Merchandising helps buoy movie ticket sales
BURBANK, Calif. — The once-catatonic corner of moviedom dedicated to merchandise has suddenly come alive as studios — walloped by vanishing DVD sales and determined to keep fans engaged between sequels — look at themed toys, clothes and home décor with renewed vigor.
And Pam Lifford, president of Warner Bros. Consumer Products, is in many ways leading the charge.
“To gain market share, it has to come from somewhere,” she said with a mischievous grin, padding in sparkly shoes past a Hobbitthemed pinball machine at Warner headquarters here.
Lifford, described by License Global magazine as “savvy, seasoned and supercharged,” credits toy-ready movies that were already in Warner’s pipeline, like the Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Kevin Tsujihara, Warner’s chief executive, credits the way Lifford came in guns blazing.
“I’m confident we can build on the momentum Pam and her team have created,” he said in an email. “It’s a great growth opportunity for the company.”
With the decline in DVD sales speeding up and the box office stalling on a global scale, studios like Warner for the first time are looking to merchandise as an engine.
This summer, stores worldwide will be flooded with items for Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Cars 3, Transformers: The Last Knight and Despicable Me 3. Mountains of Justice League and Star Wars: The Last Jedi paraphernalia will arrive in the fall.
But how much movie bric-a-brac can the market bear? Some analysts worry that the public will eventually say enough is enough. That happened in 2002, when retailers were stuck with a vast array of Treasure Planet items nobody wanted.
Disney is the world’s No. 1 licenser, with themed products generating $56.6 billion in retail sales last year. It is not a coincidence that Warner, Universal and 20th Century Fox have turned to Disney veterans to invigorate their merchandise divisions.
Lifford spent 12 years at Disney Consumer Products, leaving in 2012, when she was an executive vice president. (More recently she worked at Quiksilver.) Jim Fielding, former president of Disney Stores Worldwide, took over consumer products at Fox in January. Vince Klaseus became Universal’s consumer products and video game chief in 2014 after a long run at Disney.
The highest-ranking African-American executive at Warner, Lifford grew up in Southern California, where her father owned a small tool business. She studied fashion design at a community college but dropped out to work at a women’s clothing company, eventually going on to work for Nike and Disney.