The Smart Way to Start Licensing - David with It’s No Fluke Podcast

Everyone wants to license with the biggest brands in the world… but that’s exactly where most people go wrong.

In this episode of Born to License, David shares a powerful snippet from his conversation on the It’s No Fluke podcast with Jeff Barrett — breaking down the smart way to get started in licensing.

Because while brands like Disney or Bluey are incredibly appealing, they’re also the hardest to access — especially if you’re new to licensing.

Instead, the real opportunity lies in building momentum step by step.

In this episode:

🚀 Why you shouldn’t start with the biggest licenses

• The reality of working with top-tier brands
• Why new licensees often get rejected
• Thinking long-term (3–4 year strategy)

🎯 The smarter way to enter licensing

• Starting with “hungry” brands open to new partners
• Building credibility before going after A-list IP
• Creating a clear pathway to bigger deals

📈 Real case study: from first deal to major success

• Working with Care Bears (via CloudCo) as a first خطوة
• Scaling into a major opportunity with Wicked
• How collectability doubled customer spend

💡 Key insight: licensing is a journey

• Why momentum matters more than starting big
• How smart brand selection drives long-term success
• Turning one deal into many

The key takeaway: Don’t start at the top — build your way there.

The most successful licensing strategies aren’t built on one big deal… they’re built on smart, strategic progression.

🎙 Born to License – Hosted by David Born

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Transcript

This week I'm doing something I've always dreamed of, a trek in Nepal to base camp of Mount Everest. While I'm doing that, I thought it would be a perfect time to share a snippet from a chat I had with Jeff Barrett on the it's no Fluke podcast. Take a listen. Look, I think the companies that come to us and they say, look, we want an A plus tier license, we want to work with Disney, we want to work with Bluey, which is just such an unstoppable preschool brand right now. You have to be honest with them and say, look, if you have never done licensing before, the odds of you securing a license with the most in demand licenses in the world right now are relatively slim. But what we're really good at is saying, look, you have to crawl before you walk. 

 Don't go straight to the top. Make Disney and Bluey kind of like a three to four year plan, but you have to start somewhere first. Let's work on really great properties that are available to license, but with licensors that are more hungry, they're less in demand, but they have a stronger appetite to work with up and coming companies. And so, you know, we have a range of those that we would go to where we go to them and say, hey, we've got this really exciting client who wants to get into licensing, but they're not really sure what's going to be the right fit for them. Work with us if you're interested and we'll help you kind of sell in your brand. And usually it works. I mean, we've got some clients. One, one client that we worked with was Steven Singer Jewelers. 

 They came to us with a product, it's gold dipped roses and it's a really beautiful product. Basically, they get a real rose, they deconstruct it, they dip it in gold, and then they reconstruct it and they sell it as a gold dipped rose and they sell it for about $100, a bit more, a bit less depending on the SKU. But they came to us and they wanted like a real A plus level brand. And went to those rights holders, we talked to them about it and they weren't necessarily comfortable providing a license to a company that had never done licensing before. So instead went to one of our favorite licensors, which is Cloudco, which is Care Bears. And we know that they love working with companies that are new to licensing and that kind of, they really love embracing innovation. 

 And so they were very happy to go ahead and provide a license. So Stevensinger launched their first licensed gold dipped rose, which was the Care Bears rose. That did really well for them. And then they came to us and said, well, what can we do next? And we knew that Universal was releasing Wicked Part 1 at the end of that year when were having the conversation and we said, you have got to get onto Wicked. It's going to be the biggest thing. It's going to be the next Barbie. And they were like, oh, we've heard of the know the show Wicked, but we haven't necessarily heard of the film. Is it going to be big? Trust me, it's going to be huge. So they trusted us. We went and negotiated a license for Wicked with Universal and it did incredibly well. 

 It sold out before Valentine's Day, which is their key selling period for Steven Singer Jewelers. So they didn't order enough, which they were a bit frustrated about. But when Wicked Part 2 came around, they did another collection and it did really well for them again. And one of the most interesting things there was that usually people will go and you know, at any one time they'll buy one gold dipped rose. When Wiki came about, they had a rose for Elphaba and they had a rose for Glinda as well. So they had two SKUs. And we found that 80% of customers were actually buying both of them rather than buying one. So they doubled their basket size because of the collectability. And now we're having a whole new conversation with Stephen St. 

 Jewel is like, how can we license something where there's potentially more than two SKUs, so you can really embrace that collectability side of things, which we're very close to closing there next to which I can't reveal, but it's very going to be very impressive collection. That was just a little bit from my chat with Jeff Barrett on the it's no Fluke podcast. There is a lot more to hear and I encourage you to pop over to the it's no Flute podcast and listen to it in full. It's available wherever you like to listen to your podcasts. In the meantime, if you're interested in hearing about how the trek is going, follow me on Instagram. I'll be sharing my journey there. I'm David Born and this is born to license.