On the same day over in New York, BigBad Toys CEO Alfredo Pazzi is meeting with his key executive team which comprises of:
Seb Goldstein, Vice-president of sales and part-time psychopath
Pete Melba, fellow American-Italian, president, worldwide consumer products division and the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the company after Alfredo himself
Adèle Felous, head of International in the consumer products department, a Frenchwoman with a very large ‘pomme frite’ on her shoulder.
Pazzi: ‘ I keep hearing excuses but the line is not selling fast enough. Less then three years we’ve had Blastboys in the market, we should be on the up not giving in to the Japanese again’.
Goldstein: ‘The sales force knows better than to come to me at month end with anything less than twenty per cent up. They’ll call in favours if they want to save their hides’.
Melba: ‘Well you better be right, Seb, because I’d told enough lies this year positioning BlastBoys as still the number one boys license. We’ve got everyone in town in less than ten days for Toy Fair, and Al needs me to come through with some key seven figure renewal deals. Your sales boys let the data slip and our game will be up.’
Goldstein: ‘What you do with you asswipe licensees is no concern of mine! You bullshitted your way into deals, you get to clean up the bullshit later. I made BlastBoys number one and I will keep it that way.’
Melba: ‘And if it wasn’t for the cash I screw out of the licensees you’d have run out of marketing money and excuses a year ago. Face it, Seb, the Japs have got you on the run again and your so-called friends are jumping ship for SS Tokyo.’
Felous: ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s have a little calm, bien? I am confident that Seb’s team will do their job, just as I am confident that Pete and I will deliver the big renewals that we all need. Even if it is, malheureusement, true that the edge has gone off BlastBoys, my European licensees are still as ignorant as pigs of the fact. They will sign, they will pay, because they cannot afford to risk being without this license!’
Pazzi: ‘ Pray that you’re right, Adele, because we’re not just talking jobs and expense accounts here. We don’t bring in the cash and certain individuals on the Board are going to go head-hunting. I will not give them the satisfaction. This is my business and we will succeed. You all have my full authority to do whatever it takes. Now go and get on with it!’.
In an atmosphere of barely-suppressed aggression, the three executives managed to squeeze out of Pazzi’s office without damaging their expensively-tailored suits. Melba and Felous huddled conspiratorially in the corridor outside Pazzi’s private domain while Goldstein hustled of to whip his sales force some more.
‘Adele, you better be right about these guys you’ve got set to renew’ Melba could barely spit out the words.
‘Relax, Peter. I have them biting off my hand, as you would say. And there is something more of which you do not yet know’ purred Adele. She held up a finger to signal to Melba that he should wait, and produced from her Hugo Boss briefcase a letter on old-fashioned looking vellum paper. With a flourish, she read the important section.
‘And so I am very pleased to tell you that the Board has accepted my proposal that BlastBoys is the ideal license for us to base our return to licensed comics after a seven year absence. I can confirm the terms we agreed at our last meeting for pan-European rights and look forward to receiving the contract and minimum guarantee invoice for one million pounds at your earliest convenience.’
The letter was signed by the Head of Publishing for James and James, the old-established English West country newspaper, book, magazine and children’s comic publisher.
‘So what do you think of that, Peter?’, Adele continued to look smugly satisfied.
‘What I think is how the hell did you squeeze a million pounds out of a limey comic book outfit I’ve never heard of? ‘
‘They are ingénues, Peter, positive ingénues, but they are rich and their new Head of Publishing is an over-ambitious ass. Let him spend his bosses’ money with us. They won’t be back for more, it’s true, but there are always more fish in the sea’.
‘He’s coming to Toy Fair?’
‘Alan Greaves, yes, he will be here. We must make sure he is well entertained, n’est-ce pas?’
‘I can still turn on the charm when it’s needed, Adele, as you know clearly enough. Fix up a dinner and show and I’ll get one of the girls from the agency along, see if we can’t make sure that Alan looks forward to a long-term association with BigBad.’ Melba’s mind was already working overtime. Even if the BlastBoys deal was a stitch-up for James and James, he knew he could hook the fish and persuade him in to ‘the next big thing’ two years down the line, especially if Rachel or Carla ( he couldn’t decide which of two high-class hookers he would line up for Greaves ) gave him the special treatment and a clear promise that there was more to come. Yes, he thought, get a few more like this in the can and they could sail through the year .
The two licensing execs parted promising to catch up again later on the complete Toy Fair schedule.
Behind the closed door of Alfredo Pazzi’s office, the CEO placed a call to a private number in Trenton, New Jersey.
‘Speak’ was the terse acknowledgment at the end of the line.
‘I’d like to talk to Mr Spinetti, it’s Pazzi’ Pazzi tried to sound confident, firm, but it was a struggle.
‘I’ll see if the boss wants to talk to you’ said the voice. The line went silent for two or three minutes and then the familiar, menacing tone.
‘Pazzi, Pazzi, to what do I owe the honour of this unexpected disturbance?’ it was Vincent Spinetti, made man and number two in a major cosa nostra family with its seat in Trenton.
‘Vince, I just thought you’d want to know that my team have assured me that the revenues will be on target, if not better for the current quarter. I know you like to be kept informed of our financial progress.’
‘Assurances you can kiss my ass with, Pazzi. Lou will want to see the money, and it’s my job to count it out for him. We’ll be expecting the five mil on time, last day of March. You wanna wrap that with “assurances” that’s OK by me, long as the dollars are in the bag.’ Spinetti sounded his usual mix of weary resignation at having to deal with idiots, and quiet relish as to how he actually would prefer to deal with them, given the green light from Lou Bergamini, the ‘capo’.
‘Vince, it will be there on time. You have my word.’
‘Keep it, just come across. Last time was not so smooth, I don’t wanna see anything like it again, or maybe we’ll be looking for a new patsy to take the place of this ‘Pazzi’ – get it? Hey – will you listen to that, I didn’t realise I was so funny!’. The phone was replaced without another word.
Pazzi stared out of the window like a man condemned. He was pretty certain that March 31 would not be a problem. However, after March 31 there would be June 30, and then September 30, his life measured out in calendar quarters. He wasn’t at all sure he had many quarters left.
