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 For a laid-back kind of guy, John Malcolm takes no prisoners when it comes to product development! Before he attended Claudia's course on licensing, John came up with an idea, conducted patent research, developed prototypes, named his product, did preliminary market research, applied for a utility patent, applied for a trademark for the product's name, found a manufacturer, invested his own funds to get it made, found distributors, came up with a companion product, did all of the same work for that second item and put a business in place to support his efforts!
Then, in September, 1997, John took Claudia's workshop at Cañada College in Redwood City, California (San Francisco area). As result, he decided to license his two products instead of continuing to personally invest in their manufacture and distribution. By August, 1998, he had signed his first licensing agreement for both of them. The manufacturer who licensed John's products then invited John to join him in meetings scheduled with Warner Bros. and Disney!
Disney immediately ordered 100,000 units of John's "Pick-A-Picture Photo Frame," which is a very high initial order for any product. The manufacturer then put Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh artwork on the picture frame, and Disney immediately distributed it to its park stores, as well as to The Disney Stores. The "Forget-Thee-Not" perpetual calendar was exhibited at the New York Gift Fair trade show in May, 1999, and as of this writing, John is in negotiations with licensees for overseas markets. |
