Total Licensing leading the way in China!

If proof was needed of the magnitude and opportunity that the Chinese marketplace provides, this year’s China Licensing Expo, held alongside the China Toy Expo, China Kids Fair and China Preschool Expo is surely an excellent indicator.

Whilst a number of shows around the world have tagged on a licensing section as an afterthought, this year’s China Licensing Expo took centre stage with three enormous halls packed with IP from both Chinese origin and internationally known brands and studios.

The show, of course, is part of an immensely crowded October for the industry – BLE earlier in the month, MIPCOM and MIP Junior over recent days and now The China Licensing Expo.

It’s surprising perhaps that a show of this magnitude does not attract increasing numbers of attendees from outside China amongst the tens of thousands that do attend. From our perspective, it certainly is one to watch.

Inerestingly, on the Chinese IP side, there is a strong art, design and museum presence. Museums with impessive and busy booths included Prince Kung;s Palace Museums, Silk Road Souvenir, The Palace Museum, The Natonal Museum of China and The Forbidden City. Brands, too, played their part with Global Trademark Licensing History, Nation’s Greatest Treasures, Discovery, Licensing Matters Global, Iconix and more.

Of course, the major Chinese IP owners and agents all had an impressive presence – Alfilo, Medialink, China Brands Group, UYoung and others, many of whom had costumed characters wandering the halls thoughout the show.

On the international side, leading players such as Mattel, Hasbro and Wildbain CPLG all had a sizeable presence as did a number of gaming companies such as Blizzard, aime producers such as Toei, Pokemon, ADK Emotions and more.

One interesting aspect of the show, which doesn’t seem to have caught on in other events is the lack of business cards in favor of WeChat contact. Virtually nobody hands out a business card any more  – they just connect via the WeChat QR code.

Another point of difference perhaps from UK or UK shows, is the love of collecting things by Chinese visitors, Bags on booths, in particular, were in high demand and queues formed outside popular booths to acquire a bag with a certain character’s logo or brand. 

The visitor level to the show was tremendous. The aisles were invariably busy. Booth design, too, was innovative and immensely professional. The sheer scale of the booths would be prohibitively expensive to recreate in say,Lodon or Las Vegas but they were impressive to say the least.

The SNIEC is one of the leasing convention faciliies in the world and the co-located shows occupy most of it. In fact, More than 7 million visitors attend the venue each year and it is on such a large scale that shuttle busses run taking attendees from one hall to another.

Just to blow our own trumpet for a moment, we were delighted to be the only licensing trade with a booth and, despite providing many thousads of copies of Total Licensing China for visitors, exhibitors, attendees at the event party, The Confeence Forum and the Awards Night, we ran out on day 2.  Nice problem really!

For anyone interested in the Chinese market, a visit to this show is a must. With more than 250 exhibitors and thousands upon thousands if visitors, it really does present a very significant snapshot of the Chinese industry in these post-COVID years, Hopefully, we loo forward to seeing you there next year,