From high end to high street
28th May 2010
The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is actively managing its IP to broaden its search for growth partners.
Take a run-of-the-mill product - a garden fork, perhaps, or a frying pan. What happens if you give it a design twist inspired and endorsed by one of the world’s finest collections of decorative art?
You and your products can quickly find yourself in a different league and at a much prettier price point.
In the last five years, the V&A has starting managing its intellectual assets more actively, setting up a series of brand partnerships on the high street. Walk into John Lewis today and you will find numerous V&A products, from tea sets to gift wrap.
So, say your trend board is telling you that butterfly prints are going to be big next season. You could go to the V&A yourself, of course, and look for ideas to adapt, but you are unlikely to capture the scale and diversity of all its collections. By forming a partnership with the museum, you can ask them to search their collections for motifs such as butterflies and florals. They may appear on Chinese wallpaper or on Japanese silk, giving you the basis for creating your own interpretation.
The museum’s first branded set of bed linen, for instance, was launched in 2008 with a textile company in Northern Ireland, which adapted eighteenth and nineteenth century designs for how we live now. Sales are far ahead of expectations and the partnership has just won the award for ‘best licensed brand product’ for soft goods at the UK Licensing Awards.
For each licence, the museum has a standard set of terms, although arrangements vary from case to case. The royalty charged for use of its brands and knowledge can be anywhere between 1 and 15 per cent, depending on the volume and scope of expected sales.
Lauren Sizeland, Head of Licensing and her colleagues on the licensing team exercise close control on the development of each product. First, they share their own knowledge of which designs are working best in the market. They then approve each stage of the design process from concept through to packaging. A watch is also kept on your segment of the market.
She now runs a portfolio of 80 licences, which generated a profit of £1.2 million for the museum in 2009. It all goes back into developing the V&A collections. Looking forward, Sizeland’s priority is to build her relationship with retailers and push forward the museum’s international sales, particularly in the US.
Sourced from Intellectual Property Office IP Insight, to read the article in full please click here.