Bulldog Licensing – UK representative for the Garfield brand – has announced that brand owner Paws, Inc. has agreed to a new deal with Aurora World that will allow the plush specialist to produce a brand new range featuring the corpulent cat.
The new agreement with Aurora World will add to Garfield’s strong presence in UK retail in a sector in which Garfield has an impressive track record. Other categories are also well represented and licensees include Somerbond for men’s nightwear and underwear, J Fox for bags, belts, wallets, hankies and toiletries, Blues Clothing, Brand Alliance and Silverknit for apparel, Sert MST for pet products, Moonpig.com for online greetings cards and Smiffys for dress up.
Garfield is one of the world’s most recognisable characters, with the the cartoon strip that was first introduced in 1978 now featured in over 2100 newspapers across the globe, holding the Guinness World Record for the most syndicated cartoon strip. Garfield books have sold in excess of 135 million copies to date and the acerbic-faced puss has also spawned two animated television series, two feature-length live-action films, and three CGI animated movies – as well as thousands of lines of Garfield licensed merchandise.
Garfield is hugely popular in the UK, which is one of the brand’s strongest markets – the cartoon strip appears every day in the Daily Mail, the country’s second most popular newspaper with a circulation of nearly 2 million, and ‘The Garfield Show’ cartoon is one of the top-rating shows on Boomerang, one of the UK’s most popular kids’ TV channels. This popularity has led to increasingly impressive sales figures for licensed merchandise, with sales of product in the first half of 2012 alone showing a rise of more than 340% in comparison to the same period last year.
“Garfield is the perfect brand for plush so we are delighted to be working with Aurora who have a reputation for making high quality products that perform well at retail,” says Bulldog MD Rob Corney. “Garfield is one of few brands around demonstrating very high levels of growth at retail in the current climate. He has very wide appeal with a massive following amongst both kids and adults, working with Aurora is the perfect solution to appeal right across his fan base.”