Thursday 11 June 2009
Tuesday 31 March 2009
Chapter 5
Determined to be all corporate-responsible and marketing-dynamic, I wake at 7am Friday morning and shower and shave to the usual strains of Radio 4’s Today programme. If you listen to this you can kid yourself that you’re among the few who really know what the ‘movers and shakers’ are about. One of the elite for whom celeb-obsessed pop music radio or breakfast TV first thing in the morning is beyond the pale. They are beyond the pale, mind you, for all but the brain-dead of this island of ours, however numerous they happen to be. Mind you, if that Jim Naughtie mentions the bloody opera one more time………..
After a quick and nutritious traditional Northern English breakfast of Marmite on toast I jump in the car for the ten minute drive to the office. As usual, I’m the one who opens up in the morning, just as I’m the one who locks up at night (unless I leave early like yesterday, in which case it’s Meryl who does the honours). I do not now and have never in the past employed a secretary. That’s probably a disappointment to you as I imagine that you were looking forward to being introduced to some lithe Scandinavian blonde or sultry Latin brunette, or at worst a refugee chav from Big Brother, and I’m sorry to let you down. However I write my own letters as it would take three times as long to get my own special stream-of-consciousness writing style across in any sort of dictation. And as for filing, well I only have two files, one marked ‘maybe’ which contains 90% of the crap that gets sent in here, and the other one called ‘rubbish bin’ into which the truly desperately, astonishingly awful tripe gets ( eventually) consigned.
Actually I’ve just lied to you again. Sort of. When I was with Jenkins-Platt they ‘allocated’ me a secretary for a while. Poor woman was always bustling in looking to be dictated to. When I eventually succumbed I found that she was in the habit of putting the wrong letters in the wrong envelopes, so that a final demand for payment from a bookshop got sent to the local parish priest appealing for contributions to the church roof fund, and vice versa. If I’d had a bookie and a dominatrix for a mistress things could have been tricky. Eventually Rose was ‘reallocated’ elsewhere.
Of course, this also means that I get to open the post. How exciting! I think it’s a sad day when a man judges his own executive worth on the fact that a woman opens all his envelopes for him before, neatly prioritised, she sets them on his desk in a sweet little folder. I can wield a paper knife with the best of them. And as my reward for such self-sufficiency, here in this morning’s post we have, naturally, more crap. Let me give you an example:
Ideas Limited
‘Where characters come first!’
Kingo and the Kinglettes 26 x 30 minutes in production
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join A list licensees on this exciting new property for boys and girls aged 3 -10.
This all-new Taiwan-produced TV animation series features the hilarious adventures of Kingo, the would-be superstar soul singer sea-lion, and his trio of ‘backing lionesses’ Chiffon, Ronnette and Supreme, collectively known as ‘The Kinglettes’.
Featuring side-splitting and unforgettable characters, Kingo and the Kinglettes has equal appeal to boys and girls, and is a totally original property.
Ideas Ltd is looking for licensees who show a genuine commitment to this property. TV rights will be kept under wraps until Mip.
(Silly Colour illustration of Kingo etc )
Contact your Ideas Limited executive today
(list of execs and phone numbers) including
Dawn Adams ( food and promotions ).
See what I mean? Kingo and the sodding Kinglettes? Good grief! The sound of barrels being scraped metaphorically reaches my ears. Trouble is, this is not a one-off. There are some days in this business when I swear I’ll follow Phil Menwith out the window if I ever again have to look at another 26 x 30 minutes of inept cartoon show that the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kid is going to instantly reject. And with all respect to your occasional Waitrose and Harvey-Nicks targeted ‘Felicity and the Ribbon Folk’ type of license that crops up from time to time, it’s the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kids and their equivalents around the world who provide the money for this business to exist at all.
Even so Kingo and his pals gets filed under ‘maybe’ because you just never know in this business what the kids actually will like until, as they say, you know, by which time it might be too late to make a buck out of it.
Later, Licensing Review copy having been written and sent, I call Baz.
‘Who’s calling the Golden Shot?’ I hear on the other end. One of Baz’s little idiosyncrasies, this unique method of answering the phone.
‘ Morning, Baz, it’s Lance calling you back as requested.’
‘I didn’t ask yer t’ call back, just to let me know if yer need me down there and intend to keep me from honest work for t’ next fortnight.’ Baz hits me with his south Lancs/north Cheshire/ west of Liverpool/ east of Manchester accent peculiar to his region of birth. I talk the same way, only thirty years of living and working with southerners has taken the edge off it. That and trying to sound sophisticated when talking to Americans at trade shows.
‘I should be alright without you, mate, but I would pencil in the meeting I’ve got at the end of Feb. with Kiddyworlds. If you can do that one I’ll handle the rest on me tod for the time being’ I say to him.
‘Don’t start coming over all Northern with me, Crane, you old fraud. Yer not temped to move back up here, are yer?.
‘Tempted, mate, every sodding week, but the bastards I earn a living out of are mostly down here in the smoke, and I wouldn’t want to make it easy for them to forget me by getting out of the way.’ Lest they forget……..
‘Alright, I’ll see you for that. Keep yourself safe and sane’ Baz hangs up, keen to get on with his ennobling day of whatever the hell it is he does when he’s not working for me.
I get down to some work preparing a comparison-chart of promotion opportunities that one of my clients has asked for. Try to make two movies and a tired old TV show sound exciting.
Determined to be all corporate-responsible and marketing-dynamic, I wake at 7am Friday morning and shower and shave to the usual strains of Radio 4’s Today programme. If you listen to this you can kid yourself that you’re among the few who really know what the ‘movers and shakers’ are about. One of the elite for whom celeb-obsessed pop music radio or breakfast TV first thing in the morning is beyond the pale. They are beyond the pale, mind you, for all but the brain-dead of this island of ours, however numerous they happen to be. Mind you, if that Jim Naughtie mentions the bloody opera one more time………..
After a quick and nutritious traditional Northern English breakfast of Marmite on toast I jump in the car for the ten minute drive to the office. As usual, I’m the one who opens up in the morning, just as I’m the one who locks up at night (unless I leave early like yesterday, in which case it’s Meryl who does the honours). I do not now and have never in the past employed a secretary. That’s probably a disappointment to you as I imagine that you were looking forward to being introduced to some lithe Scandinavian blonde or sultry Latin brunette, or at worst a refugee chav from Big Brother, and I’m sorry to let you down. However I write my own letters as it would take three times as long to get my own special stream-of-consciousness writing style across in any sort of dictation. And as for filing, well I only have two files, one marked ‘maybe’ which contains 90% of the crap that gets sent in here, and the other one called ‘rubbish bin’ into which the truly desperately, astonishingly awful tripe gets ( eventually) consigned.
