainly trying to get back to normal. We're seeing No, we're seeing we're hearing that Spain and Italy have both opened up for people to fly in and out of UK. So we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. And to close us out, could you tell us just some of the trends and things you saw at the show? I mean, I don't know what you could see or how you learned about the different trends. But what did you notice from this licensing week virtual, I would say less property trends and more. Really kind of e commerce is a is a really critical, I agreed ecommerce is really critical. I would also say there are certain trends that we're seeing in say, in the toy business, for example, which is sustainability is really important, super important. And, you know, that sort of started before right before the pandemic But, you know, people have been talking about it for a while, but really the toy industry, you saw it start starting to happen in Nuremberg and in New York Toy Fair. And, and it's something that, you know, the floodgates have opened, and it's gonna just continue it's really important. And so many toy companies and made major major investments and commitments to it. So that's, that's going to be really important. Also, the whole idea of digital going physical, so you know, whether it be a YouTube property, whether it be video game property, there's they're there. Those properties that are digital are being turned into physical physical products, which is interesting, because for years and years and years, the toy industry the traditional toy industry saw the video game industry as being competitive to them. Right right. And and what's interesting is now they're they're coalescing Coming together, in the sense that when you see kids who play Minecraft with toca, Boca or, or, or some of the Lego video games that's being created to product because, you know, people don't just want people are getting set up the screen yes so they want physical right and and you know physical is really important you know we're human beings and we need tactile we need to touch and feel and and and move things around. And so that's that's a really interesting trend that I think we're going to see continue right it's a good point I think because of the quarantine people are realizing how much they appreciate they appreciate slash miss the physical like what you're saying. Yeah, and certainly then I mean just look there are trends that are coming out of that are coming out of the last three months right which is that people have learned how to work from home right people have learned how How to do virtual meetings. People learn how to operate grandparents are learning how to use zoom. Right? So they're, I mean, the whole virtual, the whole idea of like virtual world was kind of been forced upon us. We didn't have a choice, right? It's all things that that have been slowly, sort of, you know, they've been slowly happening, but it sort of sped up the process. Right. And certainly, and certainly when it comes to shopping, you know, the whole ecommerce and to the point where, you know, people buying groceries online, I mean, if you lived in New York, I have family that lives in New York City, who were buying, you know, just, you know, loves it, they love food and everything else, but they just couldn't trust to go out because of contagion. And so they were buying all their groceries online buying everything online. Yeah. And, and that's just going to continue. I think, I think now that people see that it can be done. And then it works. That it's open that open the floodgates so great. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Is there anything else you'd want to share with the listeners about upcoming events or anything? Please Subscribe. Subscribe to licensed global if you want more information about licensing, it's free of charge. Everything we do is free for our for our audience, so you can go to www dot bisons global comm sign up for our newsletters so we have a daily newsletter. If you don't want to get a debt if you if you're not quite ready to get a daily source of information you can sign up for a weekly which is basically a compendium of the of the week's top stories and licensing. If you're based in Europe, you can sign up for a European e newsletter. You'll see when you go to www.gmail.com Looking at sign up for, but education is super critical if you know, there was a There used to be a clothing store called Sims and cy Sims was famous for saying and educated consumers, our best customer. We feel we feel that as well like the more you educate yourself, the better off you're going to be. And so we want to provide that level of education for you. Also, I would recommend if you're serious about being in licensing, look, go to go to licensing international www license international comm that's our industry association. They have tremendous amount of research that they do. In fact, their their, their global sales report just came out. Just came out last week and they were reporting close to $300 billion a year in retail sales in licensed merchandise. So that's how large the industry is $300 billion a year in licensed product. So yeah, I would I would, those two resources will really be helpful I think. And then, you know, if you're once you're subscribing to those two, you'll find out about everything that we do all of our shows, our virtual shows, our lives events, you will learn everything there is to know. And again, if you'd like to email me with any questions, I'm happy to take emails. It's my first name and last name at informer comm which we can share, I guess. Yeah, great. I'll put all of that in the show notes so they can have access right to the your email and right to the links. That's great. That's a thank you so much. That's fantastic offer. Okay, good.
Azhelle 48:44
Yeah. So it was a pleasure having you on the show, Steven.
Steven 48:46
Yeah. Thank you so much. It was it was really a pleasure to be on and I look forward to talking to you soon and seeing hopefully see you at a at a at a live event. Yeah, I hope so too. Yep. Talk to you soon. Now I hope you enjoyed this interview all about a virtual licensing week and the licensing Expo. Now I want you to remember a few key points that we covered today. You really when you join this Expo next year, you really want to take advantage of their matchmaking service. This matchmaking service is offered free of charge. It's included in your show fees, and it helps exhibitors and attendees plan for a successful show. You can use this service to find and contact agents, manufacturers, retailers, and even inventors depending on what you're looking to get out of this event. And I want you to remember how important it is to generate some form of press before you attend licensing Expo. You want to write your own press release and make it memorable so that the people attending the show are already thinking about your product. And when they go through that matchmaking service, you want them to identify your logo or remember your name, and get excited when they see a message pop up from you requesting a meeting. Now, if you have any questions about licensing, Stephen was so generous to provide his email address, just head over to the show notes at thetoycoach.com forward slash 23 to get all of the details, and you've heard me right, you no longer have to type in podcast, just head right over to thetoycoach.com forward slash 23 for all of the links from today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I appreciate each and every week that you come back to this podcast and spend a little bit of time with me. Please leave a review in iTunes and tell me how much you love this podcast. I love hearing from you. And I appreciate all of the messages that you send my way. Until next week, I'll see you later toy people.
Azhelle 51:09
Thanks for listening to Making It in The Toy Industry podcast with Azhelle Wade, head over to thetoycoach.com for more information, tips and advice
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🎓Learn more about how you can develop and pitch your toy idea with Toy Creators Academy® by clicking here to visit toycreatorsacademy.com and join the waitlist.
