Photo by Diane Taylor
In my day, Roy Rogers lunchboxes were a big thing. Today? Lots more brands than Roy Rogers are available worldwide to decorate everything from lunchboxes and t-shirts to backpacks and extension cords. In fact the global brand licensing industry is a $290+ billion industry.
An entire Expo, Informa Global Licensing Group’s Licensing Expo, is devoted to the subject of brands. The 2022 show, called the World’s largest Licensing Trade Show, was held at the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Convention Center May 24-26. More than 5000 brands and 16,000 retailers, licensees, manufacturers and distributors and licensing agents from more than 70 countries were expected to attend.
Licensing Expo made the 2022 in-person event easy for product and brand managers to meet. In addition to an Opening Night Party for all attendees at Daylight Beach Club, the Expo itself featured a massive long hallway of small meeting rooms reserved by various exhibitors. In addition, a large “Matchmaking Lounge” made sure networking could take place as well.
As a non-industry visitor to the Expo, I loved walking around. I was surprised at some of the brands available (Saturday Evening Post and Shell, for example), and I was overwhelmed at the many colorful and fun characters available for branding. Today’s young folks have quite a gallery of cartoon and video friends.
The following video was taken during my May 26th visit to Licensing Expo.
Wow! Very interesting!
A very happy show! Who could possibly leave it in a bad mood! Enjoyed your coverage of this event as much as you did! Thank you for brightening our day.
I didn’t know anything about this expo. Thanks for interesting video
One of my favorite conventions too…glad you can go there and video it! Also good to see some product and company names from years ago. Too many new ones, but everyone gets their chance at being famous if they push hard enough! Thanks for walking us through it.