Random House Group in the U.K. has formed Random House Enterprises, a new unit devoted to extending its content and trademarks, for both children and adults, into consumer products and content platforms including television, live events, and gaming.
The company is bringing on Jo Edwards from Discovery Communications to oversee the new venture as head of licensing, reporting to group commercial director Nigel Waters. At Discovery, she developed the company’s international consumer products and live shows and exhibitions businesses.
“There are tremendous opportunities to develop our authors and their IP in new markets,” says Waters, “and to unlock these we decided to bring in an expert and to create this unit, which can be a center of excellence for the wider group to plug into, as well as delivering its own projects.” The team will represent projects coming out of Random House Children’s Screen Entertainment, the company’s kids’ TV joint venture, and associated licensing opportunities.
The announcement follows Penguin Group’s June launch of Penguin Licensing and Consumer Products to handle its licensing and merchandising business across its offices in the U.K., U.S., and Australia.
On the U.S. side of the pond, Random House launched Random House Television last month in partnership with FremantleMedia. It has had a movie business, Random House Films, since 2005, and a team in place to extend its properties into videogames since 2010.
