Should you go to Licensing Expo as a small artist / business owner?
I’ve gotten numerous DM’s from fellow artists and small business owners asking me about Licensing Expo, and whether it is worth it to attend. For the vast majority of small artists, I would say no. I had a booth there in 2023, and wanted to share my experience with fellow artists. I’ve had this write up in my drafts for literal years, and finally have been compelled to post it.
For anyone who doesn’t know me, hi! I’m Rachel. I draw frogs who commit crimes. I started my art business while in college, and now it’s my full time job. My products can be found in major chains all across the US, and in smaller stores all around the world!
A lot of my current success is thanks to Licensing Expo. However, I still do not personally recommend it for fellow small business owners and artists. The only time I would recommend boothing at Licensing Expo to a small artist is if all the following points are true:
- you have a lot of excess money to burn and are okay with spending ~$7-10k without making any of it back.
- you have an incredibly outgoing personality and natural people skills, or you have a close friend / family member with those skills who you can bring along. And I’m not talking “yeah I can be friendly and nice”. You know how some people just seem special? They can make conversation with anyone, and just have a sort of magnetic personality? That is the type of person I’m talking about.
The biggest lesson I learned at Licensing Expo is that licensing is all about who you know. It’s a tough business to get into unless you’re so big that you’re a household name or if you already know people in the industry.
The only reason I had any success at Licensing Expo was due to sheer luck. I’m not trying to gatekeep or stop anyone else from finding success, far from it. I was very close to essentially flushing ten thousand dollars down the toilet. If it weren’t for the fact that I lucked out, all of it would’ve been just a huge waste.
what even Is licensing?
Licensing is when the owner of an intellectual property gives somebody else the right to use that property, in exchange for fees and royalties. For example, Sanrio will license Hello Kitty to Hot Topic. Hot Topic, the licensee, then gets to slap Hello Kitty on a bunch of products and sell them to customers. Hot Topic then has to go pay the licensor, Sanrio, a fee (aka a royalty) based on how much they’ve sold.
The industry standard royalty is usually 10% of whatever the wholesale price of a product is. So if a bag is sold to customers for $30, and the wholesale price is $10, Sanrio would be paid $1 per bag sold (since $1 is 10% of $10). But depending on how much power you have in negotiations, and whether or not you have an agent who takes a cut, the royalties could be less.
the costs of Licensing Expo
If you are being contacted by Licensing Expo and being “invited” to booth, please keep in mind that they are a business. They make money by selling booths. I was sweet talked by the sales rep into getting the cheapest booth they had, at around $7,000. This package includes a 10x10 foot space, basic white walls, a carpet, 2 chairs, maybe a table, and a small trash can. Having stuff printed on the white walls costs extra.
Not included in the booth price was the cost of staying at the hotel the show is held at, Mandalay Bay in Vegas, which is expensive. You can always stay somewhere cheaper, but then you have to factor in getting yourself to the convention & after parties. Even walking to the convention center from the hotel part was a very long walk!! Not to mention how expensive the nearby food was. Sure, we could have eaten cheaper, but we were both exhausted from running the booth all day, and any cheaper food was a long trek away. Adding on the parking costs, travel costs, and more, the final total probably ended up being close to $10k.
Keep in mind that Licensing Expo is not a show you can sell merchandise at. Normally with conventions, artists sell product to make back booth costs. The only way to recoup your losses here is to land a good deal, and hope that it eventually pays off. Which could take time, as it did for me. I got my first royalty payment in November 2024 after tabling in June 2023. So it took over a year before I was able to recoup any tabling costs. This also does not factor in my lawyer fees for contract negotiation, or the time I spent working on the products for licensing for months before they officially launched.
nobody cares about small fry when there’s a 20 foot Pikachu is hanging from the ceiling
Only spending ten grand is actually incredibly cheap compared to the other booths at the convention. This show is aimed at companies and businesses, who usually have big budgets. Many of the booths will spend upwards of $100k. A majority of the booths are incredibly grand - giant things hanging from the ceiling and giving out free merchandise and prizes.
