How important is licensing for the development of your product lines?
Our business is focused on three key pillars, licensing, brands and private label. Licensing is a fundamental aspect of product development and creation. Our design and merchandising teams work closely with our licensors and retail partners to establish how to bring these amazing brands an licenses to life through our products. These insights provide us with access to innovative design directions, new technologies and trends, and the ability to call on a wealth of knowledge to exceed end consumer expectations through our products.
In your opinion, how much is retail changing towards licensed products?
Beloved characters, references and motifs bring a magic that end consumers want to daw into their everyday lives. Whether they’re proudly wearing their gaming hero on a t-short while at the cinema with friends or heading out to school with a film favourite emblazoned on their shiny new sweater, these products just make life more fun! Licensed product will always be part of retails due to end consumer demand, but as an industry, we cannot be complacent and need to keep pace with the world around us. We are seeing innovations in digital, in store and of course in the products themselves.
Is licensing still decisive for penetrating certain retail sectors?
Yes, 100%, being able to incorporate the power of a well-known brand or license into our product offering is hugely valuable and enables us to cater for the full range of our retailers from low to high tiers across the UK, EU, India, Africa and beyond.
Physical Stores vs. e-commerce, or omnichannel strategy? Which is your approach?
In all honesty to be relevant in this ever-changing world you must be able to support all routes to the market. It has always been a key strategy of ours to have customer focus at the forefront of everything we do. This has enables us to move from our humble beginnings as a bricks and mortar supplier over 37 years ago to now supplying all types of retailers from pure e-commerce through to department store. This ethos and drive to be agile will surely take us into new realms in the future and we are excited to embrace this.
How important is, in your opinions and related to your category of products, the customer experience in the stores?
This will no doubt be a key element of the future shopping experience, with many of our customers already defining location-based entertainment strategies. This is not just limited to in store but also in digital environments such as the metaverse. The great thing about apparel and accessories is our products naturally lend themselves to being at the forefront of these experience through the end consumer being able to wear them. To really bring this to life the key is to integrate the physical with the digital, which will no doubt be the future.
Source: Licensing Magazine | Summer edition 2023 | p. 93-94
About ERVE:
Erve is a European leader in character licences and brands. We produce branded fashion and apparel featuring TV, film, cartoon and video game heroes. As part of Erve Group, we have eight offices across three continents and we control the supply chain between raw materials and stores. Starting with our in-house design team and portfolio of licences – we source, produce, pack and transport collections at the request of major fashion retailers. With 37 years in the industry, our dynamic team values growth, transparency and customer focus. Our exceptional quality and sustainable practices have earned us a reputation for excellence.
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Media Enquiries Erve:info@erve.com