Actually I’ve just lied to you again. Sort of. When I was with Jenkins-Platt they ‘allocated’ me a secretary for a while. Poor woman was always bustling in looking to be dictated to. When I eventually succumbed I found that she was in the habit of putting the wrong letters in the wrong envelopes, so that a final demand for payment from a bookshop got sent to the local parish priest appealing for contributions to the church roof fund, and vice versa. If I’d had a bookie and a dominatrix for a mistress things could have been tricky. Eventually Rose was ‘reallocated’ elsewhere.
Of course, this also means that I get to open the post. How exciting! I think it’s a sad day when a man judges his own executive worth on the fact that a woman opens all his envelopes for him before, neatly prioritised, she sets them on his desk in a sweet little folder. I can wield a paper knife with the best of them. And as my reward for such self-sufficiency, here in this morning’s post we have, naturally, more crap. Let me give you an example:
Ideas Limited
‘Where characters come first!’
Kingo and the Kinglettes 26 x 30 minutes in production
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join A list licensees on this exciting new property for boys and girls aged 3 -10.
This all-new Taiwan-produced TV animation series features the hilarious adventures of Kingo, the would-be superstar soul singer sea-lion, and his trio of ‘backing lionesses’ Chiffon, Ronnette and Supreme, collectively known as ‘The Kinglettes’.
Featuring side-splitting and unforgettable characters, Kingo and the Kinglettes has equal appeal to boys and girls, and is a totally original property.
Ideas Ltd is looking for licensees who show a genuine commitment to this property. TV rights will be kept under wraps until Mip.
(Silly Colour illustration of Kingo etc )
Contact your Ideas Limited executive today
(list of execs and phone numbers) including
Dawn Adams ( food and promotions ).
See what I mean? Kingo and the sodding Kinglettes? Good grief! The sound of barrels being scraped metaphorically reaches my ears. Trouble is, this is not a one-off. There are some days in this business when I swear I’ll follow Phil Menwith out the window if I ever again have to look at another 26 x 30 minutes of inept cartoon show that the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kid is going to instantly reject. And with all respect to your occasional Waitrose and Harvey-Nicks targeted ‘Felicity and the Ribbon Folk’ type of license that crops up from time to time, it’s the average snotty-nosed eight-year-old Scouse kids and their equivalents around the world who provide the money for this business to exist at all.
Even so Kingo and his pals gets filed under ‘maybe’ because you just never know in this business what the kids actually will like until, as they say, you know, by which time it might be too late to make a buck out of it.
Later, Licensing Review copy having been written and sent, I call Baz.
‘Who’s calling the Golden Shot?’ I hear on the other end. One of Baz’s little idiosyncrasies, this unique method of answering the phone.
‘ Morning, Baz, it’s Lance calling you back as requested.’
‘I didn’t ask yer t’ call back, just to let me know if yer need me down there and intend to keep me from honest work for t’ next fortnight.’ Baz hits me with his south Lancs/north Cheshire/ west of Liverpool/ east of Manchester accent peculiar to his region of birth. I talk the same way, only thirty years of living and working with southerners has taken the edge off it. That and trying to sound sophisticated when talking to Americans at trade shows.
‘I should be alright without you, mate, but I would pencil in the meeting I’ve got at the end of Feb. with Kiddyworlds. If you can do that one I’ll handle the rest on me tod for the time being’ I say to him.
‘Don’t start coming over all Northern with me, Crane, you old fraud. Yer not temped to move back up here, are yer?.
‘Tempted, mate, every sodding week, but the bastards I earn a living out of are mostly down here in the smoke, and I wouldn’t want to make it easy for them to forget me by getting out of the way.’ Lest they forget……..
‘Alright, I’ll see you for that. Keep yourself safe and sane’ Baz hangs up, keen to get on with his ennobling day of whatever the hell it is he does when he’s not working for me.
I get down to some work preparing a comparison-chart of promotion opportunities that one of my clients has asked for. Try to make two movies and a tired old TV show sound exciting.
Friday 6 February 2009
Chapter 4
I get home to my house just as the six o’clock news is starting. The usual mix of Westminster village bullshit and celebrity fawning. I don’t know why I bother. The house is a big old place in Wapping High Street, which, in Victorian times, had been an oasis of upper-class wealth more or less in the centre of the drugs (mainly opium) trade, which flourished around the thriving London docks at the time, fuelled by easy imports from the far east. Nowadays the main type of villainy practiced hereabouts was charging forty quid for a plate of second-rate sushi to wideboy financial traders working in Canary Wharf and its surrounding, high-rise office blocks. Nice to know that the Orientals are still earning out of the area. Four bedrooms , two receptions on three floors, overlooks the Thames from all three. Pretty smart if I say so myself. Where does a humble licensing consultant get together the cash to buy such a pad, I hear you ask? And what the hell exactly is a licensing consultant? I’ll get to that in a minute, but as for the house, well, It’s a long story, but a couple of years after the promotion to marketing director at book publisher Claymore Press I submitted a song for the UK Eurovision Song Contest. Did I mention that I write tunes for a hobby? Oh, well, I’ll get to that later. Anyway, ‘Call me Anytime’ was chosen by Wogan and Co, ended up winning with lots more than ‘nul points’ and, as it turns out, was the last British entry to win at all. Whilst ‘Call me Anytime’ didn’t exactly leap me into the same league as Simons Cowell or Fuller, it did buy me a nice chunk of Docklands real estate.
What a wonderful story, eh? Good news all round and no bad feelings. Only problem with fairy-tale stories is there aren’t enough of them. After I left, Claymore Press went bust on the eve of the millennium after printing and failing to sell five million copies of some movie fantasy tie-in they’d overpaid to get the rights for. Shame that. Could have done with a good consultant.
