Sustainability In Licensing Conference 2020
Breaking new ground in the licensing industry, the Sustainability in Licensing Conference 2020, to be staged at The British Library on Thursday 11 June 2020, is aimed at everyone in the licensing arena, from retailers to licensors, licensees to trade suppliers.
To future proof your business and the industry we have to develop sustainable strategies that foster company longevity. This requires a business approach that creates long-term value, taking into consideration how a given organisation operates in the ecological, social and economic environment.
Being launched by Max Publishing (owners of Licensing Source Book, Licensing.Source.net, The Licensing Awards and the B&LLAs) and Helena Mansell-Stopher, experienced licensing executive and founder of the Products of Change group, the Sustainability in Licensing Conference (SILC 2020) will inspire and inform as to how our dynamic sector can continue to innovate and grow commercially while not costing the planet.
“Sustainability is so much more than a buzzword, it is and will continue to be, a vital driver of business decisions,” states Helena, conference director and curator. “To drive sustainable growth within the licensing industry over the next few decades will require a radical approach to business practices be it through embracing new materials and production techniques, re-engineering packaging or adopting new marketing methods, all without sacrificing financial growth. Our aim with SILC 2020 is to help both future-proof our industry and our world.”
The jam-packed agenda will see leading lights and visionaries from outside and within the industry as well as retail experts, all sharing their inspiring achievements and demonstrating the gains, both environmentally and financially, that can be made.
“The licensing industry is huge and multi-farious – generating US$272 billion at retail at the last count. The brands and properties that feature on all manner of consumer goods across the whole retail spectrum bring so much pleasure to millions of people,” says Helena. “I have every confidence that the learnings shared at the Sustainability in Licensing Conference will see some significant gains being made on the environmental front too. We’re all on this journey together, but ensuring we establish a more sustainable footing is no distant wish, it’s very much a necessity.”
The day’s conference will provide a framework and understanding to start your sustainable journey. Sustainability is not only about the materials the we use but the waste from the manufacturing process, the transportation of goods, the wellbeing of staff and the coming together of an industry to drive systemic change – and where else could be more fitting than the British Library in Central London to start our journey.
CONFERENCE AGENDA
The agenda of the Sustainability in Licensing Conference (SiLC) is being curated to both inform and inspire those from the licensing community,
whether from a retailing, licensee, licensor or trade supplier perspective.
The keynote speeches, insightful talks and panel discussions will cover what we in the industry can do to further improve our activities on
the sustainable front. Leading names across the fashion, toy, publishing and other sectors, from both within and outside the industry will share their insights. New innovative technologies will be explained that go to prove that change is possible (and profitable), financial institutions will present how sustainable finance is available to you to implement sustainable change while pointers on how to ‘design out waste’ on the product development front as well as how to market our brands to future generations who are ever more environmentally-conscious, will also be covered.
The conference – starting at 9am and ending at 5pm – will deliver a packed agenda that will serve to provide a clear pathway on the industry’s sustainable journey, which in turn will drive systemic change in our sector.
The conference agenda will be released from mid-February.
THE SPEAKERS
The speaker line-up for the Sustainability in Licensing Conference 2020 will be incredibly strong, including true leaders from the retail world, pioneering licensees, trailblazing manufacturers and inspiring opinion formers from both within and outside the industry, each playing a part in the journey to become more sustainable.
The speakers will each share experiences, facts and ideas which will collectively serve to future proof your business and the industry of which we are all a part, enabling sustainable strategies to be developed that take into consideration how a given organisation can operate commercially as well as ecologically.
The line-up of speakers will be announced from mid-February.
SECURE YOUR DELEGATE PLACE(S), BOOK NOW
You can reserve and pay for tickets to SILC 2020 using the secure form below. You will receive
immediate email confirmation, which also includes a full VAT receipt.
You can book and pay for your delegate place(s) for SILC 2020 by using the secure online form below right.
The cost of an individual delegate place for the Sustainability in Licensing Conference 2020 is £245 + VAT.
Your ticket(s) covers full, all-day access to the conference including all speakers and talks, refreshments and lunch. There is a cloakroom on-site.
Registration opens at 9.00am (with coffee and pastries available). The conference will start at 9.30am prompt and finish at 5pm.
The Sustainability in Licensing Conference 2020, will be held at The British Library – The Knowledge Centre, 96 Euston Rd, London, NW1 2DB.
