Jazwares Grows Leadership Team
Jazwares, LLC expands its team with four new industry veterans to manage its growing global presence. All will report directly to Laura Zebersky, chief commercial officer.
Chris Cofoni, a veteran senior sales executive in the music and entertainment industry with experience at EMI and Melissa & Doug, joins Jazwares as the vice-president of specialty and mid-tier sales. This newly minted division is a solution for the unique challenge these two channels face. By offering customized and exclusive product, Cofoni is building an entire sales force under Jazwares Boutique. The goal of the sales team is to provide one-on-one customer service and creative marketing solutions to showcase each brand. Jazwares Boutique was unveiled at New York Toy Fair in 2016. Since then, the team, lead by Cofoni, has expanded retail channels across categories such as home improvement and drug.
Chris Parrish joins Jazwares as senior director, licensing. Parrish’s hire will bolster Jazwares’ expanding licensing unit, with new outbound licensing programs emanating from Jazwings novel incubation team. He will also corroborate with major entertainment studios and principal content creators to identify and secure new brands. Parrish hails from Hasbro where he specialized in toys and games.
Experienced toy and hard goods global category manager, product designer, and director Audrey Knott joins Jazwares as senior director of business, where she will focus on girls’ preschool brands. Knott’s experience includes Hasbro and its licensees as well as Aqua-Leisure Industries, where she designed, developed, and managed toys and games portfolios.
Monika Salazar is the freshly appointed senior director, trade and retail marketing. In this new role at Jazwares, Salazar will help publicize Jazwares as a leading authority on creativity and innovation in the industry. Salazar comes with decades of marketing and management experience in lifestyle marketing and licensing, retail development, and trend-setting public relations programs for companies such as The Walt Disney Company, MTV Networks/Nickelodeon, Hasbro, and The Pokèmon Company International.
Larkshead Media Hires Special Consultant
Media services company Larkshead Media has appointed licensing industry expert Melanie Humberstone-Garley as special consultant. In her new role, Humberstone-Garley will focus on licensing opportunities for a number of Larkshead properties, with a particular emphasis on soft lines.
Humberstone-Garley brings more than 20 years experience across all product categories to her new role, notably as director of MHG Licensing, her own consulting group, offering short and medium-term solutions for licensors, licensees, licensing agents and brand owners. Prior to MHG, she was a licensing consultant with Misirli UK Ltd, a supplier of inspirational trend-driven garments, and head of sales, merchandise & licensing, ITV STUDIOS Global Entertainment Consumer Products. There, she was responsible for driving the delivery of annual budget and sales across all M&L product categories for ITV kids’ brands in the UK. She was also UK territory manager with international media production company Chorion, specializing in apparel and soft lines across a number of brands including Mr Men/Little Miss, Paddington, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Noddy and Octonauts. Her more than 20 years in the licensed entertainment industry have also included posts with agencies as Those Characters from Cleveland, DRi, Entertainments Rights, and The Copyrights Group.