Licensing teams
Licensing Leadership and Strategy
The leadership team decides which brands go to market, in which categories and territories, and against what targets. It owns the licensing P&L and reviews performance through each term. At the end, it decides which deals renew.
Every other team works from this plan, so it has to live where everyone sees the current version.
- Career track
- Executive
- Owns
- 12 of the 60 steps on the licensing map
- Receives from
- Ip owners, legal and the market
- Hands off to
- Every other team
- Flowhaven module
- Analytics and Reporting, Platform overview
Scope
What does the leadership and strategy team own?
- Which IPs enter the program, and which are excluded
- The program strategy, targets and category and territory plan
- Briefing commercial, creative, legal and agents when the strategy changes
- Performance reviews during the term and the yearly program review
- Decisions to continue, update or end a program
On the licensing map
How the work flows through this team
Every step this team owns, in order, with its decisions, the handoffs where programs break and the work beyond the classic map. Grey boxes show where the work moves to other teams. See the full flow across all six teams.
Scroll sideways to see the whole flow.
Show the steps as a list
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Step 1 | IP portfolio listed |
| Step 2 | Potential IPs identified |
| Step 3 | IP potential evaluated |
| Step 4 | IPs excluded from the program |
| Step 5 | Program strategy drafted |
| Step 15 | Strategy finalized |
| Step 16 | All stakeholders informed |
| Step 17 | Strategy execution started |
| Step 52 | Performance evaluated during the term |
| Step 58 | Program performance evaluated |
| Step 59 | Strategy updated |
| Step 60 | Program ended |
Team setup
Where the team sits
The work is the same in every licensor. Who does it changes with size and business model.
A founder, brand owner or one head of licensing who also runs most deals.
A head or VP of consumer products with directors per category or region, reporting to the business unit or the CEO.
Agency leadership sets strategy with each client licensor and owns the agency's own P&L across clients.
People
Roles in this team
Each role page covers the duties, individual KPIs, skills and career path. This page covers the team as a whole.
- Executive sponsor, such as the CEO or business unit lead, who decides on investment
Handoffs
How work flows in and out
The IP portfolio, protection status, and signals from agents and licensees.
Which IPs enter the program, and which are excluded
The strategy and targets, the guidelines brief, and the decisions that follow each performance review.
- Strategy to execution: Strategy is shared as a document, so nothing downstream can check itself against it, and agents work from a copy that ages.
- Strategy to prospecting: The target licensee profile is written in prose, so prospect fit is judged by feel instead of scored.
- Qualification to conflict check: The double licensing check depends on someone remembering the whole rights position. This handoff has the highest cost of failure.
- Operations to strategy: Performance reaches leadership as a pack assembled by hand, weeks after the period it describes.
Tools and methods
How the work gets done today
- Spreadsheets and slide decks for strategy, plans and board packs
- Market research, retail visits and trade shows such as Licensing Expo and Brand Licensing Europe
- BI dashboards and a licensing platform for performance by brand, category and territory
- Weekly reviews with commercial, creative and finance
- Quarterly business reviews with key licensees and agents
Measures
KPIs for the leadership and strategy team
Flowhaven recommended measures for the team as a whole. Individual KPIs sit on each role page.
| KPI | How to calculate it |
|---|---|
| Royalty revenue against plan | Royalties and guarantees earned per brand, against the annual plan |
| Guarantee coverage | Signed minimum guarantees as a share of the revenue plan |
| Revenue concentration | Share of royalty revenue from the ten largest licensees |
| Launches on time | Share of planned product launches that reach retail in their window |
| New white space opened | Categories and territories signed for the first time this year |
| Products per licensing FTE | Approved products in market per person in the licensing team |
AI and the work
How AI is changing this team
Reviews and briefs arrive before anyone asks for them. Leaders spend less time assembling reports and more time deciding what to grow next.
Today. Through an integration, a leader can ask the portfolio a question in plain language, such as which categories and territories are still open, and get a program health digest with every figure linked to its record.
- Signals that flag a drifting brand, category or partner ahead of the review
- A forecast that explains its own numbers
- White space suggestions from open categories, territories and past performance
Flowhaven
How Flowhaven helps the leadership and strategy team
- One record set for brands, agreements, approvals and royalties, so the numbers in the review come from the work itself
- Brand, category and territory structure set up at onboarding, with parent and child reporting
- Dashboards by brand, category, territory and licensee, with year on year comparison
- Actuals against forecast and guarantee for every agreement
Good to know. The strategy itself still lives outside the platform. There is no plan object to set targets against yet.
“We’re always looking for ways to confidently plan for the future, and forecasting is an immensely important function as it helps us recognize shifts in consumer appetite and retail demand.”
Go further
Where to go next
See how Flowhaven runs your leadership and strategy work
A live walkthrough built around your program, your partners and your team.
