Kid movie merchandising still a marketing tool here

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Mumbai, May 5: All those Spiderman toys and Harry Potter games make the whole experience of a movie more exciting for kids. While internationally, merchandising for children movies is a rage, in India, it's still in its nascent stage. For Hollywood, Spiderman merchandise contributed around 40% to the total revenues of the movie. In India, however, such merchandise contributes only 2%-3% to the total revenue.

“In India, merchandising is seen as more of a marketing tool than a revenue earner. The movie becomes an advertising tool for merchandising,” said Navin Shah, CEO, P9 Integrated Ltd. However, an industry analyst feels that three years from now, merchandising for children movies in India will be considered as a serious stream of revenue, and it would contribute around 25% to the total revenue of the movie. "We can see a change in trend and a number of serious players entering into the business of children movies. Therefore, it'll bring about a change in merchandising as well," said the analyst.

Though Hanuman did a pretty good business for merchandising and contributed around 20% to the total revenue, industry players feel that there is a lot more to do.

Apart from the fact that there is dearth of movies for kids, industry experts also feel that in Bollywood, people do not think much about licensing for merchandising. And merchandising is mostly an afterthought, when the movie becomes a success. Whereas in Hollywood, the idea of merchandising often goes hand in hand with scripting.

But it’s true that things are slowly changing here. Bucchki, a character from the upcoming movie Bhoothnath, is out in the market for almost three months and almost 2.7 lakh Bucchki toys have already been sold. This has been launched by Cartoon Network Enterprises (CNE) and with this, CNE marks its entry into