LEGO to Open Store in (former) Toy Building
Real Estate Weekly is reporting that LEGO will open a store on the ground floor at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street in January 2014. Yes, it’s the location of the (former) Toy Building and current home to food hall Eataly. LEGO will move into the spot that was occupied by Fidelity Investments.
According to Real Estate Weekly, the 800,000-square-foot office tower is 100 percent leased, serving as the world headquarters to Tiffany & Company, Grey Group, and IMG Worldwide. Real Estate Weekly says, “L&L’s David C. Berkey and Andrew Wiener represented the building’s ownership in the 10-year retail leasing transaction while Jonathan Scibilia and Andrew Kahn of Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant. Asking rent for retail space at 200 Fifth Avenue is $500 per square foot.”
Photos, Video from President Obama’s K’NEX Visit
As we mentioned last week, President Barack Obama visited the headquarters of The Rodon Group manufacturing facility in Hatfield, PA, home of K’NEX. The Rodon Group and K’NEX Brands, both third-generation family businesses, employ more than 150 people at their Hatfield facilities.
The goal of President Obama’s visit is “to continue making the public case for action by visiting a business that depends on middle class consumers during the holiday season, and could be impacted if taxes go up on 98 percent of Americans at the end of the year. As we enter the holiday season, the White House continues to urge Congress to act to renew middle class tax cuts so families have a little more certainty at this critical time for our economy,” said the statement from The White House. To watch the President’s speech click here.
Additionally, K’NEX released the images shown here of President Obama’s visit.
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The Passing of Murray Altchuler
LIMA Co-Founder Murray Altchuler, who served as the association’s first executive director from 1985–1997, died on Sunday at age 87.
A WWII Army veteran, he began his licensing career in the early 1960s at Licensing Corp. of America, which was the forerunner to the current Warner Bros. Consumer Products. In 1979 he co-founded and became president of the Licensing Industry Association, an organization of licensors and agents. In 1985, he presided over the merger of LIA with the Licensed Merchandisers’ Association (LMA) to form LIMA. He became the organization’s first executive director. He was a charter member (1989) of the LIMA Licensing Industry Hall of Fame. Altchuler retired from LIMA in December 1997.
“Murray Altchuler was a visionary with a distinguished career in licensing. He will be missed by the entire industry, especially those of us at LIMA,” said LIMA president Charles Riotto in a statement. “We mourn, along with the entire Altchuler family, for this tremendous loss.”
Altchuler is survived by his wife, Fran; son Steven Altchuler, his wife Debbie, and their children Joshua and Amy; daughter Fran Schwartz, her husband Marvin and sons Matthew, David & Sam; and stepson Mark Klein, his wife Hollis and their three daughters.
A private service and shiva was held this week. The family asks that donations in Altchuler’s memory be made to a charity of choice or to:
The Hole in the Wall Gang Fund,
555 Long Wharf Drive,
New Haven, CT 06511
To view an additional obituary click here.
All Baby & Child to Support Brixy Organization
All Baby & Child, the parent company of the ABC Kids Expo and spring educational conference and trade show, announced that beginning January 1, 2013, All Baby & Child will provide funding to the retail organization, Brixy. It will no longer provide funding to individual independent retail associations, including Baby News, Baby Furniture Plus, NINFRA, and USA Baby.
Brixy is a community of independently-owned baby and children’s retailers whose goal is to foster strong relationships with manufacturers, create strategic consumer-oriented marketing, and provide resources, education, advocacy, and programs to help participating retailers grow and thrive, according to a statement issued by the organization.
For more information on the organization visit www.brixy.com.
Creditors Network MAPP Trap Helps Manufacturers
Earlier this fall, MAPP Trap, which is a proprietary search engine was launched by The Creditors Network. This is a solution for manufacturers to protect the Minimum Advertised Pricing Policies (MAPP) as the service automatically scours the entire internet to find advertised price violations. It then “traps” the links to those violations and identifies the eMerchants so the manufacturer knows who to contact for policy enforcement. While many companies attempt to do the searching on their own, it’s a huge time commitment that incurs unbalanced labor costs, and it’s largely inefficient in comparison to a system that can perform millions of searches in mere seconds, says The Creditors Network.
“MAPP Trap allows us to monitor violations and correct them with a minimum of time and trouble. It provides a convenient place to collect, view and act on this information in one organized place, and the additional information Creditors’ Network provides to help us contact violators is invaluable,” said Lea Culliton, president of HABA USA, in a statement. The company has been using the MAPP Trap on a pre-launch, trial basis.
One of the hallmarks of MAPP Trap is how it identifies unknown or “ghost” sellers. When the search engine finds a violation, it does additional searches to find information strands (merchantDNA) about the seller(s). That information gets cross-referenced through The Creditors Network’s massive database in order to discover the vendor’s true identity or multiple identities. For more information visit: www.creditorsnetwork.com.
Kidz Bop, Burger King in Kids Meal Promo
Kidz Bop is partnering with Burger King restaurants to launch a six-week BK Kids Meal promotion. The promotion started earlier this week and will run through mid-January 2013. To support the campaign, 12 million custom Kidz Bop CDs will be distributed at more than 7,000 participating Burger King restaurant locations in the U.S. and Canada. The promotion is timed to coincide with the launch of Kidz Bop 23 on January 15.
The Kidz Bop/BK Kids Meal promotion will feature five individual three-song Kidz Bop CDs. One CD per Kids Meal, while supplies last. The program will be supported by in-restaurant signage, on-pack promotion, and custom online content.