As one of the highlights of the fancy dress calendar, World Book Day 2020 has been another success for both licensed and generic party product suppliers and retailers right across the UK.
The annual celebration of children’s books sees suppliers launching new lines each season, with retailers dressing windows and getting stock ready for the event weeks in advance.
Despite all this preparation, the event itself is famously last-minute, with many parents only beginning to think about costumes in the final few days leading up to the event, resulting in a frenzied dash to the nearest supermarket, party shop or next-day delivery service.
Licensed costumes have always been a popular choice for younger children, and recent years have seen preschools and nurseries getting involved as well. CBeebies’ Bing has been a great success story for Smiffys, as director Dominique Peckett explained.
“With preschool being a relatively new licence category for dress-up, the demand has exceeded our expectations, with Bing leading the way. With placement in the major grocers and online retailers, the popularity of the brand has driven demand all year-round, not just for Book Day. We are looking forward to bringing more of Bing’s friends to life in 2021.”
World Book Day 2020 was also a great success for Amscan, as Sam Taylor, dress- up category manager explained. “Our licensed Book Week portfolio of Dr. Seuss, Very Hungry Caterpillar and Elmer performed exceptionally well. We also saw a great response and sell through on less traditional Book Week styles, including PJ Masks and superheroes such as Batman and Superman.”
“These were in addition to our classic generic styles of mad hatters and fairy-tale characters, which continue to be popular year-on-year,” he added.
These types of traditional and generic costumes are still popular across the board, with the more unusual characters being created with clever use of accessories and bespoke styling.
“Accessories are the growing category in this market,” commented Palmer Agencies’ marketing director, Sergio Battaner. “Our moving mouth masks did extremely well. As a matter of fact our moving mouth fox masks sold out earlier than anticipated!”
He continued: “It seems multiples are now offering the most popular costume characters and independents and online sellers have to compete with them on price.”