Consultant, yes, I promised to explain. Well, the licensing business is a dark, dangerous and wicked business, oh yes indeed it is. I know a couple of blokes who’ve made small fortunes out of it. Problem is, they started out with large fortunes. Licensing cost them the rest. That’s because there’s many a right evil bastard out there ( and a fair few bitches, too) ready to take hundreds of thousands off you for a naff set of rights for a naff TV show that’s got a cat in hell’s chance of success. You need to have your wits about you if you’re not to get robbed blind. Either that or you need a good minder, and that’s where I come in. I ‘mind’ my clients so they don’t succumb to all this villainy. Try to help ‘em make a bit of money, keep out of trouble, avoid finding themselves in dark corridors with some of these Armani-suited blag merchants, who are all tooled-up with lawyers, auditors and assorted fancy muscle.
Mind you, that’s not to say that the clients are all saints. They can be extremely dodgy characters, clients can. Licensees, promotional agents, marketing agencies, most have a skeleton or two lurking in their samples cupboard. I once had a client in Oswaldtwistle, Jenkinsons, made socks, managed to buy a couple of licenses for minor stuff and asked me to help them move into the big time. Devout Catholics they were, I remember, crucifix on the wall behind the MD’s desk. If you had to wait to be put through to someone on the phone the system played hymns to keep you amused. Perfect job for me. Turned out, though, that they were knocking out counterfeit branded sports socks in the part of the factory you were never allowed into. I found this out after they’d paid me my first retainer, but before the first deals went through. Needless to say, Dave Jenkinson, the devout Catholic, wanted his money back, and he didn’t mind if blood was spilt to get it. I took a different view, having had to take flak from the likes of Phil Menwith and Graham Painter from Kiddyworlds for ‘introducing them to a crook’ ( as if they hadn’t met enough crooks over the years already ) once we all found out about the pirated socks. Could have ended nastily if it weren’t for Baz.
We consultants – there are a few of us, by the way – are sort of licensing private detectives. Licensed to license, so to speak. Guns aren’t usually necessary ( although I did once do some work for a firm based in Brooklyn, and that wasn’t pretty ). We haven’t had our Sam Spade or Jason King or Elvis Cole yet, which is why most of you won’t have heard of our humble profession and the joy we spread in the industry. But you will one day.
Anyway, here I am in the big house with the big car and ‘keeping my hand in’ consulting other manufacturers over their licensing needs. There’s no one at home when I get there, for reasons I’ll explain later. But there is a message on my answer phone. I recognise the Lancastrian voice right away:
‘Lance, its Baz. Give us a ring to say if you’ll need me down in that shit’ole they call London over the next couple of weeks. Got a nice job up here in god’s own country but I can’t start it till I know you’re set. See how I’m always looking after you?’
The message is from Barry ‘Baz’ Morrison. Who the fuck’s Baz Morrison? Well, if you don’t know, you’ve been reading the wrong papers all your life. Thirty four England caps, average of fifteen tries a season in a twelve-year rugby career that took him from Lancashire to Sydney and back again before he hung up his boots in 1998. Hardest, fastest loose forward ever to pick up a rugby ball. I mentioned above that I ‘mind’ my clients. Well, as in the case of Dave (Catholic) Jenkinson, the clients can turn newty from time to time. So, if things get that extra bit more hairy than usual , Baz sort of ‘minds’ me. I asked him to go and have a quiet word with the good Mr Jenkinson, who saw the error of his ways after contemplating the alternative: tackling Baz at full speed, something the entire Australian national pack had had trouble managing.
Anyway I decide I’ll call Baz in the morning. Right after I’ve finished my 500 words. Nothing like putting off to tomorrow what you can’t possibly do today.
I get home to my house just as the six o’clock news is starting. The usual mix of Westminster village bullshit and celebrity fawning. I don’t know why I bother. The house is a big old place in Wapping High Street, which, in Victorian times, had been an oasis of upper-class wealth more or less in the centre of the drugs (mainly opium) trade, which flourished around the thriving London docks at the time, fuelled by easy imports from the far east. Nowadays the main type of villainy practiced hereabouts was charging forty quid for a plate of second-rate sushi to wideboy financial traders working in Canary Wharf and its surrounding, high-rise office blocks. Nice to know that the Orientals are still earning out of the area. Four bedrooms , two receptions on three floors, overlooks the Thames from all three. Pretty smart if I say so myself. Where does a humble licensing consultant get together the cash to buy such a pad, I hear you ask? And what the hell exactly is a licensing consultant? I’ll get to that in a minute, but as for the house, well, It’s a long story, but a couple of years after the promotion to marketing director at book publisher Claymore Press I submitted a song for the UK Eurovision Song Contest. Did I mention that I write tunes for a hobby? Oh, well, I’ll get to that later. Anyway, ‘Call me Anytime’ was chosen by Wogan and Co, ended up winning with lots more than ‘nul points’ and, as it turns out, was the last British entry to win at all. Whilst ‘Call me Anytime’ didn’t exactly leap me into the same league as Simons Cowell or Fuller, it did buy me a nice chunk of Docklands real estate.
What a wonderful story, eh? Good news all round and no bad feelings. Only problem with fairy-tale stories is there aren’t enough of them. After I left, Claymore Press went bust on the eve of the millennium after printing and failing to sell five million copies of some movie fantasy tie-in they’d overpaid to get the rights for. Shame that. Could have done with a good consultant.
Consultant, yes, I promised to explain. Well, the licensing business is a dark, dangerous and wicked business, oh yes indeed it is. I know a couple of blokes who’ve made small fortunes out of it. Problem is, they started out with large fortunes. Licensing cost them the rest. That’s because there’s many a right evil bastard out there ( and a fair few bitches, too) ready to take hundreds of thousands off you for a naff set of rights for a naff TV show that’s got a cat in hell’s chance of success. You need to have your wits about you if you’re not to get robbed blind. Either that or you need a good minder, and that’s where I come in. I ‘mind’ my clients so they don’t succumb to all this villainy. Try to help ‘em make a bit of money, keep out of trouble, avoid finding themselves in dark corridors with some of these Armani-suited blag merchants, who are all tooled-up with lawyers, auditors and assorted fancy muscle.
