22 Jul 08

Classic brand enjoys books and cards sales surge after joining Coolabi stable

Purple Ronnie may be entering his third decade as Britain’s favourite cheeky cartoon bloke but he’s nowhere near slowing down. In fact, since Purple Ronnie was acquired from creator Giles Andreae by Coolabi in 2007, the brand’s popularity has reached new heights.

Soon after acquiring the character, Coolabi, which specialises in the ownership, development, creative management and exploitation of high quality children's and family intellectual property assets, injected investment into research, marketing and creative development. That investment has already paid off in spectacular fashion in Ronnie’s core license areas of books and greetings cards. In fact key licensees Pan Macmillan and Hallmark have both enjoyed significant sales increases of Purple Ronnie-branded product to the end of June.

Pan Macmillan, the fiction and non-fiction book publishing arm of global publishing giant Macmillan, has reported increased sales of Purple Ronnie publications year on year across all key occasions including Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Published under Macmillan’s humour imprint Boxtree, Purple Ronnie’s Little Book for a Smashing Dad was expected to enjoy good sales in the run-up to Father’s Day, In the event, it did even better, easily topping the Sunday Times bestsellers list.