The Museum’s head of licensing on supporting licensees and planned new launches for 2021.
The museum, heritage and institutions sector has endured its own challenges throughout this year’s lockdowns – including venue closures, key exhibitions put on hold and social distancing measures to incorporate.
All of this means the importance of licensed products is higher than ever.
LicensingSource.net catches up with some key names in the sector to find out their views on the year to date.
Today: Maxine Lister, head of licensing, Natural History Museum.
“We were extremely lucky that our planned launches for spring were not affected by the lockdown and we have seen our collections with The Royal Mint, Finisterre and Uniqlo go ahead as planned.
We were very fortunate that the licensing team was able to continue working throughout lockdown, which has allowed us to continue to plan and develop the upcoming launches we have for this year and also into 2021.
The Museum was closed to the public for almost five months, the longest period since the Second World War, so this was of course incredibly challenging for many reasons. Even as we started to reopen our doors, there was limited capacity and new measures in place to ensure staff and visitors can have a safe and enjoyable experience.
With regards to licensing, we are very lucky that our products are sold at wider retail and continued to be available during this time despite the Museum itself being closed.
Our focus for the rest of the year is to support our existing licensees, as well as to continue the ongoing discussions we are currently having with various licensees and retailers. We have several launches coming up, particularly in early 2021 that we are very excited about.”
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2020 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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