The London Studio has appointed Firefly Brand Management as the US agent for its playful, funny and ever-so-slightly-subversive new brand, Art of Drag.
Following an agreement signed during Licensing Expo, the world’s biggest licensing show, Firefly Brand Management a respected agency whose team offers decades of experience in all facets of leveraging brand value, will bring Art of Drag to the vast US and Canada markets for the first time.
Art of Drag is all about the reimagining of famous artworks that feature cultural female icons, who are then replaced with drag artists – to stunning and memorable effect. Each original Art of Drag artwork features a beautylicious Drag Queen, created by an award-winning independent art house of LGBTQ+ artists and allies.
The brand targets a core market of young adults, but The London Studio expects a strong secondary market among teens and tweens, for whom drag is now very much part of mainstream British culture.
The wide range of famous artworks is expected to translate across multiple product categories in the US and Canada. Firefly is already planning a wide-ranging licensing campaign that will include partners in such categories as apparel, accessories, home décor and stationery. In fact it hopes to announce the finalisation of some early deals very soon.
The agreement with Firefly for the US and Canada follows a number of significant UK deals for Art of Drag and The London Studio, which this year have already seen the Art of Drag brand appear on six Art of Drag images from independent wall art company Tall Boy Prints, t-shirts from major UK retailer boohooMAN, and 2024 calendars, jigsaws and foiled embossed notebooks from independent publisher Flame Tree Publishing. A number of other Art of Drag UK deals are in the pipeline, with more announcements planned soon.
Cynthia Modders, CEO, Firefly Brand Management, says: “We are delighted to be working with The London Studio. They are an incredibly talented group maintaining an amazing line-up of assets and an eye-catching portfolio.” She adds: “They are very successful at identifying on-trend programmes that deliver results and garner enormous interest for their brands. We’ve just returned from Licensing Expo with a handful of deals already in place for this amazing property and anticipate many more to come”.
Founder and director of The London Studio, Soula Zavacopoulos, adds: “Firefly loved Art of Drag, were thrilled with its potential and see it as a brand they can develop for the long term across a wide audience. In short, they get it. We’re thrilled to be working with this experienced and insightful agency on developing this exciting and distinctive brand for the US and Canada markets”.
Awareness of The London Studio and its work is growing fast. Its success in greeting cards and gifts now extends to a fast-growing list of international retailers and licensed publishers. It has also launched a number of specially created lifestyle brands appropriate for apparel, gifts, homeware, stationery and more.
