The Longevity of Art & Culture Licensing

The Longevity of Art and Cultural Brand Licensing

It’s an exciting journey to build a new venture from the ground up, and this is undoubtedly the case for ARTiSTORY, which possesses a secret recipe of transforming artefacts into merchandise. Founded by Natasha Dyson and Yizan He earlier this year, the company has expanded rapidly with four new worldclass museum clients on board, growing creative teams and opening sales offices in London, Boston, Barcelona, Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore. As a pioneer in the art and cultural IP licensing specialist, ARTiSTORY continues to build its client base of museums, galleries, libraries, and science centres around the world. They have secured multi-year master license rights to the National Gallery (London), National Palace Museum (Taiwan), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and Dunhuang (China), with additional cultural organisations in the pipeline. This gives ARTiSTORY, and therefore their licensees and retailers, access to a diverse selection of artefacts and artworks, from ancient Greek potteries to Renaissance masterpieces, from woodblock prints such as the Great Wave off Kanagawa to Mogao Caves in Dunhuang. These museums all have different collections. MFA Boston was opened on July 4, 1876, and is home to collections of ancient Asian art, early American art, mysterious Egyptian art, elegant European art, and innovative modern art make MFA one of the most influential art museums in the world. The National Gallery is home to more than 2,600 of the world’s most renowned paintings, including 700 years of work from the late 13th to the early 20th century. The National Palace Museum in Taiwan owns, preserves, and displays in rotating exhibitions, nearly 700,000 artefacts. The collections spanning 8,000 years feature beautiful ceramics, paintings, fashion and more, from imperial collections of different dynasties. Centred around Mogao Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the art of Dunhuang covers more than a dozen major genres, such as architecture, stucco sculpture, wall paintings, silk paintings, calligraphy, woodblock printing, embroidery, literature, music and dance, and popular entertainment. Blessed with a diversified portfolio of art and cultural IP, ARTiSTORY enjoys ample design inspiration and rich content in the development of its annual art and cultural themes and original design assets. The themes and design assets will enable consumer brands and global retailers to create appealing and relevant products and packaging, and also empower them in the shopper acquisitions. There are four themes for SS 2022 and AW 2022, namely, Let’s Play, Botanical Affairs, Voyage of Discovery, and Gathering of the Greats. Each theme is broken down into episodes that focus on different artists, topics, or periods. Each episode features illustrations, prints & patterns that are inspired by select artefacts and artworks, supported by specifically crafted editorials, videos, and the immersive window display that consumer brands and global retailers can easily tap into. ARTiSTORY will be presenting their global annual theme launch this coming September. They are hosting two release events, one for the global market on the 13th of September and one for the Chinese market on 15th September in Shanghai. The event on the 13th of September will be hosted online to accommodate attendees from multiple time zones, and will introduce SS 2022 and AW 2022 themes to consumer brands and retailers in various key markets. The creative theme launch is well-timed as the demand for art and cultural IP has been grown rapidly. Licensing International reported in May 2021 that art and cultural IP has risen from merely 1% in 2015 to 18.7% in terms of the retail value of licensed merchandise in China in 2020. The EU and the US markets are picking pace too with many consumer brands and retailers are harnessing the power of art and cultural IP. A key appeal to brands and retailers is the longevity and security that art and cultural licensing provides. Luxury brands such as LVMH and global retailers such as H&M, Zara, Mango, and Uniqlo have embraced art and cultural IP, and this will further inspire more brands and retailers to explore art and cultural IP.

natasha@artistorybrands.net www.artistorybrands.net