Leveraging Your Assets, Disney Style

Since Disney's 1953 movie "Peter Pan", Tinker Bell has been a popular classic Disney character, but they never did much with her.

Now, according to an article I saw last week in the Chicago Tribune business section, they want to "recast" her to launch a billion dollar Fairies franchise, aimed at girls who have outgrown the "Disney Princesses", but are still too young for Hannah Montana.

They are going to start the launch with the straight-to-DVD movie "Tinker Bell", which is due out on Oct 28, and made under John Lasseter - the creative force behind Pixar.

Then, there will be 3 more movies, followed by an online fairy world, followed by fairy-themed merchandise: books, toys, etc.

After the success of the "Princesses" line of merchandise (which should sell $4 billion this year), Disney had people hunting through their animation vault, looking for more opportunities.

They realized that Tinker Bell had a lot of latent demand they were under-utilizing, because Tinker Bell merchandise has always sold well at Disney parks and resorts ($800 million in sales last year).

Even before reading this article, I thought Disney does a good job of recycling assets. For example, they make expensive movies for the theaters - such as Lion King and Beauty and the Beast - then they reuse the characters in weekly shows on Disney's channels. Finally, they release the sequel as a direct-to-DVD movie - thus capturing a high profit margin.

I think Disney can serve as a lesson to small businesses and even individuals - take stock of your assets, and think creatively about how you can further utilize them for profit.