Mind you, that’s not to say that the clients are all saints. They can be extremely dodgy characters, clients can. Licensees, promotional agents, marketing agencies, most have a skeleton or two lurking in their samples cupboard. I once had a client in Oswaldtwistle, Jenkinsons, made socks, managed to buy a couple of licenses for minor stuff and asked me to help them move into the big time. Devout Catholics they were, I remember, crucifix on the wall behind the MD’s desk. If you had to wait to be put through to someone on the phone the system played hymns to keep you amused. Perfect job for me. Turned out, though, that they were knocking out counterfeit branded sports socks in the part of the factory you were never allowed into. I found this out after they’d paid me my first retainer, but before the first deals went through. Needless to say, Dave Jenkinson, the devout Catholic, wanted his money back, and he didn’t mind if blood was spilt to get it. I took a different view, having had to take flak from the likes of Phil Menwith and Graham Painter from Kiddyworlds for ‘introducing them to a crook’ ( as if they hadn’t met enough crooks over the years already ) once we all found out about the pirated socks. Could have ended nastily if it weren’t for Baz.
We consultants – there are a few of us, by the way – are sort of licensing private detectives. Licensed to license, so to speak. Guns aren’t usually necessary ( although I did once do some work for a firm based in Brooklyn, and that wasn’t pretty ). We haven’t had our Sam Spade or Jason King or Elvis Cole yet, which is why most of you won’t have heard of our humble profession and the joy we spread in the industry. But you will one day.
Anyway, here I am in the big house with the big car and ‘keeping my hand in’ consulting other manufacturers over their licensing needs. There’s no one at home when I get there, for reasons I’ll explain later. But there is a message on my answer phone. I recognise the Lancastrian voice right away:
‘Lance, its Baz. Give us a ring to say if you’ll need me down in that shit’ole they call London over the next couple of weeks. Got a nice job up here in god’s own country but I can’t start it till I know you’re set. See how I’m always looking after you?’
The message is from Barry ‘Baz’ Morrison. Who the fuck’s Baz Morrison? Well, if you don’t know, you’ve been reading the wrong papers all your life. Thirty four England caps, average of fifteen tries a season in a twelve-year rugby career that took him from Lancashire to Sydney and back again before he hung up his boots in 1998. Hardest, fastest loose forward ever to pick up a rugby ball. I mentioned above that I ‘mind’ my clients. Well, as in the case of Dave (Catholic) Jenkinson, the clients can turn newty from time to time. So, if things get that extra bit more hairy than usual , Baz sort of ‘minds’ me. I asked him to go and have a quiet word with the good Mr Jenkinson, who saw the error of his ways after contemplating the alternative: tackling Baz at full speed, something the entire Australian national pack had had trouble managing.
Anyway I decide I’ll call Baz in the morning. Right after I’ve finished my 500 words. Nothing like putting off to tomorrow what you can’t possibly do today.
Friday 12 December 2008
Chapter 3
Monday 3rd February, just after four a.m. Tom Grass hauled the wheel of his 32 tonne Volvo truck over to the left as he headed into Times Square in Central Manhattan. Turning left on 42nd Street, the big truck glided to a halt outside the loading bay for the Manhattan Central branch of the world’s biggest toy retailer, Toys ‘R’ Us. Almost an hour early for his delivery slot, Tom relaxed, free to head for breakfast at Mac’s 24 hour diner before TRU’s goods-inward team opened up for business, then an hour supervising the delivery before he could set off back for the depot.
The Volvo’s bulk on this dark but clear morning is given over entirely to one product: action figures from a range made by Kingplay Toys, the world’s biggest toy company. The figures were all manufactured in Taiwan and mainland China, sourced through Kingplay’s Hong Kong buying office. With a range of retail prices from $5.99 for the smaller figures through to $59.99 for an all-singing all-dancing feature playset, the load in the Volvo represented more than a million dollar’s worth of sales for TRU Times Square. A million dollars is a lot of money, but it would be spent, in this one store, before the trade for the day of Monday 3rd February was over. Such was the heat in this toy line. Before Christmas parents had fought over the few scraps of stock that trickled their way into stores. The usual conspiracy theories about deliberately under-supplying the market made the consumer press, junior congressmen made speeches denouncing the lack of planning at Kingplay, all of the USA’s major toy retailers and anyone else they could blame just to get the irate mothers’ to stop bombarding their constituency offices with tearful complaints.
And the cause of all this anguished commerce? A new Japanese-originated animated TV series which hit US television for the fall season 2006. Made by the classic Osaka-based outfit Gamba Animation Company, the show was a TV and merchandising hit in its home country in 2005. Contrary to the popularly held belief, however, all that glisters with gold in Japan does not translate into greenbacks/Euros/Pounds in the rest of the world, so it was with no particular fanfare that the show debuted on Cartoon Network on 27th August. Kingplay bought the toy rights from Gamba’s international agent, Kiddyworlds, a deal that was sealed at the Brand License Europe show in London in October 2005. There were the usual trade press photos of Sally Bateman, CEO of Kingplay, shaking hands with Junichiro Kunde, the veteran president of Gamba on a rare trip out of Osaka, a smiling Graham Painter from Kiddyworlds’ London office just squeezing himself into the picture. Then it was all over bar the shouting about product development, as it were, and the industry moved on to cover other things.
Nonetheless the show quickly built a US audience, grey-market copies of the Japanese video game wormed they way inevitably into American hobby stores, as did some of the original manga comic books. By the time October arrived these same stores were buying-in Japanese language trading cards to sell to kids with money to buy anything, anything at all as long as it featured their new heroes, Kingplay realised they’d got a breakthrough property on their hands and tried to rack-up late production and fly-in stock to cope with demand. Inevitably, they couldn’t do it, with only eight weeks to Christmas and most Chinese factories committed to turning out orders on other lines.
And so we find February 2007 has come around with every bet being that the new show will be the hot property of the year. Kiddyworlds licensing team has garnered a roster of over 40 US licensees, including most of the big names familiar to all in the business. The TV show was selling around the world, and Kiddyworlds offices in London, Milan and Munich were gearing up for a bumper year making sure no-one in Europe underestimated demand when the show hit their territories, as it inevitably would in Autumn 2007.
