Fraser Smeaton joined the panel on the Wake up to Money programme last week.
Joining Fraser on the ‘panel of business minds’ was Natasha Ebtehadj from Artemis Investment Manager and Linda Yueh, University of Oxfordshire economist and author.
The panel discussed China’s economy, the Conservatives’ Green Prosperity Plan, gender inequality in pension savings, charity shops, Yodel’s difficulties, and much more.
When talking about Disney’s investment in Epic Games, Fraser commented on the potential for licensing in the costume industry: “Fornite and all the skins within it are a big licence in the costume industry, so if Disney is going to be able to feed in some of their characters, like Captain America, Black Panther, Spiderman, The Avengers, that’s going to make a difference.
“We are a licensee of Disney, so we have those characters. You can see in the Disney results, some of the story that’s been going on there. The improvement has come from cost cutting, but the revenue has been flat and that’s probably because they’ve been resting those big franchises in the last year and the new franchises like the Marvels haven’t quite got the same traction.
“So this could well be a play to give them more media space in a new channel like video games where they can get those franchises in front of their consumers, which will then have benefits for consumer products, for example costumes, where we sell.”
Fraser also discussed the trend for inflatable costumes: “That was one of the trends we were actually involved in driving. We’ve been selling inflatable costumes for a few years now and just with the size of them, and the impact, and therefore the pictures you can take for social media, it’s been something that has been really popular.”
You can listen to the episode here.
