“Without direct experience, there’s no authenticity.”

“T-shirts, programs, posters, clown’s noses... get your souvenirs here!” From the time Cirque du Soleil began, merchandise sales were always important to the company. It was a highly lucrative sector of activity, contributing to the deployment and exploitation of the brand. We gradually developed our merchandise through trial and error, an approach that brought improvements year after year and yielded excellent results.

As the 1985 tour began, we just started with our first line of products (T-shirts, programs, posters, sweatshirts, clown’s noses, etc. Our approach was simple and intuitive. A few days before the first performance on the tour, Guy burst into my office. He was beside himself. He gave me a dressing down as only he could do. He was furious that I had authorized such a large order of products. He claimed we didn’t have enough liquidity to justify a big inventory. I pointed out that our order was based on extremely conservative sales projections and that, in my opinion, it was the least we could produce if we wanted to have a favorable cost price ratio.

I also assured him that I had taken care to negotiate reasonable terms of payment with our suppliers. But to no avail. The tirade continued unabated. I attributed his reaction to stress brought on by the tour launch. The next Monday, after our first week of shows, Guy called me up and tore into me again because, he said, we risked running out of stock. Customers couldn’t get enough of our products: our merchandise was flying off the shelves and during the first weekend our sales succeeded all expectations.

We never really suffered from product shortfalls while I was running the marketing department. Consumers appreciated our highly diversified range of articles as to price and type of product. They were happy they could find items for as little as a dollar and as much as $500. What was really amazing is that fewer than 10% of the products generated over 85% of the revenues. This applied to almost every city we visited in the world. Our best sellers were our videos, music, and souvenir programs.

In the early 1990s, we tried to set up a licensing program, in which we granted operating licenses for use of our trademark to manufacturers who distributed their products in large stores and specialized boutiques. We teamed up with Determined Productions, a San Francisco firm, with solid experience in the domain. The company acted for us, developing concepts, models and visuals, which it offered other firms involved in clothing, accessories, toys, jewelry, etc. Company founder and chairperson Connie Boucher fell in love with Cirque du Soleil. She was passionate, honest, dedicated, and a bit of a visionary. She was an artist. Jean Laliberté, Guy’s dynamic younger brother ran this highly ambitious project.

Could the qualities of our new show trademark be projected onto clothes and other popular consumer items? A number of factors had to be taken into consideration. First, brand recognition. How recognizable was our brand to consumers and what did it conjure up in their minds? And what demographic should we target initially? Children, teenagers, adults, men, women? We also had to determine the range of products to create. Which should we choose: sports clothes, leisure wear, jackets, pants, dresses, ties, scarves, travel items, decorations, wallpaper, gift items, Christmas articles? The list was endless. There were so many questions, that our agent preferred not to answer them directly but to get advice from manufacturers who had a sense of flair.

Our agent’s concepts appealed to some of the manufacturers who attended our shows. Quite rightly, he wanted to take full advantage of the imagery and creations we’d developed over the years. But after a few years our efforts had failed to bear fruit. Especially after the death of our beloved Connie, the firm’s chairperson and principal stockholder, her estate decided to end the partnership.

Nonetheless, the experience taught us how to exploit the brand. Souvenir merchandising received more emphasis. Our products sold best when they were directly linked with our shows. That’s one reason why Cirque du Soleil boutiques are so successful in Orlando and Las Vegas because they are located near the theater.

I believed that brand exploitation deserved particular attention. The recent events led me to draw the following conclusions: we were among the best in the world in the live show sector, and we’d carved out an international reputation for excellence. Our merchandise sales were strongest on the show sites themselves.

In distributing the music from our shows internationally, we faced stiff competition. All you have to do is go to a record shop to see that. The same applied to our television shows, films, videos, cartoons and variety shows, etc. In these sectors, the competition was generally light years ahead of us.

Associating the characteristics of our brand with other areas of activity — amusement parks, hotels, restaurants, spas, — was, I feared, a risky proposition. There are limits to how far you can stretch a brand, and the limits vary from one brand to another. Apart from the financial incentive, what’s the point of trying to “force” such a fragile and unique brand to expand? Why risk cheapening a treasure?

Some brands lend themselves to all sorts of exploitation. Virgin is an outstanding example. But as far as I was concerned, the Cirque du Soleil brand was intimately related to the Cirque du Soleil experience. The word that best encapsulated the qualities of our shows was authenticity. The further the consumers were from the experience, the less credible and appealing they found our merchandise. Without direct experience, there was no authenticity.

What do you think?

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