The name of Gamba’s hit new kids show was Cobra Crew. Nothing particularly special about the animation, but it featured a good back-story ( a classic trait of Japanese animation when compared to western works ), four main characters on a mission, each with his/her own alien sidekick. Some tasty bad guys to fight, and, here’s the twist, the alien sidekicks, in a ‘parallel universe’ were the heroes and the human masters the alien sidekicks! Neat, eh? So every episode featured the plots and battles against evil in two worlds connected only by the hero/sidekick/hero match-ups. All of this was good for the licensing business, of course, as no child had a full set of the action figures until all the combinations of hero/alien/sidekick/alien/hero were acquired, not to mention the multifarious baddies, vehicles, role-play kits and all the rest.
And so Toys R Us Times Square has a million dollars worth of sales to look forward to that day. Sadly for their stockholders and thousands of parents just now rising to get into Manhattan that day to snap up some of this consignment, it didn’t happen.
As Tom Grass jumped down from his cab that cold February morning, anticipating eggs-over-easy and Canadian bacon, he was struck from behind with a baseball bat, bundled into a dark corner of the despatch area, tied up, gagged and left for the early shift to find. Before Tom awoke from the blow, his attackers, three men in black, bulky clothing leapt into the cab, fired up the engine and serenely pulled away from the back of the store on their way to persons and places unknown, there to profit from easy black-market sales of the hot Cobra Crew goodies.
If folks are stealing it, you know it’s hot.
The Volvo’s bulk on this dark but clear morning is given over entirely to one product: action figures from a range made by Kingplay Toys, the world’s biggest toy company. The figures were all manufactured in Taiwan and mainland China, sourced through Kingplay’s Hong Kong buying office. With a range of retail prices from $5.99 for the smaller figures through to $59.99 for an all-singing all-dancing feature playset, the load in the Volvo represented more than a million dollar’s worth of sales for TRU Times Square. A million dollars is a lot of money, but it would be spent, in this one store, before the trade for the day of Monday 3rd February was over. Such was the heat in this toy line. Before Christmas parents had fought over the few scraps of stock that trickled their way into stores. The usual conspiracy theories about deliberately under-supplying the market made the consumer press, junior congressmen made speeches denouncing the lack of planning at Kingplay, all of the USA’s major toy retailers and anyone else they could blame just to get the irate mothers’ to stop bombarding their constituency offices with tearful complaints.
And the cause of all this anguished commerce? A new Japanese-originated animated TV series which hit US television for the fall season 2006. Made by the classic Osaka-based outfit Gamba Animation Company, the show was a TV and merchandising hit in its home country in 2005. Contrary to the popularly held belief, however, all that glisters with gold in Japan does not translate into greenbacks/Euros/Pounds in the rest of the world, so it was with no particular fanfare that the show debuted on Cartoon Network on 27th August. Kingplay bought the toy rights from Gamba’s international agent, Kiddyworlds, a deal that was sealed at the Brand License Europe show in London in October 2005. There were the usual trade press photos of Sally Bateman, CEO of Kingplay, shaking hands with Junichiro Kunde, the veteran president of Gamba on a rare trip out of Osaka, a smiling Graham Painter from Kiddyworlds’ London office just squeezing himself into the picture. Then it was all over bar the shouting about product development, as it were, and the industry moved on to cover other things.
Nonetheless the show quickly built a US audience, grey-market copies of the Japanese video game wormed they way inevitably into American hobby stores, as did some of the original manga comic books. By the time October arrived these same stores were buying-in Japanese language trading cards to sell to kids with money to buy anything, anything at all as long as it featured their new heroes, Kingplay realised they’d got a breakthrough property on their hands and tried to rack-up late production and fly-in stock to cope with demand. Inevitably, they couldn’t do it, with only eight weeks to Christmas and most Chinese factories committed to turning out orders on other lines.
And so we find February 2007 has come around with every bet being that the new show will be the hot property of the year. Kiddyworlds licensing team has garnered a roster of over 40 US licensees, including most of the big names familiar to all in the business. The TV show was selling around the world, and Kiddyworlds offices in London, Milan and Munich were gearing up for a bumper year making sure no-one in Europe underestimated demand when the show hit their territories, as it inevitably would in Autumn 2007.
The name of Gamba’s hit new kids show was Cobra Crew. Nothing particularly special about the animation, but it featured a good back-story ( a classic trait of Japanese animation when compared to western works ), four main characters on a mission, each with his/her own alien sidekick. Some tasty bad guys to fight, and, here’s the twist, the alien sidekicks, in a ‘parallel universe’ were the heroes and the human masters the alien sidekicks! Neat, eh? So every episode featured the plots and battles against evil in two worlds connected only by the hero/sidekick/hero match-ups. All of this was good for the licensing business, of course, as no child had a full set of the action figures until all the combinations of hero/alien/sidekick/alien/hero were acquired, not to mention the multifarious baddies, vehicles, role-play kits and all the rest.
And so Toys R Us Times Square has a million dollars worth of sales to look forward to that day. Sadly for their stockholders and thousands of parents just now rising to get into Manhattan that day to snap up some of this consignment, it didn’t happen.
As Tom Grass jumped down from his cab that cold February morning, anticipating eggs-over-easy and Canadian bacon, he was struck from behind with a baseball bat, bundled into a dark corner of the despatch area, tied up, gagged and left for the early shift to find. Before Tom awoke from the blow, his attackers, three men in black, bulky clothing leapt into the cab, fired up the engine and serenely pulled away from the back of the store on their way to persons and places unknown, there to profit from easy black-market sales of the hot Cobra Crew goodies.
If folks are stealing it, you know it’s hot.
Monday 3 November 2008
Chapter 2
Playabout is a big outfit based in an old high-rise office block in Chiswick. Big for a licensing agency, that is. Forty five staff on two floors, full team of sales, marketing, retail liaison, artwork approvals, finance, the lot. Been in the game even longer than I have, opened up in Soho in the early seventies before anybody in the UK had even heard of licensing. Forty five staff and only six blokes. The same six blokes who’ve been in the firm since 1985. The same six blokes including the three who started it all off, Ted and Brian Harris, the terrible twins, the salesmen, the pioneers/buccaneers, the take-the-money-and-runners, and Peter Jaye, their straight-shooting, laced up accountant.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of women work in the licensing business, from straight-out-of-college young wonders to mature matrons who like to curl up and listen to Barry Manilow with the best of them. There was just something about the Harris’s very masculine ego that made them want to surround themselves with females whom they could either lord it over, lust after or be mothered by depending on how the mood struck them. The women have run that business for years, truth be told, but Ted’s not going to give up until he’s got himself into the Hall of Fame and Brian won’t give up until he’s beaten Ted to it. Peter just does the numbers like he always has.
