The Growth of this new venture is better than I expected

Looking back at the First B&RUK winter conference I remember standing on stage and in my opening speech announcing I would be organising a Summer 'two' day conference and bringing in Sports, Lifestyle, Commercial, Heritage and Charity brands - a very brave decision.

The smiles from the audience of Retailers and Licensees was a sure sign they would support me though.

I started to pitch the Summer event to the non-character and gaming side of the business and was delighted TeamGB, Paramount, the V&A, The Ashmolean Museum, Mighty Jaxx, Pink Key Licensing, Battersea, Lucia Heffernan and the FA all took a slot and were excited I was dedicating a day to them.

To give it some pizzazz I thought we should end the new Day 1 with a Retail Buyers panel and with Boots, ASDA, eBay, Character.com lined up I feel Day one has something special.

As you would have seen Julia Redman who has a huge experience of Retail Buying is now contributing articles for B&RUK each week so I asked her if she would like to moderate the panel for me and was delighted she said yes.

I am also looking at holding a keynote as well on Day one and having discussions about that as well. 

With a month to go we have 7 slots left for Day 1 (at time of press), with Day 2 now sold out, so if you are a brand please contact me to book a presentation slot. 

The audience is looking great with some new retailers supporting the event - notably The Entertainer, Vanilla Underground, Boots, Primark and Toys"R"Us.

I am also looking at how I turn B&RUK into a membership and working with some industry friends on how I do that, so watch this space.If you are a licensee or retailer and yet to sign up it is FREE to attend so I hope you can make it to London on the 6th and 7th July at the British Library.

I am also delighted Michael Gottlieb an industry veteran and long time friend is now writing articles for B&RUK and given his vast Licensor and more predominantly Music Publishing experience they should entertain, Michael is a great one for anecdotes so they should add something special to the content each week.

Lastly I do want to thank my sponsor Fabacus who again are supporting me in this NEW conference - a fantastic company.

Ryan Beaird
Editor - Event Director