Gilmar Ice Play line of Angry Birds clothing honoured by licensor Rovio
Maurizio Distefano Licensing, which manages licensing for the Angry Birds property in the Italian and Swiss market, has been honoured with a special award from brand owner Rovio.
MDL won the Rovio Innovation Award 2017 for the most innovative licensing product of 2017 for the development with Angry Birds licensee Gilmar Group, a major player in the Italian apparel industry, of a special Angry Birds version of the Ice Play apparel line for men and women. Rovio’s licensing team awards its best partners in different categories on a yearly basis.
The Gilmar Group is a leader in the manufacture and distribution of quality clothing brands, both house ones (Iceberg, Ice Play) and license ones (Paolo Pecora, Siviglia, N°21). The company’s growth and development strategy includes a wide range of clothing categories, from high-end ready-to-wear to youth fashion lines, but always with keen attention to style, technology and communication.
Ice Play is a sportswear range that emphasises the bright, bold, adventurous, cool and laid-back, and is described as “a riot of art, prints, colour and kaleidoscopic pop culture”. The Angry Birds collection, launched in store and online in late 2016, consists of a set of t-shirts, sweatshirts and other items with fashion forward and stylish designs of Red and the rest of the Angry Birds flock. The collection excellences also in innovative usage of Assets and Style Guides.
The Rovio team highlighted the collection for its ability to interpret the Angry Birds characters in an innovative and at the same time very recognizable way. There was particularly praise for the ingenious use of Angry Birds graphics to provide a distinctive product with high consumer impact and strong market positioning.
MDL CEO Michela Marchese Patti and MDL founder Maurizio Distefano were in Helsinki from 13-14 March to collect the award in person.
Angry Birds is massively popular in Italy where MDL signed the highest number of licensees for Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds brand in the 2015-16 timeframe for a single country. With the second Angry Birds movie set to release in 2019 and a whopping 4 billion game downloads since 2009, the property is likely to remain a leader in the MDL portfolio for some time to come.
Maurizio Distefano says: “This wonderful apparel line from one of the leaders in Italian licensed clothing thoroughly deserves the recognition that this award represents. It is not only a hit at retail but also a creative and stylistic triumph.”