Natural History Museum’s Maxine Lister talks new launches, moving more into the toy category and global opportunities.
The heritage sector – from museums and galleries, through to universities, gardens and stately homes – continues to gain momentum when it comes to licensing, with 2022 having seen some high profile product launches and collaborations.
LicensingSource.net catches up with some of the companies operating in the sector.
Today: Maxine Lister, head of licensing, Natural History Museum.
“We have a brilliant new launch with Joanie, a sustainable online womenswear retailer, which we have been working on for quite a while and are delighted to see this launch.
We have also recently launched our second collection with Dunelm, this time focused on British woodlands, which sees the brand expand into many new categories. We currently have lots of new partnership conversations happening, some of which will come to fruition in 2023, which we are very excited about. I have also appointed a senior licensing manager – Emma Russell – to oversee the UK licensing programme, so that I can concentrate on supporting our new global agent TSBA.
There are some issues that continue to be challenging including on-going supply chain issues as well as the cost of living in the UK, so we will be carefully observing how this will play out over the next few months. There are still lots of challenges within the industry which we will all have to navigate for some time yet.
With Emma’s extensive background in toy we are now able to focus on this as a key category, by creating a strong strategy and talking to key partners at BLE. We are really keen to explore this area as we feel there is huge potential for the brand. I am also excited about the launch of our international programme via TSBA. We have various categories and territories as part of our strategy.
For the remainder of 2022 and into 2023, the focus will be on continuing to support our existing licensees as well as hopefully signing some great new toy licensees to join the NHM licensing family. We have a lot of opportunity globally with TSBA so I am very excited to see how conversations move forward and how we can support them. We had lots of interesting conversations happening even before BLE, so I am feeling very positive regarding the next few months.”
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2022 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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