Survey respondents reporting that their U.S./Canada licensing business grew in 2015 outnumbered those reporting declines nearly 3 to 1. When you add the “flats” to the “down” total, the ratio was 2 to 1 in favor of positive growth.
However, while 2015 seems to have been a good year for most, Survey respondents weren’t as optimistic as usual about the future. Only 56% said they thought that their business would grow in 2016, as opposed to 75% who predicted growth from last year. But among the optimists, nearly 66% predicted that growth would exceed 10%. Among the pessimists, 66% said they expected sales to be flat next year; the rest said they thought 2016 would be a down year.
Click here to read the full story, complete with a complete breakout of 2015 retail sales by product type and product category in the U.S. and Canada.
Survey Methodology
TLL’s estimate of the size of the licensing business is based on its online survey of global licensing executives, conducted in January 2016; third-party research of overall category and industry size; dozens of in-depth interviews with licensing executives, both for the survey and throughout the year; annual reports and other corporate information from retailers, licensors and licensees; and news articles from trade publications covering trends in the respective product categories and property types affected by licensing.
Experts interviewed included licensors, manufacturers, agents and retailers, as well as consultants, allied professionals and individuals with multiple roles. They were based in all territories around the globe; but for this portion of the survey which focuses only on the U.S. and Canada, results are based only on responses of those doing business in those territories.
More results from TLL’s Annual Licensing Business Survey will be forthcoming in future issues, including trends in royalty rates and payment structures, distribution trends and product category results by key property types for U.S. and Canada, as well as coverage of the size of the global licensing business and trends in territories outside the U.S. and Canada.