As Pink Key Licensing turns 20, founder Richard Pink looks back at the past – and on to the future!

Congratulations on your 20th anniversary, Richard…
Thank you! 20 years…

You gave a little grimace there!
Ha! Only from wondering – you know – where the hell did that lot go?! It seems like yesterday that I thought I might set up a company. And then it’s 20 years later.

Ha! Well, let’s talk about that… We’ve interviewed you a few times, notably here, and here. For those not familiar with the Pink Key story, though, how did you come to be in the industry?
Well, as you know, Deej: nobody chooses to go into licensing! In fact, the only person I ever met that chose it as a career is Ash Holman. Ash aside, everyone’s in it by accident! For my part, I used to be the promotions controller at Kellogg’s. My first foray into licensing was effectively as a licensee for them because I used to bring in licensing for promotions. Eventually, I set up their licensing department – which was me in effect!

We focused on a kid’s licensing program around the time when Kellogg’s were moving away from marketing to kids so it was never going to be easy… Still, it washed its face for a couple of years before we all agreed it wasn’t really sustainable. That’s when I went into entertainment licensing for about a year – and what I say about that year, Deej, is that it really taught me one thing…

Oh?
That my strongest suit was licensing brands! After that, it struck me that there’s really only one way to be able to make decisions about which brands you want to license, and that’s to have control of it yourself. So that’s basically where Pink Key came from. It started out with a bit of licensing alongside a lot of consultancy. I was straddling the two areas in which I was well versed: promotions and licensing.

Who was keeping you busy?
I was doing a lot of project work with people like Discovery Concepts. I also went back to Kellogg’s and effectively did my old job, but as a consultant. They’d started doing some things in the US, but they’d never done anything with their vintage assets in Europe. And yet, at their offices in Battle Creek, the whole of their basement was this incredible archive. Every promotion, every advert, everything they’d ever done was in that basement… It was like a gold mine!

After ages of me banging the drum and saying, “Can we restart the licensing program now?”, I’d got on their nerves enough for them to decide it would be easier to give me the license than have me keep hassling them. Ha! So we started the Kellogg’s licensing. As it happens, Kellogg’s is, I think, one of those brands that tends to attract other brands… So then we quickly had Laughing Cow come and talk to us. But it got to a tipping point, I think, after we took on SLUSH PUPPiE.

You gave up the consultancy work?
We gave up the consultancy work and declared ourselves to be a fully fledged licensing agent. And that’s what we’ve done ever since. So yes… I fell into licensing, and I fell into this area of licensing! It’s a strategy that built itself because at some point, we just realised we weren’t a consultancy anymore.

And I think your website says you specialise in “the development of long-term licensing programs.” In that respect, who are your clients at the moment?
We’ve got Kellogg’s, Pringles, Pan Am, SLUSH PUPPiE, Laughing Cow – and all the brands around that: Babybel, Boursin. We’ve also got Seriously Cheddar; very much a food-licensing program. Our recent signing is Tiptree – best known for their preserves, conserves and so on. And although we do have the rights to do food for a number of those brands, the licenses aren’t all limited to food programs. A lot of it is food brands going into non food, which makes a difference actually.

And Pan Am comes to mind as enormously creative… last year, I think, we interviewed Ian McCulloch about Pan Am gin… People can read that here. I loved that deal – even though there isn’t any connection between the two; it just feels like they belong together! Here’s an impossible question, Richard: How has licensing changed over the last 20 years?
Crikey! It has changed a lot, actually. And I think a lot of that change has been retail driven. If you go back maybe six or seven years ago, the retail landscape was very different. It’s been changed by the emergence of licensing in what I’d call discount retailers and the likes of Primark…

So bargain retailers?
Bargain retailers, yes; retail stores that some have historically seen as low end… Previously, licensing was much more geared towards the higher end. That way, having people see your products in certain stores helped elevate the brand. In the UK, for example, everybody wanted – strategically – to get into John Lewis or Marks & Spencer. That way, you’d be positioning your brand high and watching it trickle down. In fact, the old joke used to be that once you got into some of the discount stores, that was it… That was your last stop on the route!

That’s now done a complete one-eighty. The retailers you were hesitant about back in the day are now the retailers that drive licensing! They’re where you can benefit enormously. And what I’ve found is that the big licenses – the Disney’s, say – are adapting what they do to let them inhabit anywhere and everywhere on the retail spectrum.

Can you give me an example of that?
Yes – I’ll give you an example from our portfolio! We can have a brand like Tony the Tiger sitting in Saks Fifth Avenue as a handbag for $1,500. At the same time, we’ll be selling Tony the Tiger boxer shorts in Primark for $9.99. So some brands are able to do that. That said, others don’t have any aspiration to reach that higher-end market… If you take SLUSH PUPPiE, say – which is a self-declared end-of-pier brand – it thrives in Home Bargains and B&M. That’s where you expect to see it. But yes: that – for me – is the biggest change I’ve seen in licensing since I started doing it.

