Trio of Kids’ Execs Launch New Consumer-Products Platform

Eye Present’s Genevieve Dexter and Jules Coke have partnered with Sophie Cornish, founder of notonthehighstreet, to launch Space Hop, a new kids’ consumer-products platform.

Space Hop will provide a direct-to-consumer platform for owners of kids’ IP who are struggling with the traditional licensing-and-merchandising model. Space Hop will provide each IP owner with a branded destination website and access to a curated product marketplace, as well as an integrated suite of digital marketing tools, customer and market research, and product sourcing services.

The new venture is raising finance and being led by Jan Heuff, digital director of Squint/Opera. Dexter will focus on identifying potential IPs. She is joined on the board of directors by Cornish. Among other roles, Cornish is a director of Doodle Productions, which houses the Messy Goes to Okido brand.

Cornish said: “We’ve had enormous success in meeting the changing market dynamics involved in monetising a kids’ IP brand. In bringing Okido’s consumer products to the online retail market, we identified an exciting opportunity to build a platform and service which will do the same for other brands. We’re now very excited to launch Space Hop as the one-stop solution for this otherwise thriving sector.”

Coke added: “We are in discussion with several high-profile IP owners and will be announcing our first partnerships imminently. The response has been enormously positive and we are clearly addressing a gap in the market. We’re keen to hear from any IP owner who is experiencing the same problems with the traditional L&M market as we did.”

Dexter commented: “Our master toy deal did not bear fruit and so we acquired the unsold stock and started selling directly to our magazine subscribers and in so doing developed proprietary software and marketing techniques, the effect of which can be precisely monitored to plan marketing spend based on consumer behavior.”