The agenda and line-up of speakers will be announced from mid-February.
Once booked and paid you will receive immediate confirmation, which will also include a full VAT receipt. Our event organising company (Keystone Communications) will help with any dietary or accessibility requirements you may have.
A digital ticket will be sent to you in due course.
If you would prefer to book a delegate place by phone, or have any queries about the day, please call Clare Hollick on 01733 294524 or email clare@keystonecomms.co.uk – or contact the SILC 2020 organising team by clicking here
EVENT SPONSORS
The Sustainability in Licensing Conference 2020 has been received widespread support from the industry with leading businesses and brands keen to pledge their commitment, sharing in the belief that together real progress can be made in the sector on this vital issue.
HEADLINE SUPPORTER
PRODUCTS OF CHANGE
The Products of Change Group was founded in July 2019 with a handful of industry professionals wanting to drive sustainable change within the Licensing Industry. Within six months the group has grown to sixty individuals from different areas of the industry such as retail, licensees, licensors through to agents. Spanning fashion, toys, publishing and FMCG.
Our ethos is to ‘learn from each-other’ and Educate to Inform Change across the wider industry and transfer our knowledge across sectors.
With Ten years to transform society and limit our impact on climate change its a hard task, but with an extremely dynamic industry and a willingness to change, I do feel that together we can make a difference.
OFFICIAL SUPPORTERS
More consumers than ever before are making an effort to buy greener, healthier, ethically sourced and more environmentally sustainable products, which is great.
Sustainability is a huge priority for me personally, as well as BBC Studios as a business, and I believe the licensing industry must work together to identify more ways to make a positive impact. We as an industry need to ensure we adopt a deliberate and ambitious approach toward forging a sustainable future for our consumers by coming together to help bring more eco-friendly products to market. Climate change isn’t going away and SILC is launching at a crucial time. I think the conference will be a great platform for industry members to learn more, share best practice and collaborate on solutions that can help enable companies work towards producing more sustainable products.
https://www.bbcstudios.com
MDR Brand Management is the first brand management business to be launched by a leading law firm in the UK, and the fourth non-legal business within The Mishcon De Reya Group, sitting alongside MDR Cyber, MDR Discover and Mayfair Private.
It was created in 2018 to address the growing complexity that brand owners face in the global marketplace, and to deliver a unique brand of brand management. It is boutique and recognises that there has never been more overlap between creative, commercial, regulatory, digital and the law.
MDR Brand Management highly supports projects with a truly sustainable vision. Working closely with environmentally friendly brand owners and properties, MDR aims to create ethical licensed products and develop brand extension programmes, with a commitment to the environment, something that is becoming more important by the day.
Sustainability is at the forefront of several of MDR’s ventures, including the recently launched canned water brand, PURENorway Water, which is responsibly produced and packaged in recyclable aluminium cans. MDR has also been appointed to represent a classic, unique, and eco-friendly family of characters which will soon be relaunched in the UK. Given the challenges our planet is facing today, it is the perfect time to revive a positive message about how we can make a difference through simple actions.
For more information about MDR Brand Management, please click here:
https://mdrbrand.com
We are facing a planetary emergency. Our future depends on the natural world, but we are not combating our own destructive impact on the planet. Understanding life on Earth is the greatest scientific challenge of our age.
We cannot hope to develop solutions without research that unlocks the underlying biology and applied science. Alongside the science, all of us need hope: hope that there is a future where both people and the planet thrive. Building and spreading this hope through evidence and action will be the foundation of the Museum’s strategy in the coming decade. In today's challenging times, we will create advocates for the planet: individuals who feel sufficiently informed, confident and motivated to make wise decisions, to get involved, and to use their influence and actions to make a positive difference to the global future. To achieve this, we will harness our collection, our research and our reach. Alongside our ambitious outward reaching targets, we are also looking inwards, challenging ourselves to create a more resilient and sustainable organisation, one that strives towards financial and environmental sustainability. This vision is mirrored in our approach to the Museum’s licensing programme, creating meaningful products in a responsible way that encourage a shared respect for the natural world.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/
Sustainability and ESG at ViacomCBS
ViacomCBS is committed to building sustainability and corporate responsibility into the way we do business. We actively use sustainability as a lens to evaluate our most material impacts with the goal of becoming one of the most environmentally and socially responsible media company globally.