And that’s where the biggest problem for small artists and businesses lies - why would anyone pay attention to your tiny booth when there’s a 20 ft Pikachu hanging from the ceiling? Pokémon is the biggest intellectual property in the world, and is guaranteed to sell. Potential licensees are looking to make money as a business (duh). Why would they risk doing business with a small fry when there’s household names like Pikachu right over there?
My booth looked very home made and like it belonged in an artist alley. Surrounded by all these giant, professionally designed booths, it was obvious to every passerby that I was not on the same level as these other companies.
I was incredibly lucky that my corporate overlords were looking for a new intellectual property that was relatively small, but still had seen success. I already had previous licensing experience with Hot Topic under my belt, and my type of artwork and characters was exactly what my corporate overlords were looking for. That was the one and only deal I had that ended in success, and I got it through sheer luck.
Despite it working out for me, I don’t want to encourage others to take such a huge gamble when there’s such a low chance of success, unless they’re fully aware of the risks.
your fate is decided before the show even begins
The entire purpose of Licensing Expo is to have meetings. Meetings are mostly scheduled in advance via the website, and you reserve time slots to hold meetings with people in your little booth.
Before anyone even sets foot in the convention hall, licensors have already gone through all the profiles and intellectual properties listed, and scheduled meetings with the ones they think are most important.
I had a handful of meetings, and aside from the one I had with Daiso, the rest were all small fry. Many of them were fellow small businesses who were looking for properties to put on their products in order to gain sales from fans of the properties.
And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with fellow small businesses, I found that most of them were unreliable. Some were rejected for meetings by the bigger booths, so they scheduled with mine because it was all they could get. Others ghosted me when I tried to follow up because I wasn’t worth their time. And some would end up with deals where I would only make a couple hundred dollars max, which is a fraction of the booth price. I managed to get one other agreement besides the main one I got with my corporate overlords, and here we are 3+ years later still waiting for it to happen, despite me already paying my lawyer for the contract and doing work for the company.
Shelling out so much money on a booth only to be left with nothing to show for it was a very real possibility that I only barely managed to avoid.
Before I attended the convention, I had a meeting with a potential licensing agent. A licensing agent essentially represents your property, and goes to companies and says “hey, would you like to put this IP on your products?”. And if the companies say yes, then the agent takes a cut of the royalty fee.
So I had a call with the owner of a licensing agency, and when I told him I paid for a booth at Licensing Expo, he was shocked. He told me that I should see if I could get a refund, because there was no way I would succeed there. His company’s booth cost $120k this year, and he was genuinely concerned that I got finessed by the Licensing Expo salesperson. I don’t believe he was trying to be mean, but he very much told me that the reality of the situation was that I was a nobody. I had done a good job building my business to what it was so far at my age, but I would not find success in licensing with where I was now.
I got off that call in tears, sobbing that I had essentially been tricked into spending $7k on something that wouldn’t even work out. My parents convinced me that I should stay the course, and do my best to “prove that jerk wrong”.
Ultimately, I’m very glad I did attend the show, but I know deep down that the man was just trying to give me genuine advice. He even connected me with other people that could potentially help me for the level I was at. While his delivery was brutally honest and hurt, it was advice meant to save a young, naive girl from a financial pitfall.
it’s all about connections, baby!
Licensing Expo is not just about the convention hours itself. So much of it goes on in the after parties.
Do you want to know the only reason I got invited to any afterparties?
Because my mom got invited.
My mom is one of those people who can make friends with anyone. She is a social butterfly, and is at her best when surrounded by people. She managed to make friends while in the elevator, and managed to snag us invites to a bunch of events.
Me, on the other hand? I’m a very shy introvert. I felt like a fish out of water at the convention. Despite technically being the CEO of my own company, I looked and felt like a child who was just cosplaying as an adult. Whenever anybody spoke to us at our booth, they immediately assumed my mom was in charge and I was an assistant. And I don’t blame them! My mom radiates so much confidence that people just assume she’s in charge anywhere she goes.
