By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
Once in a while you run into a licensing company that is just so different from the norm, you’re compelled to write about them.
For me this week that company is King Ice, a jeweler that has specialized in curating trends from hip hop and streetwear culture, and applying that to the brand licensing industry. I spent some time speaking with co-founder Cuong Diep at the Licensing Expo in June, but was inspired to learn more this week after I spotted some of the jewelry King Ice created for brands like SEGA, DC Comics and 7-Eleven.
It was really the latter that got me thinking, as King Ice applied their street aesthetic to the convenience store giant’s popular Slurpee frozen beverages, and came up with a collection that puts some street savvy into a venerable brand. (see photo above)
Slurpees are, of course, the cooling drink of the summer for many people, and in July this year 7-Eleven launched a promotion that included a King Ice jewelry collection and a ‘song of the summer’ track and music video from rapper Flo Milli.
The collab coincided with 7-Eleven’s recent redesign of its Slurpee cups with nearly-fluorescent colors and bold black logos. “That revamp has now been set in stone, so to speak, in a jewelry collaboration with streetwear and accessories designer King Ice,” the company said at the time.
The four capsule collection pieces (available at this link) feature blinged-out Slurpee cups as a necklace, keychain, or car weight, plus an OG 7-Eleven logo pendant. All are plated in 14-karat gold (plus white gold S’s on the cups) and studded with VVS diamond simulate stones. Prices range from $100 to $120 at 7collection.com.
Additional Slurpee-themed necklaces, rings, bracelets, and a chain valued at $2,500 were given away to 7-Eleven rewards members, with purchases gaining entries to the contest through Aug. 1.
As for the aforementioned song, Flo Milli collaborated with rising stars Maiya the Don, 2Rare, and Kari Faux on a new banger with Slurpee-inspired lyrics titled “Anything Flows,” that captures summer vibes with its sound and an early-2000s aesthetic in its accompanying music video.
King Ice has worked on many other collaborations, a lot of them more what you’d expect from a hip hop and streetwear oriented jeweler, with brands like Snoop Dogg, Notorious B.I.G., Death Row Records, Odd Future, and Wu-Tang Clan, but the company has also worked extensively with major licensors like Warner Bros., Viacom, 20th Century Fox, NBC Universal, Live Nation, Sony PlayStation, and Microsoft Xbox.
More than just a jeweler, King Ice specializes in also helping brands bridge the gap into the world of hip hop they know so well, creating events or music collaborations like the one by Flo Milli for 7-Eleven. Some of their collaborations include collections for PacMan, Warner Bros.’ Batman, and Sonic the Hedgehog, among many others.
Co-founder Cuong Diep told TLL that the first collaboration of that nature was done with the Fox hit show The Simpsons at a time when their company was very young, and the work was incredibly difficult in their first foray into licensing.
Part of the reason, Diep says, was that they had a Minimum Guarantee (MG), but found it difficult to get products out the door, simply because Simpson’s creator Matt Groening was so busy with the show, that getting his attention for product approval could take time.
“We burned our hands on that one,” Diep says. “The MG was $20,000, and Matt Groening as the creative director was part of the approval process, but he was so mad busy nothing got approved for the first two years of the contract.
“But we didn’t give up,” Diep adds. “We started thinking that the licensing deal itself was great, and working with Fox was great, and when we went to their headquarters in Burbank it was a great experience to see all the companies they work with, and that project was an honor to be involved with.”
Still, as many smaller companies can confirm, working in licensing can be challenging when your company doesn’t have a lot of capital, as collaborations typically take over a year for products to actually hit store shelves, so there is usually a sizeable gap between signing the deal and generating the revenue. But, as their success grew, King Ice was better able to not only handle licensing terms, but also build out spectacular marketing campaigns that impressed clients and brought in new business.
In a major coup for King Ice, their unique work attracted the attention of one of the biggest names in both Hip Hop and licensing, namely rapper Snoop Dogg, who not only wanted to work with them, but expressed an interest in buying a share of the business.
“Snoop, he loves to wear all the Ice-style jewelry as part of his persona and have all the bling bling, so he came in one day and he said I want some ownership of your business, this is how we do it and we want to be a partner,” Diep recalls. “But initially we declined; we said, we worked hard on building our business, but let’s do a licensing deal, okay? We to build a collection under your name and we sell it, and then give some of the profits to your youth football league.”
That licensing deal lasted for the next decade, with Snoop Dogg and his football league earning good profits the entire time, but 10 years later the rapper came back with another partnership offer.
“He basically said, ‘I want to be a partner this time for real because I have a jewelry company offering me shares, offering me free jewelry, all that stuff, but I want to work with King, I want to work with you guys, because we have that history,” Diep said. “So after all the negotiations between our lawyers and his lawyers we gave him shares in the company provided that he deliver marketing effort for us.”
In the meantime, King Ice was still working with Fox, and the second time out the studio offered them the perfect property to work on.
“They gave us another license for the Empire TV show, and that was a big hit because we created a collection that actually focused on the hip hop culture in the series, based on music, hip hop culture, and that did really well for us and really well for them, and I guess that’s when things really took off,” Diep says. People looked at our product and they look at what we did. I guess they liked what they saw, because more companies came in and said they want to work with us, like Microsoft’s Halo, Sony Playstation, and we worked with SEGA on Sonic the Hedgehog.”
Diep says the key was offering their partners much more than just a product, and instead creating an entire ecosystem for the collection.
“We don’t just take their IP and then just make some piece of jewelry,” Diep explains. “We actually give them a full takeover of our website and sometimes we changed our site to their logo.The last time it’s changed online to the SpongeBob logo and they get the first banner, we make a lookbook for them, we do press releases, we give them a video as well, and our website has like 5 million unique visitors per year.”
King Ice also works with a network of social media and music industry influencers, so clients who work with them get a lot more than a branded jewelry collection; they also enjoy the benefit of a highly targeted and effective marketing machine. As Cuong Diep points out, the goal is not to just sell jewelry, but to elevate the brands they work with.
“We make them happy,” he says. “We make them shine.”
In the event you too want to shine, you can reach King Ice by email at help@kingice.com and by phone at 626-339-3642.
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