We identify, measure, and map our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts across our global operations, and have a team dedicated to driving our ESG and sustainability strategy forward. We are working to manage and report our material impacts and transparently address them with our stakeholders. We believe this work strengthens our ability to innovate and better serve our partners, audiences, and shareholders. Transparency is a value inherent to our sustainability strategy: we are working to understand, and make public, our greatest risks and opportunities as we continue to grow, looking at everything from our consumer products’ supply chains, to the content we produce for our networks, to the footprint of our television and movie productions across the globe.
From our LEED®-Certified headquarters building in New York City, to our companywide diversity and inclusion initiatives, to our commitment to strong corporate governance practices, we will continue to manage the impact of our economic, environmental, and social value across our brands and businesses.
Character World have been working on an important project over the last 12 months focusing on how as a business they can be more sustainable. Their plan is clear, simple and concise but it is a journey. Instead of focusing on individual elements, Character World have taken a holistic approach to sustainability throughout the entire business.
This holistic approach covers everything from using more sustainable and recyclable materials in their product, packaging and shipping cartons to the post-consumer care through their partnership with WRAP. Character World have also joined OPRL (On-Pack Recycling Label) scheme enabling more consumers to recycle more material correctly, more often.
Sustainability is at the forefront of Character World’s future plans with everything from new innovations to being vigilant about new processes and techniques being developed in production capabilities.
Danny Schweiger, Joint Managing Director:
“It would have been easy to just look at a single product, but we wanted to do something meaningful and impactful throughout the business. We can’t do this on our own, we are working with retailers, licensors and factories to tackle sustainability. We have clear and ambitious plans for the future. We firmly believe a good night’s sleep shouldn’t cost the earth.”
For more information please visit https://www.characterworld.com/index.php/wecare/
https://www.characterworld.com
According to the UN, we have just 10 years to save our planet from disastrous climate change. Our world requires urgent action, and consumers are rightfully demanding that businesses become part of the solution. As a progressive, innovative industry, we know that licensing can make a difference.
That's why Brandgenuity is delighted to support SILC in its inaugural year. We're excited to bring best practices in sustainability to our clients, and to work with our colleagues to reduce the environmental footprint of our industry.
https://brandgenuity.com
We knew we had to do something; we had to change plastic for good.
The technology Breakdown Plastic, BDP™ is an organic polymer that is added into the manufacturing process of plastic, rubber, foam...even fabric. Products made with BDP™ maintain all the same properties as regular plastic. The shelf life, appearance, clarity, recyclability and strength all remain. Once the product is discarded into landfill, oceans and soil the microbes utilise the plastic as a food and energy source, accelerating the biodegradation process. What used to take thousands of years, now takes only a few years as microbes consume the entire product. The only thing that remains are the same by products as decaying organic matter; humus, CO2 and CH4 that can be captured to produce clean energy.
Paladone has been one of the pioneers of the technology with 75% of its current gift ranges using the technology with Mainetti, Hairitage by Mindy (sold in all Walmart and Target stores in the US), Ripcurl, MCM, The Reformation, Kristen Ess Cosmetics and National Flexible among the other companies adopting it too.
We have made it our mission to help change plastic for the future through BDP™ technology but are also donating a portion of our profits to clean up efforts on behalf of our clients. Ours is an amazing story of responsibility for past, present and future plastic products
- Peter Rooke BDP EMEA
Boutique bedding specialist Dreamtex Ltd demonstrated its commitment to sustainability when it partnered with National Geographic in 2019 to launch a recycled bedding collection in support of the iconic brand’s ‘Planet or Plastic?’ mission.
In this innovative market-first, Dreamtex worked with Repreve®, the leading performance fibre made from recycled plastic bottles, to apply National Geographic designs across its bedlinen range and introduce this unique, ethical material exclusively into the UK market. Up to 12 recycled bottles are used to make a single duvet and up to 18 to make a double, plus, in a move to be even more environmentally responsible, the product is sold in recycled packaging with no polythene bags. The response from retailers, media and consumers to the beautiful “Save Our Oceans” inspired bedding has been phenomenal and more National Geographic designs will be launched this year. Dreamtex is proud to be supporting SILC and raising awareness of eco-friendly materials in the manufacture of home textiles and is excitedly looking forward to extending the Repreve® product to other licenses in the near future, including current collaborations with Life Magazine, BBC Earth and in the longer term popular children’s bedding collections such as L.O.L. Surprise! and PJ Masks.
http://www.dreamtexltd.com
Those Licensing People is a boutique independent agency based in Leeds. Representing some of the industries most iconic properties as well as being the owners of amongst others, the KidsCast OTP Platform, Stories for Stars and a partner in Two Near the Bone.