Actually I lied about the six blokes. There used to be seven. Ted’s protégé, brought in to the firm in 1986 from a music marketing outfit. Hot-shot, did well for a few years working on publishing, then food, then finally headed the toys division. Regular visits to China to see all the big toy firms before he was caught in a Hong Kong hotel by a surprise visit by Brian Harris. In the room with the protégé was a hot Chinese bird and an even hotter business plan for a new licensing agency to be headed by the protégé. Tut, tut. Not very sporting. Protégé fired on the spot, comes back to the UK and starts his own agency anyway. The protégé? Phil Menwith. The agency? Coolthings. The rest? History.
So it’s not really surprising that when the trade press got the story about Phil’s parachute-free sky-diving stunt the first people they called for obituary stuff were the brothers Harris. Not surprising, but stupid. Maybe it’s another reason why the Harris’s employed so many women, but they certainly didn’t intend to be ‘betrayed’ again. No love lost. Ted wouldn’t say anything to the press, Brian managed to get the words ‘we haven’t had much contact with Phil since he left the firm in 1995’ out through gritted teeth before putting the phone down.
So after the Harris’s it was me. Why me? I did the first deal that meant anything to Phil back in his Playabout days. I was running the licensing for a children’s book business and signed the small-format paperback rights from Phil for Andy’s Adventures, a TV series running on BBC 1 that was doing quite nicely at the time but then hit it big when a piece on News at Ten claimed that children learned to read twice faster than average when introduced to the Andy’s Adventures books. Over the next three years a ten thousand pound guarantee produced two million quid in royalties for Playabout, a promotion to marketing director for me and a twenty grand bonus for Phil. Everybody in the business for more than five minutes knew about this deal as Phil never tired – after he’d left Playabout – of complaining about the pile he’d made for the twins and how he’d never been suitably compensated for it. You usually got the story about midnight at the Licensing Awards or the LIMA Gala or the Spring Fling after Phil had drunk his customary eight bottles of red wine and felt compared to share this tragedy with you.
So I pick up the phone and it’s Dave Sutton from Licensing Review.
‘Lance, I wanted a few words from you about Phil Menwith. We’re doing an obit and we’re talking to all the folks who knew him for a fair while. Can I ask you a few questions or do you want to do me five hundred words and e-mail it over?’
I decide I don’t want to talk about Phil so I promise the five hundred words. By tomorrow. Morning. I hang up the phone. Phil’s been dead for three days, it’s five o’clock on Thursday afternoon and I’ve had enough. Then, Meryl, my cleaning lady, arrives with her cat on a lead as usual and her hair hidden under a pink wig, wearing a get-up like the girls on the ‘Clinique’ counter at Harrods only she’s twice as lovely as any of them. Not really a cleaning lady by profession since she won three million on the lottery two years ago. She used to do the entire floor of this office building but now she just does mine. Keeping her hand in, as she puts it, should disaster strike. I saved her cat once, from two Doberman pinchers who were part of some hare-brained licensing presentation some berk was giving me about the Powerdogs or some such idiocy. Died the death, anyway, unlike Meryl’s cat. I think that’s really why Meryl still cleans my office. I hum a bit of ‘My Old Black Cat’ by Ian Anderson, apologise to Meryl that I’ve got to go, and skip out before she starts a conversation.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of women work in the licensing business, from straight-out-of-college young wonders to mature matrons who like to curl up and listen to Barry Manilow with the best of them. There was just something about the Harris’s very masculine ego that made them want to surround themselves with females whom they could either lord it over, lust after or be mothered by depending on how the mood struck them. The women have run that business for years, truth be told, but Ted’s not going to give up until he’s got himself into the Hall of Fame and Brian won’t give up until he’s beaten Ted to it. Peter just does the numbers like he always has.
Actually I lied about the six blokes. There used to be seven. Ted’s protégé, brought in to the firm in 1986 from a music marketing outfit. Hot-shot, did well for a few years working on publishing, then food, then finally headed the toys division. Regular visits to China to see all the big toy firms before he was caught in a Hong Kong hotel by a surprise visit by Brian Harris. In the room with the protégé was a hot Chinese bird and an even hotter business plan for a new licensing agency to be headed by the protégé. Tut, tut. Not very sporting. Protégé fired on the spot, comes back to the UK and starts his own agency anyway. The protégé? Phil Menwith. The agency? Coolthings. The rest? History.
So it’s not really surprising that when the trade press got the story about Phil’s parachute-free sky-diving stunt the first people they called for obituary stuff were the brothers Harris. Not surprising, but stupid. Maybe it’s another reason why the Harris’s employed so many women, but they certainly didn’t intend to be ‘betrayed’ again. No love lost. Ted wouldn’t say anything to the press, Brian managed to get the words ‘we haven’t had much contact with Phil since he left the firm in 1995’ out through gritted teeth before putting the phone down.
So after the Harris’s it was me. Why me? I did the first deal that meant anything to Phil back in his Playabout days. I was running the licensing for a children’s book business and signed the small-format paperback rights from Phil for Andy’s Adventures, a TV series running on BBC 1 that was doing quite nicely at the time but then hit it big when a piece on News at Ten claimed that children learned to read twice faster than average when introduced to the Andy’s Adventures books. Over the next three years a ten thousand pound guarantee produced two million quid in royalties for Playabout, a promotion to marketing director for me and a twenty grand bonus for Phil. Everybody in the business for more than five minutes knew about this deal as Phil never tired – after he’d left Playabout – of complaining about the pile he’d made for the twins and how he’d never been suitably compensated for it. You usually got the story about midnight at the Licensing Awards or the LIMA Gala or the Spring Fling after Phil had drunk his customary eight bottles of red wine and felt compared to share this tragedy with you.
So I pick up the phone and it’s Dave Sutton from Licensing Review.
‘Lance, I wanted a few words from you about Phil Menwith. We’re doing an obit and we’re talking to all the folks who knew him for a fair while. Can I ask you a few questions or do you want to do me five hundred words and e-mail it over?’
