The Smiley Company has signed a partnership deal with leading back to school licensing partner Lannoo. With this, the former continues the cross category brand extension for Rubik.
Lannoo joins a host of new Rubik’s licensees, as the brand continues to branch into a wide variety of new product categories and develops its business globally.
Smiley CEO Nicolas Loufrani said: “We are very happy to have our long term Smiley partner trust us on the Rubik’s brand. Based on the absolutely unique lifestyle positioning we have created under the “art of smart” slogan, we believe that back to school products represent a massive opportunity to leverage the recent hype around the Rubik’s brand among tweens and teens.”
This new partnership with Lannoo perfectly showcases how Rubik’s has been able to plug into Smiley’s existing global licensing network to sign a deal with one of Europe’s leading back to school manufactures and distributors, who has been a long term partner of The Smiley Company.
Lannoo will develop a full range of Back to School items including back packs, pencil cases, folders, notebooks and pens that utilise Rubik’s new Geek style guide that focuses on an explosion of rich Rubik’s colours and quirky slogans that will underpin the growing trend today for retro gaming and geek inspired designs.
With demand for the Rubik’s Cube throughout the world reaching record levels and 45 per cent year-on-year growth from 2015 to 2016, the desire for the Cube among teens and tweens today is the most it has been since 1980.
The Smiley Company has carefully crafted a new strategy that fuses the art of intelligence with industry leading design development and leverages the amazing brand equity and heritage of the Cube, to create a strategy that will shape a new future for the world’s best-selling toy.
