Nickelodeon gets into Retail
April 3, 2014
By Chris Forrester
Viacom-owned kids channel Nickelodeon has just opened its first-ever retail store in Panama City and says it will shortly be opening other Nick-branded stores including Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this year and Moscow next year.
Viacom’s International Media Networks unit is looking after the investments, and these initial ventures will be followed by at least one other Gulf location (Jeddah) later this year.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nickelodeon’s Disney rivals has some 340 stores, many in North America, Europe and Japan, however the Viacom division has no intention yet of attacking the US retail market preferring to focus on emerging markets.
There’s another difference. Disney tends to operate its own stores, but Viacom will instead take a licensing royalty from trading partners.