I decide I don’t want to talk about Phil so I promise the five hundred words. By tomorrow. Morning. I hang up the phone. Phil’s been dead for three days, it’s five o’clock on Thursday afternoon and I’ve had enough. Then, Meryl, my cleaning lady, arrives with her cat on a lead as usual and her hair hidden under a pink wig, wearing a get-up like the girls on the ‘Clinique’ counter at Harrods only she’s twice as lovely as any of them. Not really a cleaning lady by profession since she won three million on the lottery two years ago. She used to do the entire floor of this office building but now she just does mine. Keeping her hand in, as she puts it, should disaster strike. I saved her cat once, from two Doberman pinchers who were part of some hare-brained licensing presentation some berk was giving me about the Powerdogs or some such idiocy. Died the death, anyway, unlike Meryl’s cat. I think that’s really why Meryl still cleans my office. I hum a bit of ‘My Old Black Cat’ by Ian Anderson, apologise to Meryl that I’ve got to go, and skip out before she starts a conversation.
Chapter 1
The problem with being in the licensing business as long as I have is that you start to believe that you’ve seen and heard everything. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon on a wet February morning and I’m staring at the window trying to put off making a call to Phil Menwith at the Coolthings agency. Why I am trying to put off making this call? Because I think I know what Phil’s going to say, and I don’t really want to hear it. See? I’m even arrogant enough to think I know what he’s going to say to me before I’ve picked up the phone. So I do it anyway.
‘Coolthings. To whom may I direct your call?’
‘Phil Menwith, please’
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Tell him it’s the Archbishop of Canterbury about the photographs Phil borrowed’
I wish. The truth is it went like this.
‘Lance, how’s it going, mate?’
‘The usual, Phil, keeping the pieces stuck together as best we can.’
‘Got a proposal for me yet on the Moonsters? Any of your mob interested? I’ve got offers coming out of my ears and it’s toy fair next week and I expect to be signed up in all sorts of categories by the time I get to New York.’
I can picture Phil Menwith in his fourteenth floor office off Tottenham Court Road, feet up on his ten-grand Heal’s black-lacquer desk. Made a lot of money ten years ago on the Purple Avengers and never got round to spending it. At least not on drinks bought for me.
‘Phil, all my clients are looking at the Moonsters but we probably need a bit more info on the TV before we can be definite. I’ll talk to you in New York about that. I was actually calling on something else.’
‘Can’t wait forever, Lance, I’ve got ‘em queuing up here. 104 eps in production and you’re still fannying around on it. Confectionery’ll be gone soon, all the toys as well……..’
I interrupt. Time to get it over with.
‘In New York, Phil, OK? I promise. Before the Kidscreen bash. Now, we need to talk about the Blastboys audit. ‘
‘What’s to talk, just send us the money. Bang-to-rights your guys at Entwhistles, no doubt. Shouldn’t even talk to you, lawyers stuff by now, this.’
‘That’s not how we see it, Phil. Your auditor’s got his numbers completely arse over tit, not to mention asking for penalties that aren’t even in the contract. We reckon there’s about three grand owing, hardly enough to cover the audit costs. I’m wondering if we can make a quiet agreement and put it behind us.’
‘Your guys not going to pay up?’
‘No, Phil, they are not. This has always looked like a stitch-up and they’re not buying. I might be able to get you five grand if we can square it before New York’.
‘Just a minute, Lance, will you mate? Need something from the other room.’
So I hang on the phone and try staring at the window again hoping the view might change to something more spectacular than the bad side of the Isle of Dogs in the rain. Two hundred quid a square foot and you get to look at the back of an old crane. Actually you can see a bit of Millwall Dock if you lean way over to the left. I get so into it I don’t notice nearly ten minutes go by. Then the phone again, a woman’s voice.
‘Hello? Who’s there?’
‘it’s Lance Crane from the Everything Company, I was talking to Phil. Is he coming back?’.
‘I’m afraid not. He’s just jumped out of the window.’
‘Coolthings. To whom may I direct your call?’
‘Phil Menwith, please’
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Tell him it’s the Archbishop of Canterbury about the photographs Phil borrowed’
I wish. The truth is it went like this.
‘Lance, how’s it going, mate?’
‘The usual, Phil, keeping the pieces stuck together as best we can.’
‘Got a proposal for me yet on the Moonsters? Any of your mob interested? I’ve got offers coming out of my ears and it’s toy fair next week and I expect to be signed up in all sorts of categories by the time I get to New York.’
I can picture Phil Menwith in his fourteenth floor office off Tottenham Court Road, feet up on his ten-grand Heal’s black-lacquer desk. Made a lot of money ten years ago on the Purple Avengers and never got round to spending it. At least not on drinks bought for me.
‘Phil, all my clients are looking at the Moonsters but we probably need a bit more info on the TV before we can be definite. I’ll talk to you in New York about that. I was actually calling on something else.’
‘Can’t wait forever, Lance, I’ve got ‘em queuing up here. 104 eps in production and you’re still fannying around on it. Confectionery’ll be gone soon, all the toys as well……..’
I interrupt. Time to get it over with.
‘In New York, Phil, OK? I promise. Before the Kidscreen bash. Now, we need to talk about the Blastboys audit. ‘
‘What’s to talk, just send us the money. Bang-to-rights your guys at Entwhistles, no doubt. Shouldn’t even talk to you, lawyers stuff by now, this.’
‘That’s not how we see it, Phil. Your auditor’s got his numbers completely arse over tit, not to mention asking for penalties that aren’t even in the contract. We reckon there’s about three grand owing, hardly enough to cover the audit costs. I’m wondering if we can make a quiet agreement and put it behind us.’
‘Your guys not going to pay up?’
‘No, Phil, they are not. This has always looked like a stitch-up and they’re not buying. I might be able to get you five grand if we can square it before New York’.
‘Just a minute, Lance, will you mate? Need something from the other room.’
So I hang on the phone and try staring at the window again hoping the view might change to something more spectacular than the bad side of the Isle of Dogs in the rain. Two hundred quid a square foot and you get to look at the back of an old crane. Actually you can see a bit of Millwall Dock if you lean way over to the left. I get so into it I don’t notice nearly ten minutes go by. Then the phone again, a woman’s voice.
‘Hello? Who’s there?’
‘it’s Lance Crane from the Everything Company, I was talking to Phil. Is he coming back?’.
‘I’m afraid not. He’s just jumped out of the window.’
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