Established by veteran Licensing professional Russell Dever the company operates on both a B2B and D2C basis. In recent years the business has been moving closer to a fully sustainable model and is intending to be carbon neutral by 2022. During 2019 the company helped to preserve several hundred hectares of virgin rainforest in South America creating a corridor where Jaguars could move from traditional hunting grounds to a nearby lake for fresh water. In 2020 the company intends to continue to extend this work by helping NGO’s to buy and preserve natural habitats and to reforest areas decimated by logging. TLP is calling upon the industry, as a whole, to establish a far more responsible approach to licensing and as Agents for ‘The Little Prince’ who is already a world Ambassador for sustainability and climate change TLP is working to develop eco-friendly products with licensees, refusing to license product made from single use plastics and palm oil. The intention is to extend sustainable criteria much further over the next two years.
http://thoselicensingpeople.com/
CONFERENCE VENUE
VENUE
The Sustainability in Licensing Conference is being held in the Knowledge Centre, a state of the art conference centre at The British Library. The Knowledge Centre has its own separate entrance in the piazza aside from the main building The British Library 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
BY TRAIN
Kings Cross and St Pancras International and Euston
BY UNDERGROUND
King’s Cross St. Pancras, Euston and Euston Square
BY BUS
Many services including 30, 73, 91, 205 and 390.
BY CAR
There is no onsite parking. Metered parking (08:30 – 18:30) is available on Ossulston Street (3 spaces only). Alternatively, Visit London has general information about parking in London.
GET IN TOUCH
As is often said, there is no ‘I’ in team. Behind the scenes of The Sustainability in Licensing Conference is a close-knit team of people with complimentary skills and personalities, but who all share in the vision of ensuring this significant conference really hits the mark.
Owned by Max Publishing (the independently-owned media business that includes the Licensing Awards, Licensing Source Book, LicensingSource.net the B&LLAs among its crown jewels), the Sustainability in Licensing Conference benefits hugely from the partnership formed with Helena Mansell-Stopher.
Meet the team…
HELENA MANSELL-STOPHER
Curator and Director of SILC 2000
Founder of Products of Change (The Products of Change Group)
With a 20 year career in the licensing industry across media and lifestyle brands and a wealth of knowledge across all categories and retail. Helena, who was recently Director of Licensing at National Geographic UK has been driving sustainable change for the last two years. With a course in Business Sustainability Management under her belt, from the University of Cambridge Helena will continue to work with brand owners, retailers and category experts to drive change within the licensing arena.
JAKKI BROWN
Director of SILC 2020
As a co-founder of Max Publishing (which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary), Jakki has been at the forefront of driving the editorial side of the business as well as being heavily involved in the creation and evolution of the company’s well established and respected B2B awards programmes across both licensing and consumer products sectors.
IAN HYDER
Director of SILC 2020
Having made licensing the focus of his attention for the last 15 years at Max Publishing, of which he is Joint MD, Ian has very much been part of the industry’s evolution. Leading on the commercial front he has brought to life the Licensing Source Book, the Licensing Awards, the Brand & Lifestyle Licensing Awards (B&LLAs) and digitally LicensingSource.net.
ROB WILLIS
Director of SILC 2020
As a director of Max Publishing, which includes The Licensing Source Book, LicensingSource.net, The Licensing Awards and the B&LLAs, Rob’s network spans widely across licensing and consumer products. This 20-year address book will be extensively utilised to ensure that SILC 2020 is a key discussion point not just for those in attendance, but the entire industry.
CLARE HOLLICK
Bookings and Event Organiser of SILC 2000
Director of Keystone Communications
Keystone Communications is an established event management company, specialising in the organisation and delivery of corporate events, conferences and award ceremonies.
Quite simply they care.
With passion, drive and enthusiasm Keystone Communications delivers professional and memorable events that exceed client and guest expectations.
Contact Clare for any or all ‘on the day’ questions such as dietary, accessibility, or anything else to ensure you are perfectly taken care of – it is Clare’s speciality.