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The Pokemon Company - A Billion Dollar Entity

V

vinnygambini

Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
For many years, I've always wondered what worth The Pokemon Company carried and the result of such a popular franchise.

License Global!, a respected publication in regards to the licensing industry, recently published their Annual Global Top 150 Licensors. The Pokemon Company ranked 40th in terms of annual revenue with 1.5 Billion $.

http://images2.advanstar.com/PixelMags/license-global/digitaledition/05-2014_sp.html#14

Furthermore, License Global! provided an in depth report in regards to the Japanese licensed consumer product market with Pokemon and many others at the forefront:

With a retail market for character goods valued at nearly $16 billion, Japan still represents–by a wide margin–Asia's largest territory for branded character merchandise.

Japan's character market reached its peak during the Pokémon and Hello Kitty induced frenzy of 1999, a year that saw roughly $20 billion in retail sales of character merchandise. While economic malaise, migration to digital platforms and other media and one of the world's lowest birthrates have since tempered the industry's growth, Japan continues to be the Asian behemoth of character licensing. And with an array of new hit properties such as the popular boys' action brands, YO-Kai Watch and Oreca Battle, the country promises to maintain its position as one of the world's most dynamic character licensing markets.

Top Characters of 2013

Japan's Character Databank ranks the top five licensed characters in 2013 as follows:

1. Anpanman

2. Mickey Mouse

3. Hello Kitty

4. Pokémon

5. Pretty Cure
Click to expand...

http://www.licensemag.com/license-global/view-east-japan

Hence, judging by the above, it is not surprising that Nintendo's CEO, Saturo Iwata, is placing a further emphasis on Character IP Licensing moving forward.
 
B

Busaiku

Member
I'm surprised Pokemon is so low, relatively.
Anpanman I can understand, but do Disney and Sanrio even have cartoons airing?
 
Pagusas

Pagusas

Elden Member
I guess its because I know nothing of Japanese culture, but I had never heard or nor seen Anpanman before in my life until this thread.
 
G

Game Guru

Member
Busaiku said:
I'm surprised Pokemon is so low, relatively.
Anpanman I can understand, but do Disney and Sanrio even have cartoons airing?
Click to expand...

No... That's Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty. Those two characters, despite not having cartoons at the moment, are licensed to pretty much everything and make most of their money off of that. They are icons that are always well-known.
 
B

Busaiku

Member
Retro4ever said:
Considering that Pokemon has been around for less than 20 years that is amazing.
Click to expand...

Pretty Cure's even younger, just barely 10 years old.
Game Guru said:
No... That's Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty. Those two characters, despite not having cartoons at the moment, are licensed to pretty much everything and make most of their money off of that. They are icons that are always well-known.
Click to expand...
Pokemon's everywhere too.
As you can see by my avatar, Pikachu's the mascot for Samurai Blue.
 
O

Orniletter

Banned
I have never heard of Anpanman before in my live.

And I didn´t know Pretty Cure is such a beast. I remember the Anime when it aired here for a brief period of time (like 10 years ago)....but I found it pretty unremarkable.

*shrug*

Some impressive results for TPC !
 
W

Wyndstryker

Member
Pokemon_Jets.jpg


Licensing at it's finest!
 
O

OmegaFax

Member
Disney makes sense. You wrap Marvel and Star Wars into the mix on top of their Pixar and Disney animated films, sweet Zod.
 
W

Willxc123

Member
Does anyone know how that 1.5 billion of profit affects Nintendo? I know the Pokemon company is it's own separate entity, but doesn't Nintendo own a large stake in it? I never really understood that relationship, between Nintendo and the Pokemon company.
 
M

Mr-Joker

Banned
Willxc123 said:
Does anyone know how that 1.5 billion of profit affects Nintendo? I know the Pokemon company is it's own separate entity, but doesn't Nintendo own a large stake in it? I never really understood that relationship, between Nintendo and the Pokemon company.
Click to expand...

Nintendo has a stake in the company and pretty much handles the production and distribution of each Pokémon game.

You should check out polygon article on The Pokémon Company.

What is the Pokémon Company?
 
V

vinnygambini

Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
Willxc123 said:
Does anyone know how that 1.5 billion of profit affects Nintendo? I know the Pokemon company is it's own separate entity, but doesn't Nintendo own a large stake in it? I never really understood that relationship, between Nintendo and the Pokemon company.
Click to expand...

Nintendo owns a 32% stake in the Pokemon Company. Nintendo publishes Pokemon games; as such, any revenue derived from Pokemon games are accounted in Nintendo's earnings releases.

