New Delhi, June 13: Having licensed two US-based apparel brands last month, the Delhi-based Licensing Plus, a joint venture between Australia-based Lee Walsh Licensing Pty Ltd and Exim India Pvt Ltd, has now licensed world famous characters such as Phantom, Garth, Flash Gordon and others, the rights of which it holds, to a local publisher -- Diamond Group of Publications.Last month, in a five-year agreement with Gulshan Rai, publisher of the Diamond Group of Publications, it licensed 12 characters including Phantom, Garth, Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician to be published as comics under Diamond Comics in English, Hindi and Bengali. Diamond Comics was already publishing these characters by paying royalty to King Features who had the Asian rights for these characters. The minimum required print run will be 5,000 and the price is likely to be Rs 15 to Rs 20 per comic. Diamond will pay a royalty of 7.5 per cent of the total sales per month to Licensing Plus.A Rs 25-crore company, Diamond claims to be oneof the few companies with a huge retail and marketing network of 5,000 agencies. Besides having 80 -- of which 32 are Indian -- characters in its kitty, in 1987 it had acquired from IBH, the rights to Amar Chitra Katha comics. Diamond also publishes Comic World, a composite monthly magazine of characters in five languages -- Hindi, English, Bengali,Tamil, Malayalam and Kannad.
Surprisingly, Gulshan Rai is not very bullish about the sales of foreign comics in the country. Says he: ``Foreign characters don't sell easily here. Sales are restricted to the public-school kids in the metros. Even there, most of them prefer to watch TV.'' Nevertheless, he is going ahead with a print run of 30,000 in the first month. At present, he claims a circulation of four lakh for comics with foreign characters while Rs 20 lakh accrue a month from Indian characters.
Licensing Plus is also negotiating with some of the popular TV channels to telecast some of these characters. ``We're likely to finalise deals with one or twochannels in the next six months,'' says Ashwani K Goel, brand manager, Licensing Plus. The company has been following a wait and watch policy in licensing characters in India since the business of merchandising of characters has not taken off in India. ``Unlike the West, where characters are more popular than brands, in India, characters are not too hot. Here, we have not reached that stage as yet,'' says Goel of Licensing Plus.
The company, has therefore set its strategy right: it wants to first get into publication and syndication, then on to TV to popularise these characters, and finally jump into merchandising. ``The most important step is to get first into media: so that the characters are popular; followed by getting into merchandising in major product categories such as apparel and stationery,'' says Goel.
Licensing Plus acts as a medium to bring the foreign licensor to India and obtains the concurrence of the principal owner of the brand, character or event before looking for prospectivelicensees. At the same time, it also provides support to the licensee by helping develop viable marketing strategies for each brand.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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