The Big Interview – Alex Balzaretti

Alex Balzaretti, London 2012 Project Director for Hornby, discusses the brand’s Olympic involvement and its plans in sport beyond 2012…

How did Hornby become involved in London 2012?
When Beijing hosted the closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games, you might remember Boris Johnson took a red double-decker London bus as an icon of Britain for the handover of the Games. At that time Hornby had recently purchased the Corgi business and brand. Corgi is nearly 60 years old and its heritage is in making die-cast toy cars, buses, trucks, and trains, so we made connection with Locog, who hadn’t then established a licensing department as such, and we made a pitch for proprietary brand status; generally if you want a London 2012 contract you go through a tender process, but we pitched to Locog that because of the brands Horby owns, nobody else really had the British heritage and the capability to do the wide range of products that we could do. The long and the short of it is that we were given the rights to toys, gifts and collectables without having to go through that tender process.

So it quickly moved beyond that single red bus?
Yes, we pitched a number of things at that time. One was the idea of 40 collectable sporting taxis, which now exist – we have had them liveried up and they are out on the roads, because the nature of our business is that our collectors buy things that exist in real life, in small form. Another thing we put in there was miniature mascot figurines, and at that point no-one had any idea what the mascot was going to look like. We now have a forecast of about a million units of mascot keyrings, 3D solid metal, and about half a million solid figurines. We had never made those before, and the legacy it will deliver for Hornby is huge – we have already signed rights to other licences which we wouldn’t have won without proving what we were capable of doing with London 2012.

In terms of new business, then, it has already had an effect?
One of the key objectives with signing the deal with London 2012 was to break Hornby out of a pigeon hole –  people sometimes recognise the brand but assume it’s just about making trains. The rights to London 2012 Olympic products put us on another level, in front of a worldwide audience, with a retail opportunity that is absolutely unparalleled; the number that is bandied around is a billion pounds worth of merchandise. The profile it brings to any organisation is huge – there are approximately 500 companies that have the opportunity to provide Locog with something, be it security, building the stadium, or whatever. 500 companies out of all the companies in the world is quite a small club to be in, and the profile that has given to us has been tremendous. 

What are the challenges of your Olympic involvement?
You are expected to be best in class, from anything from quality to sustainability to compliance to safety to durability. All of your processes, procedures and policies, your ethics and how you manage that, are scrutinised, assessed and followed – it’s not just noted on a scrap of paper. But although there are some relatively onerous things that you have to take on board, once you implement them into your daily working life you can’t fail to stand out as an organisation. I can’t see that there is any licence out there that you then can’t work with, because this is on a completely different level.

Do you have firm expectations from this summer?
To a degree, but it’s completely unprecedented. Every retailer has dealt with a Harry Potter movie launch, or Manchester United winning the Champions League. They understand the uplift of potential sales if one of our teams gets to the World Cup final. There’s a history, there’s a graph, there’s a chart, where you can get a bit of a guide. We’ve never held the Olympics in our own country in a time when the commercial side of things is so powerful. So whether you’re talking to the Asda Wal-Mart buyer or somebody that has a cashmere shop that the red London tourist bus stops outside, trying to explain to them what this is worth and why is difficult, because nobody really knows. But we released our first product with three years to go and we’ve had product rolling out since then – all our products were out by last year, so every retailer who has taken them in has a real understanding of what that product can do even without the uplift of this summer. We have a responsibility and a duty of care to those companies not to overdo it, and to select product correctly based on their local market, sports in their community, and really helping them dig deep to ensure they get it as right as they possibly can. If we let these people down we won’t have much of a business left beyond it.

You’ve also brought an Olympian on board in the form of Lizzie Armistead. What prompted that?
When we signed up to our Locog agreement it didn’t bring rights by association – we can’t consistently say ‘Hornby do this, Hornby do that,’ because of the sponsorship rights and the value associated with those. So we had to find a way to communicate what we are doing. We worked with a PR agency to explore that and set up a partnership with an up and coming British talent who might be fairly unknown to a wider audience – just like us. We set up an agreement with Lizzie Armistead which I think has worked very well for both parties – she was young, relatively unknown and needed that profile work. She was thrilled as she had been approached by a number of other people to do things that perhaps weren’t quite as good a fit. The work we’ve done with her, and what we’ve got from it, and what she’s got from it, has been more than either party at the outset ever anticipated. It’s definitely something we would look to do again in the future around other events.

Will those future events include other Olympic Games – Sochi or Rio perhaps?
Yes. We probably wouldn’t take a red London bus to Rio but if you’re looking at keyrings, figurines or pin-badges we’ve proven our capabilities. Once you’ve done it, and you’ve done it well, your reputation precedes you. There are challenges with Rio, for example, in terms of import laws, so it’s a little more unlikely, but we’ve looked at Rugby World Cups, we’ve looked at the Commonwealth Games, we’ve looked at big international football teams – there are a lot of conversations being had. I’m sure you’ll see more of Hornby in the sport industry in the future.