Great answer. And do you have any idea why that changed?
People’s knowledge! I just think there’s a much better understanding of the value of licensing within the industry. When I was starting out, far fewer people understood licensing. The agents understood it, obviously. Some licensees understood it and were able to capitalise on their knowledge of how licensing could add value. But that deeper knowledge has spread to retailers, licensees and licensors alike… Now people better understand what licensing can do on a much broader basis.

Fantastic. Now… Heroic though you are, Richard, you don’t do this on your own! Who else is on your team?
There are five people on our team! Nancy Jones you know…

Nancy is fabulous! People can read a chat with her here.
Obviously, Nancy really runs the whole company! But her counterpart on the financial side is Rona Purdham. She’s been working with me for longer than Nancy. She oversees all of our financials and royalties; all that sort of thing… She’s supported by Anne Tadhunter, who’s been in licensing for quite a while. She knows exactly what she’s doing; she does all the running around at the end of the quarter collecting royalty reports. And then there’s Zacey Sell. Zacey is…

Wait, what? Zacey Sell?! That’s the best name I’ve ever heard! Zacey Sell… I can’t imagine Zacey has any trouble starting a conversation.
It is a great name, isn’t it?! And Zacey does all our administration: the contracts, the approvals, all that sort of thing.

It’s only now that I realise that you being charming and making connections is the tip of the iceberg… You’ve got this amazing team doing all the admin!
It’s almost all admin, actually! That’s what licensing is! Ha!

And your surname’s Pink, obviously… But why’s the company called Pink Key Licensing?
I’m glad you asked me that! Ha! There’re two reasons, actually. When I first started the company, I was thinking through the obvious names – things like using just my initials: RJP Licensing, say… But in the words of Jason Mraz, “our name is our virtue”! And because everyone knew my name was Pink, it would’ve been ridiculous not to use that. I did feel, though, that it needed more. Anyway, I was out for a run one day, thinking about what licensing does…

This is going to sound incredibly contrived, but my mind went to how licensing is about unlocking brand value… And what do you need to unlock things? A key! As soon as I said it, I realised that ‘pink’ and ‘key’ go well together. And I don’t know why I didn’t think of it months earlier because people had been calling me Pinky for years! Ha! So it’s Pink Key because it unlocks brand value and it’s a bit of a pun on Pinky.

Perfect!
By the way, one interesting thing about the Pink Key name is a story about Carol Janet who runs Design Plus Licensing. When Carol was looking for a sub agent for SLUSH PUPPiE, she started scouring the UK licensing website. It just so happened that I’d put up a Pink Key Licensing banner that month… When Carol read it, she thought, ‘Who in god’s name would call themselves Pink Key Licensing?’ But then she said, “I’ve got to talk to this guy!” So she rang me up – and that’s how we got SLUSH PUPPiE – literally because of the Pink Key name!

Ha! Well, we need to start wrapping this up, Richard… Just before we do: what’s next for Pink Key?
Good question! The way I see it, you can go in two directions in licensing. You can either go wide, or you can go deep. If you go wide, you take on a load of brands and try to do a few deals for lots of brands. If you go deep, you keep exploring how to serve a smaller number of brands more thoroughly. And at the moment, we’re doing that: deep rather than wide.

So you’re not actively looking for new brands at the moment?
Not reallllllllly, no. I mean… If the right brand knocks on the door, then we’re absolutely going to look at it. But we don’t take on brands lightly: we only ever take on a brand if it meets two criteria… First, we have to love it. That’s such a cliché to say! But it’s true. We mean it. Second, we have to believe that we can really do something with it. How do we add value to that brand? The result of having those two criteria is that we’ve turned down an awful lot of brands.

I believe you! One of the reasons I love chatting to you, Richard, is that the energy and enthusiasm you have for the brands you represent is palpable.
Thank you, Deej. That’s lovely to hear.

To wrap this up then, what’s the one question I could’ve asked you today that I didn’t?
Crikey! I guess: “When are you going to retire?”

Retire?! I wouldn’t have thought you were old enough…
Well, bless your heart!

But since you’ve raised it: when, Richard Pink, are you going to retire?
At no time soon – I’m having way too much fun! I actually bought a book on retirement after I hit the big six-oh last year. One suggestion it made was to set up and run a little company that you love when you retire… That’s when I realised I actually retired 20 years ago. So why would I stop?!

Ha! Love that! That’s the perfect place to leave it. Thank you, Richard. Lovely to chat. And congratulations again to you and the rest of the team on your 20th anniversary.