From the wearable technology that graced fashion brands to home automation and more standard TVs, digital cameras and headphones, licensing was woven into the International Consumer Electronics Show last week.

In part the licensed brands were designed to both raise the profile of new and emerging technologies and provide a consumer draw. For example, eyewear supplier Safilo, which sells products under the Hugo Boss, Dior and Fendi licensed fashion brands, unveiled a new smart-glasses platform that uses sensors built into the frames to measure brainwaves. The data collected is sent to a companion app installed on a smartphone or tablet that detects a person’s mood and contains meditation exercises.

And Fossil, which markets 14 brands of smartwatches including those sold under the Armani, Michael Kors and Chaps labels, unveiled its first Kate Spade New York smartwatch with an Android operating system and full touchscreen.

The new watches stand in contrast to the first models of Kate Spade hybrid non-touchscreen smartwatches launched in 2016. Those models contained a classic watch design that happened to include accelerometers and Bluetooth chips. The new versions, which will be available in February, have aesthetic touches unique to the brand that are recognizable to fans, including a scalloped edge along the watchface.

“There is definitely some brand loyalty when it comes to fashion, but we also are tapping into a technology audience that may be looking more for wearable products and want a variety of styles instead of a techy piece,” says Fossil’s Laura Dechert. “Licensed brands also help provide credibility to a new technology and help establish it in a consumer’s mind.”

Those same traits can be found in home automation and security where a brand with an established name or presence helps attract consumers. For example, Voxx International weighed using its own MyGuard brand for a new home security products line, but chose RCA after finding that about half the consumers it surveyed preferred the label over well-established brands, says a Voxx spokesman. Voxx unveiled an RCA home security kit at CES replete with a motion detector, alarm, security camera and digital video recorder and paired with RCA app.

“This really plays to the strength and the value of the brand especially when it comes to something like home security where consumers are looking for a brand they can trust,” says a Voxx spokesman.

For Jasco Products Co., the Honeywell brand, already well established for professionally installed home automation systems, gave it an avenue to establish the technology in mass retailers, says Jasco’s Matthew Henson. Jasco already sells GE branded home automation products through Lowe’s, but Honeywell will be available to a broad array of retailers, says Henson. Jasco will launch a 13-SKU line of Honeywell dimmers, switches, motion sensors and other products starting in Q2, says Henson.

Elsewhere at CES:

• The Hugo Boss label found its way to prototype wearable golf apparel. Smart apparel platform developer Xenoma demonstrated with Hugo Boss its e-Skin technology using five sensors and a micro-computer woven into a prototype golf shirt designed to monitor a golf swing. The sensors monitor motion, breathing, pressure and body temperature and relay the information to a smartphone or PC. Xenoma will release a e-Skin software developer kit on Feb. 1 and expects to have product available under the Hugo Boss brand in 2019, says Xenoma’s Masao Nakajima.

• Licensing is bringing new focus to brands long dormant in digital imaging products. Elite Brands is reviving the Minolta banner for digital cameras, marking the brand’s return to a category it left in 2006, three years after merging with Konica. Meanwhile Idea Electronics Inc. is seeking to reestablish the Hewlett-Packard (HP)label in digital imaging with car and body camcorders, cameras, and photo frames. HP sourced and marketed its own digital cameras until 2007 and shifted to a licensing business in hiring LMCA a few years ago. Idea launched sales of 13.3-inch digital photo frames on Home Shopping Network and expects to have rest of its product line available by spring.

• Westinghouse, which via LMCA has built a roster of about 40 licensees, is considering pairing them to integrate technologies, says Westinghouse Electronics’ Brett Hunt, whose parent company, Tongfang, is a TV licensee. Westinghouse Electronics has had discussions with Westinghouse Security (licensee Strattec) about bringing security features such as displaying digital camera feeds in its LCD TVs, says Hunt. Separately, Westinghouse Electronics, which has largely limited TV sales to the U.S., is weighing expanding into international markets via distributors in Australia, China and Europe, says Hunt. Tongfang sharpened its focus on the Westinghouse brand last in discontinuing the non-licensed Seiki TV banner that it also had sought to establish in the U.S.

• Water sports brand Body Glove will move into electronics late this year. Licensee DGL Group is readying a 15-SKU assortment of water resistant speakers and power banks, along with wireless earbuds and headphones, says DGL’s Victor Sardar. “It is lifestyle brand that is all about surfing so the line needs to be water resistant and rugged to put the DNA of the brand into the product,” says Sadar. The pact is among the first Marquee Brands has struck since acquiring a majority stake in the brand in November from the founding Meistrell family, which kept a minority interest.

• Speaker maker Altec Lansing, best known for its home theater products, is developing a line of Major League Baseball-licensed waterproof speakers.  The company showed prototype St. Louis Cardinals, Minnesota Twins, San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox models at CES based the designs of its H20 Mini and Lifejacket Bluetooth-equipped waterproof speakers. The line would be Altec Lansing’s first venture into sports licensing and expand a brand that was acquired by Infinity Lifestyle Brands in 2012.

• The composition of CES exhibitors stood in stark contrast to previous shows. Japanese consumer electronics companies – Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi, Pioneer – once took center stage at the annual show. But with the exception of Sony and Panasonic (which dedicated its booth to its automotive infotainment platform), Chinese suppliers such as TCL, Haier, Hisense, Changhong and Skyworth largely replaced the Japanese brands.  Toshiba, which sold its TV business to Hisense, had a smaller booth filled with audio products including Bluetooth-equipped boomboxes. TCL even plastered an exterior wall of the Las Vegas Convention Center with a banner proclaiming the company as having the “fastest growing TV brand” in the U.S., a claim that is hard to verify given its relatively short time in the market.

(For more reporting from CES, go to www.licensing.org)

Contacts:

Altec Lansing/Infinity Lifestyle Brands, Altec Lansing, Leah Steinhardt, Marketing Dir., 212-695-6666 x558

DGL Group, Victor Sadar, VP, 732-692-5117, victor@dglgroup.com

Fossil, Laura Dechert, Wearables Marketing Mgr., 972-234-2525

Idea Electronics, Hamed Hejran, CEO, 866-886-6878

hhejran@ideausa.com

Jasco Products Co., Matthew Henson, Product Mgr., 405-752-0710

LMCA Ray Uhlir, Managing Dir. Brand Licensing, 646-781-3165, ruhlir@lmca.net

Marquee Brands, Colin Hagen, SVP Business Development, 212-203-8135

Westinghouse Electronics, Brett Hunt, VP Sales and Marketing, 909-972-9641, brett.hunt@westinghouseelectronics.com

Voxx International, Patrick Lavelle, CEO, 631-436-6556

Xenoma, Masao Nakajima, Chief Business Officer, +81 3 3830 7977, masao_nakajima@xenoma.com