TOTAL LICENSING
EUROPEAN INSIGHT
Expansion through
Acquisition
Everybody in the licensing industry There have had to be other changes about taking on new challenges and
By Morten
wants to be bigger; acquisitions and as well. I am now Chairman of the gaining new experience to take your
Geschwendtner
expansions are the order of the day. Board and Director of Licensing, Claus whole business forward. That means
Director But what do you do when you’ve taken Tømming becomes Director of Enter-
you need to keep a close eye on areas
Kidz Entertainment over that rival, or expanded into that tainment, KJ Istok becomes Director such as brand management and brand
new territory? of Emerging Markets, while Catharine development. You also need to bridge
At Kidz Entertainment we recently Bushnell, is Executive Vice-President the gap between brand management
negotiated a successful merger with Legal/Contracts. and sales, especially in new territories.
EEMC which makes the new company Darran Garnham is Senior Vice Presi- It’s also important, I believe, to take
- Kidz Entertainment/EEMC - the larg- dent of Sales and Marketing for East- your clients with you. Eastern Europe
est integrated brand marketing agency ern Europe and Gabriel Sturm is Vice is going to be an increasingly impor-
in Nordic and Eastern Europe. President of Sales and Marketing for tant part of our business and we have
That’s a massive territory and a com- Nordic. already signed strategic long-term
pletely new and unfamiliar market for This is not a question of giving people deals with partners such as HIT En-
us so we had to make a number of titles so they will look good on their tertainment and Pokemon so that we
strategic appointments in a restructure business cards. A restructure was inev- can develop their properties in those
designed to make the newly-enlarged itable in the light of the EEMC merger territories.
company more efficient and receptive and Kidz Entertainment’s sustained Retailers are important too. It’s vital
to changing market conditions. growth over the past two years but that you have someone who can speak
The company is really too big now for it is important that this is done cor- to them, literally in their own language,
one person to keep track of every- rectly. so you can maintain the best possible
thing so there has had to be a division I believe that we need to take a ho- relationship and make sure you are
of responsibilities. listic view of the new company so we delivering what you and your partners
Our VP of Licensing Anna Lisa McBride, need to make sure that the right peo- need.
for example, takes on the newly-cre- ple with the right expertise are in the In these days when a lot of companies
ated role of company CEO. She has a right jobs. find themselves cash-rich it’s easy to
hands-on role in the day to day running I could have sat here in Copenhagen go out and buy up someone else. But
of a rapidly-expanding company, which and attempted to work out what re- you need to do it right.
has just opened an office in Stockholm tailers in Hungary need but I don’t Being bigger for its own sake isn’t much
to add to its existing corporate head- think I would have been very suc- use to anyone. It isn’t about how smart
quarters in Copenhagen, as well as cessful and I don’t think the company you are in moving into that new terri-
offices in London, New York, Prague, would last very long. tory, it’s about how you are smart in
Warsaw, Moscow, and Budapest. Expanding into new territories is coping with a fresh set of challenges.
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