The Licensing Expo in Vegas had the biggest licensors coming together to meet up and discuss what the next years focuses are and we have the low-down on the biggest takeaways from this event.
The official public launch of Shikwasa Creatives by Figurama Collectors couldn’t have gone any better.
We have been working away on developing our service-side of Figurama Collectors for a while now and testing it out with some very trusted partners. So when we got to the stage we were happy with our ability to deliver high-quality OEM projects for external clients, we thought, let’s launch this into the world!
That’s where the Licensing Expo 2024 comes in.
It was an amazing event filled with incredibly talented and excited licensing professionals, who were equally as excited to talk with us. We were having meetings with existing partners from Figurama as well as new contacts like Ubisoft, Legendary and CD Projekt Red.
Here’s some of the top takeaways had from our conversations with top licensors:
1/ Licensors are looking for higher quality products
The days of pumping out high quantity, low quality products are being left behind and replaced with higher quality products. With Gen Z entering the market they are looking for something they can keep for life and are willing spend more on it. They’re more invested in the art pieces and having individuality than following the crowd.
We found that a lot of brands we spoke to were looking to move away from their current investments to creating more limited runs of high-quality product. They were showing us pieces that had created before and how lackluster they found it in every way, including sales numbers.
So expect to see a new wave of quality coming out from the biggest companies in the coming months and years.
2/ Big marketing activations are coming back
Over the past few years and an unmentionable period of time, we were all locked up in our houses consuming solely digitally. This created a shift away from physical events and big activations within the marketing world. It’s starting to shift the other way now though.
People are happy to go to the big events, free from fear, and marketers are starting to realize they need to up their game at these events to draw that attention.
We had a lot of conversations around creating physical experiences, photoshoot opportunities and life-size models of their characters, to help make their event spaces something to put on TikTok.
Expect to see events this year and next only get bigger and bolder.
3/ Unexpected licenses are bridging out into top tier merchandise
With a change in cultural viewership from adults only watching adult shows and kids only watching their cartoons, to adults and teens watching everything and having some of those kids shows being their favorites to watch, like Bluey, IP holders are starting to explore how to merchandise to this new found viewership.
We had conversations with IP that we never thought we would be having. Talking to some kid focused IPs that are looking into the high-end, collectible statue field to make products for the millennial audience that don’t have any merchandise they want otherwise.
In the next years expect to see high-end merchandise and collaborations from some of the most unique and quietly successful IP around.
4/ Accessing world-markets is always top of mind
Getting in front of the world market is top of mind for all businesses in all industries and will forever be the case. It can only help to expand your audience, but it’s a tricky thing to do, there are so many cultural and language barriers to getting into those areas.
Being a global company ourselves with offices in Japan, Kuwait, Jordan and Ireland, we completely understood the challenges these companies were facing and how difficult it can be. We had some great conversations around how we unlocked these locales and localization can start to happen, especially when reaching for Japanese and Middle East audiences.
Expect more localized content coming in the next few years, ramping up in areas you didn’t expect.
5/ Digital focused IP are wanting a larger physical presence
Gaming and streaming are a large part of a lot of people’s lives, it’s all online and they can access it from anywhere. Which is why publishers of these IP have been so successful and grown substantially over the years. But with that focus in the digital realm, they are lacking a physical presence that they desperately want.
We were having very interesting talks about physical distribution of products and getting merchandise into stores with some of the top IP holders. It’s certainly an interesting challenge and something we’ve faced with Figurama, it touches on marketing activations, quality products and world-markets.
Expect to see more of your favorite digital IP on the shelves of stores very soon.
That’s it for this roundup of an incredible event. If you were there and missed saying hello to us, reach out now!
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