Licensing Industry

It's about time there was a venue outside of New York!! Here's a vote in favor of the move for all of us *****side west of the Mississippi (it's a whole new world out here folks)!

New York City is the perfect location for the International Licensing Show... hotels, restaurants, Broadway shows and
convenient travel connections for both domestic and international exhibitors and show visitors. Change is not always for the better. "What Happens In Vegas... Stays In
Vegas" is not the kind motto we should want associated with our industry's top trade show.

Interesting that the two people interviewed are not exhibitors, although the way Janet Woodward sounds off- you'd think she was an exhibitor. She is certainly always willing to part with her opinion isn't she? Her comments show a complete lack of knowledge of the situation. I am an exhibitor for the past 10 years based in Miami. It has been explained to me by Show management that the reason the Show is considering a move is because the Convention Center will not insure it of dates in 2009 or beyond. Additionally for Ms Woodward's information, were she really an exhibitor, the move to Las Vegas would save her 40% on her set up costs. As an exhibitor for the past 10 years, who has watched as costs at the Javitts as well as hotels in New York have skyrocketed, I find it offensive that a non exhibitor is trying to influence where the show moves. If Ms Woodward or Mr Downes were retailers or manufacturers, they might have a say, but as Agents who use the show to take meetings away from us, the exhibitors, it shows a real lack of ethics on their part. I wish our industry organization, LIMA would do a better job of monitoring the ethical behavior of their members. It is fine to express your opinion, just don't misrepresent yourselves- neither of you are exhibitors and you sponge off of us that are.

The industry seems fairly split on the pros and cons of New York versus Las Vegas. The Copyrights Group has exhibited at every Licensing Show since the second show held in the Sheraton (ie pre-Hilton days) in circa 1984 or 1985. We have certainly seen some changes in that period of time. The most unwelcome change has been the increasing costs associated with the Javits venue and New York generally, whilst at the same time business that we can identify as arising solely because of the show has declined.

Fewer US retailers seem to think it important to walk the show in recent years and when they do it is only for a day because the cost of staying in a New York hotel has got prohibitive and cannot be covered out of many retailers budgets. With the major studios and licensors taking up so much time of the few retailers who attend that means that many medium size and smaller licensors are not getting the attention that they should from this all important audience.

Does this matter? Well for us our primary purpose in exhibiting at the show is to meet prospective licensees and retailers and the latter are of increasing importance in our industry. The move to Vegas will certainly lower exhibition costs and attendance costs significantly despite the further flying distance and if that means that more retailers can spend more time at the show and stay over to give it two days it needs to do it thoroughly, then I am in favour of the move.

New York is a great city in many ways, but is it the best place to hold a licensing show where business can be done by the whole industry? If you just want to meet other agents and licensors then New York works fine, but if you actually want to do licensing in the USA then I think it is very debatable whether New York works for the industry.

Dear Ms Kapinsky,

Perhaps before you accuse me of sounding off you should do your homework. If you look at last year's list of exhibitors you will see that Coolabi was an exhibitor. I have exhibited every year since 1990 with the exception of 2. It might also be worth noting that costs are a lot more relevant to those of use crossing the Atlantic as we're already hit with higher costs. In my full reponse to the question I did comment that the cost of exhibiting would be a lot cheaper in Vegas. Perhaps before you undertake blatant character assasination you should get your facts straight. At no point in my answer did I say Vegas was not the answer.

Dear Ms Kaminsky

Further to Janet's response I would like to add that Janet was invited to make comment on the Las Vegas issue for Licensing.Biz through myself as a Director of Kilogrammedia, the PR company handling Coolabi's licensing trade . As ever she gave a rapid and thoughtful answer to the question posed and one that certainly did not deserve an inaccurate and unjust response such as yours. Debate yes - attack no!
Oh and there were three not two interviewees, the third thankfully escaped your ranker.

In all that I've read regarding this issue, there has been no mention of the fact that Surtex is also held in New York City, just a few weeks before the Licensing Show. While it has a different tone, there is significant overlapping when it come to the art and design industry. Many of us are faced with the decision of exhibiting at and/or attending either one show or the other, but not both since they are both in New York and so close together on the calendar. I wonder if we would all be better served if these two shows were not only in different locations (one in NYC; the other elsewhere) but different times of the year as well?