720426Advanced Technological Platform solving distribution in the licensing industryClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKShip & Duck wishes to develop an extension to its Licensing Marketplace, currently facilitating product development through the connection of Brand Owners, Designers and Licensees (manufacturers) to encompass distribution, thus providing a comprehensive solution from partner discovery, to crowdsourcing of novel product concepts, product development and ultimately access to and exposure to retailers (“Buyers”). The licensing industry is widely considered as a fragmented market (many potential partners for each product category, and for each territory) dominated by a few massive actors (Disney, Hollywood Studios…). As a result, this industry is hard to navigate for most brand owners, products often lack innovation (with widespread “brand slapping”) and access to consumers via retail is extremely complex. Ship & Duck’s mission is to solve the pain points of this industry by connecting all licensing professionals (Brand Owners, Designers, Licensees) through a unique digital marketplace, which has been developed. We wish to extend this marketplace to retailers to cover the whole value chain ("Buyers Showroom"), providing tremendous value to licensing professionals (more distribution options, assessment of market opportunity of new products even before launch…) and buyers (access to exclusive products, no intermediaries, etc…). The Buyers Showroom will allow for intelligent matchmaking and dynamic pricing from real-time telemetry and analytics-driven, predictive and stochastic algorithm to optimize value for the partners. The development of the Buyers Showroom will lower the barriers to entry to this industry, allowing new companies, currently not able or not even considering licensing options because of the inefficiencies of this market, to start implementing brand extension strategies with new licensing partners, creating more choice for end user, increasing manufacturing, creating jobs and generating business.