New Delhi: Turner’s Cartoon Network has tied up with Warner Brothers to sell merchandise of popular characters and movies owned by the Hollywood studio ranging from personal care items to home linen and apparel in India and South Asia.
With this deal Warner Bros Consumer Products has appointed Cartoon Network Enterprises as its consumer product licensing representative in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The agreement between Warner Bros Consumer Products (WBCP) and Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific’s licensing and merchandising arm Cartoon Network Enterprises (CNE) was signed yesterday.
“This deal includes iconic brands of warner brothers merchandise such as DC Comics Super Heroes Batman, Superman and The Flash as well as Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, and The Hobbit Trilogy, among many others,” the company said in a statement.
The licensing rights would include categories such as toys, apparel, accessories, publishing, stationery, gift, novelties as well as branded foods, personal care products and licensed advertising promotions in the region.
Warner Bros Managing Director Bianca Lee said: “This extension of our relationship will now include representation of our consumer products licensing business in the region, which is a strategic collaboration that will be mutually beneficial.”
Turner Asia-Pacific President Ricky Ow said: “We already operate some of the most loved leading brands in South Asia and this collaboration will benefit from our proven success and future investments we will make in the region.”
CNE has a network of 76 partners with footprint in traditional retail, modern trade and e-commerce.
“We will be working on a royalty-based license fee model for the WBCP portfolio. The current arrangement is valid till the end of 2017,” said, Turner International India & South Asia Managing Director Siddharth Jain.
Turner will be responsible for growing the WBCP business across categories such as toys and games, sporting goods, gifts and novelties, automotive, home furnishing, housewares, stationery and paper among others.
“We have already signed deals for WBCP with Titan, Firefox, Crompton Greaves, Creative Portico, Funskool, Parle, Vanessa amongst others,” Jain said.
The warner brothers merchandise products will be available in over three lakh outlets, across all distribution channels including mass distribution, mom & pop stores, e-commerce websites and large format stores.
“As pioneers in the kids’ genre of television entertainment, we will be showcasing the classic cartoon properties such as The Looney Tunes Show, Tom & Jerry and others on Pogo while superhero series of Batman and Superman will be aired on Toonami.
“Since the DC Comic properties are very popular in the young adult age group, we intend to partner with a number of lifestyle and youth-centric brands,” he said.
The size of the licensing and merchandising industry is estimated at Rs 4,000 crore.
“Although a mere 4 per cent of the global industry, in our experience, the Indian market is evolving at a fast pace. Fuelled by the recent e-commerce boom, we can easily aim for double digit growth in the character led licensing and merchandising business in the coming year,” he added.
