Licensing Industry

At Kidz Entertainment, our successful merger with EEMC makes the new company - Kidz Entertainment/EEMC - the largest integrated brand marketing agency in Nordic and Eastern Europe. But moving into new areas poses new problems.

For one thing, it's a massive territory and a completely new and unfamiliar market for us so it obviously requires a new strategy. We could no more treat Eastern Europe as one territory than anyone would lump continental Europe together. It is one market but with many different territories, each of them with unique social, cultural and economic drivers.

One of the first things we had to do was make a number of strategic appointments in a restructure designed to make the newly-enlarged company more efficient and receptive to changing market conditions.

Our VP of licensing, Anne Lisa McBride, for example, takes on the newly created role of company CEO. She has a hands-on role in the day to day running of a rapidly expanding company, which has just opened an office in Stockholm to add to its existing corporate headquarters in Copenhagen, as well as offices in London, New York, Prague, Warsaw, Moscow and Budapest.

In this role she will be looking at the overall growth of our current brands and work with the teams to continue to push the brand development.

There have has to be other changes as well. I am now chairman of the board and director of licensing, Claus Tomming becomes director of entertainment, KJ Istok becomes director of emerging markets, while Catharine Bushnell is executive VP legal/contracts.

With these newly defined roles, we will have a much clearer focus on finding new merchandise properties, entertainment properties and in scoping out and growing new markets respectively.

Darran Garnham has been appointed as senior VP of sales and marketing for Eastern Europe and Gabriel Sturm as VP of sales and marketing for Nordic. As sales has become increasingly more important in licensing, with more and more brands being available, we found that a clear focus on this from both a management and day to day perspective was an important change for us.

These are not titles for their own sake. I could have sat in Copenhagen and attempted to work out what retailers in Hungary need, but I don't think I would have been very successful. You need to ensure that the right people with the right expertise are in the right jobs and to trust their judgement.

Expanding into new territories is about taking on new challenges and gaining new experience to take your whole business forward. It's also important, I believe, to take your clients with you.

Eastern Europe is going to be an increasingly important part of our business and we have already signed strategic long-term deals with partners such as Hit Entertainment and Pokemon so that we can develop their properties in those territories.

Retailers are important too. It's vital that you have someone who can speak to them, literally in their own language, so you can maintain the best possible relationship and make sure you are delivering what you and your partners need.

Being bigger for its own sake isn't much use to anyone. It isn't about how smart you are in moving into that new territory, it's about how smart you are in coping with a fresh set of challenges.