On top of party invitations, my mom also managed to land us a few extra meetings just by chatting with folks in the elevator. They were impressed with my mom and everything she told them about my business, but once they met me, saw the booth, and realized we were just small fry, we were quickly ghosted.
The owner of another licensing agency I spoke with said that licensing is all about who you know. Folks in the industry have been attending for years, and have known some of these people for 10+ years. They have their own parties, after parties, breakfasts, and industry connections that a newcomer with no big corporate backing has no way of discovering.
attending as a guest
A majority of the booths at the show are businesses who wish to license out their intellectual property (licensors). While I did meet a few licensees (aka retailers or manufacturers) with booths, they were few and far between.
If you sign up ahead of time to go as a guest, it is technically possible to schedule meetings in generic meeting rooms with licensees.
However, please keep in mind that you are fighting against almost every booth in the show for a meeting, let alone a deal. Unless you have incredible achievements under your belt already, most of the big fish don’t care about the small fish, especially small fish who don’t even have a booth. Unless you previously spoke with someone directly and agreed to meet, walking in and expecting meetings doesn’t seem likely.
final thoughts
If you do still really want to get into licensing, attend as a guest first to get a feel for things. Try to make connections and get invites. There’s a website where they list all the official after hours gatherings that I didn’t even know about. If you’re like me and have a less than stellar personality, have a really cool / unique business card and memorable free items for people to grab to take home to their kids. Anything to be remembered by anybody.
If you’re still looking to expand and do more professional types of shows but don’t think licensing is the route for you, I was advised by someone to look into shows like Toy Fair. These types of shows are aimed at showing off your wares to see if retailers would like to stock them. This would involve selling them wholesale, which will be difficult if you do not have a warehouse or the funds to spend $100k on merch and not be paid for it until 3 months after it’s arrived at the retailer. It is a whole other ball game, but easier to get into if you have a good product to show. I’ve also heard that even if you’re a smaller brand, if you have a cool item you can still be taken into consideration. I’ve never done it myself, so take this advice with a grain of salt!
A final disclaimer: This is all my personal experience at the Las Vegas expo as a self representing small business. None of this info might apply to shows in other countries, or if you're represented by an agency who has their own booth. I don't want to flat out discourage people from following their dreams, but sometimes a realistic opinion & advice is needed. if i just blindly encouraged everyone it would really suck if you lost a lot of money with no benefit!!
a list of some of the booths i saw there
just so yall can get a feel for the types of businesses that were boothing
- the Pokemon company
- they didn’t let anyone in their booth unless you had a meeting, but it sure looked cool
- bandai Namco
- the giant tamagotchi was hella cool
- Viz media
- giant Naruto statue
- Miffy
- they had a miffy mascot!!! The booth was super cute, too!!!
- tokidoki
- Sylvanian Families
- I got some free blind boxes!!
- Anirollz
- the booth girlies were nice and gave me a giant tote bag in exchange for some frog pins
- Squishmallow
- i got some free blind box keychains!! they had a giant swing chair made entirely of squishmallows
- Funko & loungefly
- they apparently had a huge pool party, there were tons of people walking away with bags of goodies 👀
- the representatives of Baby Shark (doo doo doo)
- Crayola
- they had a flower truck and were giving out bouquets I think??
- Jelly Belly
- i got some free boba flavored jelly beans :D
- Thomas Kincaide
- you know, the guy whose painting style is “a cozy little cabin in a snowy field” ?
- Minis
- the company that makes those eggs with the mini figures in them? They had a giant gacha machine!! the guy was nice and let me win one hehehe
- Sanrio
- funnily enough, Sanrio just had a generic plain meeting room. they’re so big that they don’t even need a booth to attract attention, they had people scrambling for meetings with them.
- Disney
- Disney did not have a booth, but a whole secret floor. You needed special clearance to get in! They were (allegedly) showcasing the new projects and movies that would be coming out for the next few years, so it’s classified info 👀
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advice, business advice
