With more people cooking at home, there’s been an upswing in licensing action in kitchenware. “While COVID-19 has been a catalyst for increased consumer demand for our products, we expect a new generation of home cooking will continue to have a positive effect on our revenues even when the pandemic is long gone,” said Lifetime Brands CEO Rob Kay late last year.

Competition for traditional players
Well-known and more traditional names such as All-Clad, Le Creuset and Staub and others face heightened competition from direct-to-consumer brands featuring designs and prices targeting trend-conscious millennials.  There also seems to be an uptick in character-based licensed appliances.

“Retailers are increasingly interested in licensed brands to add some entertainment to the kitchen since consumers are spending more time there,” says one licensing agency executive. “And food companies are excited about the opportunity to have items that remind consumers to buy their core products and hopefully increases salles in that business” at a time when well-known comfort food labels have gained favor.

Among recent developments:

• Licensed characters are gaining renewed favor with retailers. Uncanny Brands’ Baby Yoda-themed waffle maker was a top seller last year, hastening the company’s decision to add new characters to a kitchen appliance line that also includes Marvel, Bob Ross and NHL toasters, popcorn and coffee makers and other products.
• Lifetime Brands took its KitchenAid gadgets (whisks, fruit slicers, spatulas and other products) outside the U.S. for the first time, expanding a brand that it first licensed in 2000. It’s being marketed in a store on Alibaba’s Tmall that’s already home to Whirlpool’s KitchenAid stand mixers.
• Kitchenware supplier Vasconia Brands late last year began selling an 18-SKU line of MasterChef brand skillets, frying pans and knives in Mexico, marking the company’s first venture into licensing. Tycoon Enterprises is representing MasterChef in Mexico.
• G&S Metal Products Co., better known for producing private label products, will enter licensing by launching kitchenware carrying various Kraft Heinz Corp. brands by year-end. The Kraft and Heinz brands will be licensed separately along with other labels such as Philadelphia cream cheese, Kraft Mac and Cheese, and Velveeta. Brand Central is handling licensing for Kraft Heinz.
• Kitchenware product sales rose 59% in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, while those for kitchen measurement were up 76%, according to NPD. NPD also forecast fourth-quarter sales of kitchen electrics would rise 19%. (Year-end figures haven’t been released.)
• There’s new competition in kitchen from a raft of DTC brands including Made In, Material Kitchen, Milo, Field Co. and Great Jones, the latter named after cookbook author and editor Judith Jones.