With countries, states and municipalities around the world mandating that people wear face coverings anytime they leave their homes, a tsunami of deals and rampup of manufacturing continues to rip through the licensing business. A category that sprang to life as a nascent effort by Etsy makers has emerged – with a charitable twist – as perhaps the most visible product category in the industry.

Disney and many others
Among the latest into the business since our most recent report: Disney now is selling non-medical masks featuring Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars characters sourced by its Disney Stores division. It announced its mask availability last Thursday, and by Monday morning posted on ShopDisney.com that “due to overwhelming demand, we’re thrilled to share that we have reached our goal of raising $1 million in profits from the sales of our cloth face masks, which will be donated to MedShare to support the medical community’s ongoing efforts to provide lifesaving care to those in need.” (It also said last week that it’s donating a million masks to be distributed by Medshare to “children and families in underserved and vulnerable communities across the U.S.”)

Meanwhile, Bravado Universal Music Group’s merchandise and brand management company,  announced it will sell a line of cloth face masks with logos of such artists as The Rolling Stones, Tupac Shakur and Billie Eilish, with all proceeds going to MusiCares in the U.S. and Help Musicians in the U.K. They’re available through Bravado’s We’ve Got You Covered eCommerce site.

Trevco, since starting production April 9, says it has manufactured and shipped 100,000 non-medical masks through MaskClub.com; each one sold is matched with a donation of medical grade versions (provided by health products supplier HoMedics) to a first responder through the First Responders Children’s Foundation.

Brand owners who recently granted licenses to MaskClub include Paramount and NBCUniversal, The Maurice Sendak Foundation (“Where The Wild Things Are”), Emoji Co. and NASA, says Trevco CEO Trevor George. Trevco also recently launched a mask “collaboration” with Hearst Corp.’s cooking brand Delish and is in discussions with a major consumer products food brand, George said.

More sports brands
Separately, FOCO, which launched its mask program with the NBA and WNBA in the middle of last month, has added licenses for the  NFL ( which is donating all proceeds to the CDC Foundation) and NHL (donating all proceeds to Feeding America and Food Banks Canada) to its roster. Fanatics, which is selling the FOCO masks (as is FOCO on its own site), also has the license for Major League Soccer (also donating all proceeds to Feeding America and Food Banks Canada) under its own brand.

Patience required
Consumers who buy licensed face coverings will have to be patient, in large part because of shipping times from Asia.  Disney lists all its masks (in both adult and kids’ sizes) as available for preorder, and that it “expect[s] this item to be available by 07/15/2020.” Similarly, FOCO’s NFL- and NHL-licensed masks are promised for June; deliveries of masks licensed by the NBA, which were announced several days before the others, are slated for the end of this week.

The tsunami of demand can be charted by the lengthening of delivery times for MaskClub, which manufactures its masks at its Michigan plant.  It started out in early April with 5-day deliveries, later slipped to 10-15 days and this week is at four weeks, says George.

“Demand has been so high because customers have been stressed about going outside but these are handmade masks produced in the U.S. and we have had to staff up,” says George, whose company is about a week behind in production and is planning to launch two brands a week in the near term.

Yet licensing outside of entertainment brands has been slow to emerge. Absent so far have been restaurant, corporate and automobile brands. In addition to the Bravado effort, a few other music acts have licensed, but for the most part haven’t participated out of concern about being seen as profiteering during the pandemic.

“There’s a mixed feeling [among musical acts] about a category like this that is associated so closely with something as horrific as the virus,” says Joe Marziotto, VP Branding and Licensing at Sony Music/Thread Shop.