TOTAL LICENSING
Allan Stone A true Licensing Industry Founding Father and Pioneer Allan Stone, who was one of the true pioneers of the licensing industry sadly passed away from coronavirus on April 23rd, aged 96. Stone’s legacy, of course, lives on through sons Michael, co-founder and Chairman of Beanstalk and Robert, President of Excel Branding Group. He began his career, back in 1949, at the Howdy Doody Show where he was responsible for a comprehensive
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licensing program based on the children’s television series – one of the very first times this had been achieved. At its height, Howdy Doody had more than 100 licensees across many categories as well as promotions with sponsors of the show such as Colgate, Kellogg’s and Welch’s. Realising the potential of licensing, in 1960, Allan Stone founded Licensing Corporation of America (LCA) which was then the first-ever independent li-
censing agency and which became the leading agency for many years. LCA merged with National Kinney, who owned DC Comics and the group went on to acquire Warner Bros out of bankruptcy and eventually renamed the company Warner Consumer Products. LCA represented a wide variety of properties including sports properties, such as the MLB and the NBA, movies such as MGM’s James Bond, celebrities including Arnold Palmer and DC Comics which, of course, included Superman and Batman. During those years Stone also began licensing the characters from General Mills’ cereals – a sector that is now widely used but in the 1960s was very much ahead of its time. In 1967 Stone was also responsible for one of the first retail exclusives when he licensed the United States Lawn Tennis Association to Macy’s to establish a shop-in-shop and to create a USLTA licensed tennis ball, which was used at the first U.S. Open Championship in 1968. After ten years as President of LCA, Stone decided it was time to move on and he founded a company called Hamilton Projects where he was responsible for developing licensing programs around corporate and trademarked brands. His first two clients were Coca-Cola and Harley Davidson. As legend has it, he told the story of how Coca-Cola came to him, pleading with him to license their trademark as they were frightened of losing it to knock-offs at the time. And Harley Davidson came to him, after just exiting bankruptcy from AMF Bowling Corporation, interested in seeing if there was any value in the Harley Davidson logo! He represented a number of celebrities, such as Charlie Chaplin, television programs such as All in the Family on
