Tikiboo’s Faye-Louise Jobbins on adapting due to supply chain challenges, lining up new licences and the power of an online only brand.
All this week, LicensingSource.net will be catching up with a selection of licensees across key categories to ask them how their businesses have been impacted by COVID-19 and what conversations the industry needs to be having to aid recovery.
Today: Faye-Louise Jobbins, md, Tikiboo.
“There have been two sides to this: on the one hand, we have seen an increase in customers as during lockdown a lot of people have turned to fitness and embracing home workouts. On the other hand, we have experienced stock issues due to supply chain closures and have had to adapt the items we sell based on what we can physically make internally.
We have still kept in touch with the majority of partners. Obviously, with factory closures, we have not been able to make any new products, but we have lined up some exciting new licences during the lockdown period that we hope to release later this year.
We are lucky in the fact that we are online retailers and we have been fortunate that our fulfilment centre kept working throughout the whole lockdown period, meaning we could still sell what we currently had in stock. If we had a physical retail store, the company would have lost way too much money to continue after three months of no income.
I think now is a good time for the sector to be looking for new partners, and to explore partnerships with ecommerce-based brands, which is likely to be the future of retail for most.
We have previously experienced snobbery from certain licensed brands because we are only an online brand. However, this mindset will need to change and adapt in this ever-changing world in which we live in.”
This feature originally appeared in the summer 2020 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
Want to read more news like this? Simply sign up to our daily digest by clicking here. You can also follow @LicensingSource on Twitter and @licensing_source on Instagram.
