the success of products made in France from a license “for everyone”

2023-04-21 16:49:32

While the exhibition dedicated to Harry Potter opens Friday in Paris, the license is now available on cushions, curtains and furniture, produced in France.

The Harry Potter interactive exhibition arrives in Paris on Friday April 21, Porte de Versailles, in Paris, 25 years after the publication of the first opus written by JK Rowling. Books, films, but also clothing, school supplies, jewelry and Harry Potter-branded bags brought in nearly 25 billion euros. The young wizard’s magic wand worked well in 2020: every minute, five games stamped Harry Potter were sold, enough to decide Lansay, the French game specialist for more than 50 years, to offer his first box of creative hobbies .

“It’s a 15 to 20% boostrejoices Corinne Grenet, Development Director at Lansay. We could not miss this license, since now children from 6 years old know Harry Potter very well. It’s an investment to conquer new consumers, so the products on the market will quickly disappear.”

Wallpaper and bookcase inspired by the latest movie

If most derivative products are made in China, there are now high-end decorative objects made in France, such as cushions, curtains, wallpaper and even a bookcase displayed at more than 7,000 euros, taken from from the last opus The Deathly Hallows. The idea germinated in Burgundy, in the Maringue family. “Harry Potter, for us, started around the age of 15, when the first ones came out, remembers Jonathan, one of three siblings running the Fantastic Home company. We’ve been rocked by that for all these years. We are part of communities of fans, so we were going a little on the nerve, with a first concept that did not work, then a second concept, hence the two and a half years that made it possible to launch this project.

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“It requires a large financial contribution to be able to work on the license, underlines Jonathan Maringue. On the furniture part, we are beyond half a million euros”. Convincing Warner Bros, the license holder, is not easy but it is worth it according to Nathalie Chouraqui-Gerson, the organizer for nearly 20 years of the Cobrandz licensing fair. “It’s a fantastic brand, it’s for everyone! Of course, the children who discover it, but also all those young people who have taken it with them in their lives.”

“It’s a family target, and then, it’s exceptional, it’s mixed, which is not so common!”

Nathalie Chouraqui-Gerson, organizer of the Cobrandz licensing fair

at franceinfo

But you have to be able to constantly renew yourself, hence the television series, launched next month in the United States, with ten years of program to come and produced by JK Rowling, herself, and too bad for the accusations of transphobia who targeted the writer.

3,000 square meters of exhibition space

After a visit to Vienna, the Harry Potter exhibition arrives in Paris on Friday for six months, until October 1, Porte de Versailles. It extends over 3,000 square meters devoted to the world of the little wizard with round glasses, with emblematic decorations of the saga, from Harry’s bedroom to the Forbidden Forest to Hagrid’s house.