Hypothetically, The Pokemon Company most likely distributes dividends (percentage of earnings, profit, distributed to stockholders) and GameFreak, Nintendo and Creatures are amongst its stakeholders.
 
C

Crayolan

Member
Never heard of Anpanman. It must be absolutely huge in the east to top brands like Hello Kitty and Pokemon which are popular in both the west and the east.
 
G

Game Guru

Member
Mr-Joker said:
Nintendo has a stake in the company and pretty much handles the production and distribution of each Pokémon game.

You should check out polygon article on The Pokémon Company.

What is the Pokémon Company?
Click to expand...

Basically, because Nintendo, Creatures, and Game Freak are independent companies who co-own the rights to Pokemon and because Pokemon is this popular global franchise, those three companies needed a go-between for licensing out the Pokemon IP to other companies, hence The Pokemon Company, designed specifically to manage the brand so that Creatures, Inc. and Game Freak can continue to focus on the most important part... the mainline RPGs. Because the Pokemon Company exists to deal with the minutia of managing the brand itself, Game Freak can focus completely on making not just the Pokemon games, but others like Drill Dozer and Harmoknight.

In exchange for existing to manage a brand co-owned by three independent companies, Nintendo, Creatures, and Game Freak each own basically 33% of the Pokemon Company each.
 
V

vinnygambini

Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
Pardon me for the slight bump, though the Japanese 2013 report does not provide any annual merchandise sales per character unless subscribed, as point of reference, back in 2005, the Japanese market composed of the following:

2005 Character Market Scale in Japan - 1.61 trillion yen

Rank | Character | Share | Income
01. Winnie the Pooh 6.72% 108.2 billion yen
02. Hello Kitty 6.09% 98.1 billion yen
03. Mickey Mouse 5.06 81.5 billion yen
04. Anpanman 4.89% 78.7 billion yen
05. Pokemon 4.05% 65.2 billion yen
06. Pretty Cure series 3.52% 56.7 billion yen
07. Miffy 2.56% 41.2 billion yen
08. Rilakkuma 2.51% 40.4 billion yen
09. Super Sentai 2.49% 40.1 billion yen
10. Gundam series 2.43% 39.1 billion yen
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Game Guru said:
No... That's Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty. Those two characters, despite not having cartoons at the moment, are licensed to pretty much everything and make most of their money off of that. They are icons that are always well-known.
Click to expand...

Umm Mickey Mouse has been having new shorts being made since 2013, which are awesome.
Dunno about Hello Kitty though.

Rather impressed Anpanman is #1 though.
 
S

spyroflame0487

Member
Busaiku said:
I'm surprised Pokemon is so low, relatively.
Anpanman I can understand, but do Disney and Sanrio even have cartoons airing?
Click to expand...
Mickey has a new line of cartoon shorts on Disney Channel (which by the way are amazing and I encourage everyone to check them out. Seriously, go do it right now. I guarantee you'll laugh). From the looks of the listing, it's probably all of the Mickey properties which could go for limitless directions; bedding, figures, clothing, plush, etc.

tumblr_mxi5fiSvYM1s2wio8o1_500.gif


I would assume Hello Kitty is the same way; anything you can think of probably at one time or another had Hello Kitty or Mickey's face plastered on it.
 
K

Kusagari

Member
People seriously surprised at Hello Kitty? I'm surprised it isn't #1.

You cannot walk into a store in America without seeing her plastered on 50 different products.
 
G

Game Guru

Member
spyroflame0487 said:
Mickey has a new line of cartoon shorts on Disney Channel (which by the way are amazing and I encourage everyone to check them out. Seriously, go do it right now. I guarantee you'll laugh). From the looks of the listing, it's probably all of the Mickey properties which could go for limitless directions; bedding, figures, clothing, plush, etc.

tumblr_mxi5fiSvYM1s2wio8o1_500.gif


I would assume Hello Kitty is the same way; anything you can think of probably at one time or another had Hello Kitty or Mickey's face plastered on it.
Click to expand...

Oh does Mickey? That's news to me... That is a pretty good redesign for Mickey given Flash Animation's limitations.
 
L

Legendarylemur

Member
Anpanman was a badass. I remember watching his cartoon back when I lived in Korea. The mfer tears off his fking face and feeds it to people to heal them. Could you do that? I couldn't.
 
R

rrs

Member
I've heard of Anpanman before this thread, it's pretty much a big book/movie/anime/anything franchise that's been around for forever. Doesn't surprise me with it's place.
 
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