Peppa Pig and Me: Enterprise Journey With Richard Bridgewood
An entrepreneur is essentially someone who when presented with an opportunity, acts – as opposed to the majority who may acknowledge the opportunity but will not act. This opportunity can arise from just about anywhere - education, insight, market knowledge, skill, contacts, regulation, good timing, and of course innovation.
In my case the first opportunity that seemed to offer attractive prospects was the impending impact of a disc-based format for the home entertainment industry. When I started my first business in 1995 the dominant medium for pre-recorded content was VHS tape, a cumbersome and low quality format that was expensive to make and distribute. But coming fast down the line was the digital revolution in the form of the DVD. I had lived through the eighties when the arrival of the audio CD revolutionised the music industry – in the form of both simple hardware and cheap to manufacture software. The combination provided a huge wave of cash as entire back catalogues were re-released on the new medium. The same was going to be true of DVD, and taking advantage of that opportunity was what prompted me to found the Contender Entertainment Group in 1995.
Fast forward a few years and the cash generated by this successful enterprise needed to be put to good use.
What we had learned in that time was that there was a direct correlation between those children’s TV shows that sold well on DVD and those that generated strong sales of other licensed products – in other words, as consumer brands. If families wanted the bottled programme they would also want the toy, toothbrush or lunch box of the same brand.
But not every kids TV show that was a ratings hit worked on DVD. So what was it about some that made a consumer hit and others a miss? Little by little, learning from both our mistakes and our successes, we began to figure out some of the elements that were leading indicators of whether a programme could make that desirable but elusive transformation into a consumer character brand.
Once we had figured that out, it made sense to invest in owning the whole brand, not just the video rights. And that’s where we directed the profits from our DVD business – into the ownership of children’s intellectual property, with a strong track record of success culminating in Peppa Pig®. Here the opportunity was taking a skill or insight we had picked up in one of aspect of our business, and leveraging that insight into a successful investment in a related but bigger – global - business.
And what’s the latest opportunity to present itself? A new BBC commission for a preschool kids show Mojo Swoptops® – and in the connected world the chance to exploit this new IP directly to consumers on global digital platforms. Watch this space!
Richard Bridgewood
Richard Bridgewood is a serial entrepreneur, business coach and angel investor working in Cambridge and London. Richard was educated at Stowe School and Edinburgh University and after graduating in French and Business Studies in 1988 worked for the media department of US commercial bank Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust Company (now part of JP Morgan) in New York and London.
He moved into the TV business in 1991 working for Hit Entertainment until he founded the Contender Entertainment Group (CEG) in 1995, which was acquired by Entertainment One (EOne) in July 2007 for £50m, making a return of 11,000% for its founder shareholders. He took CEG to its ranking of 51 in the Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track list of the top 100 fastest growing private companies in 2002. In the same year, Richard was also a finalist in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards and in April 2004 the company ranked 18th in the Deloitte Indy 100 list of companies showing sustained sales and profit growth over five years.The company was a leader in the burgeoning DVD market through the late nineties and in 2003 the company began to develop and market its own wholly owned children’s character brands hitting mainstream success immediately with Tractor Tom®, followed by current preschool phenomenon Peppa Pig®.
All four of the company’s 2008 productions (Peppa Pig, Little Kingdom, Lost and Found and Humf) won BAFTA nominations in 2009, winning two, and Peppa Pig® has now become the no.1 selling preschool character licence globally. The sale of CEG to EOne in 2007 brought significant investment into the theatrical releasing division of the company, which scored immediate success with its first release, Twilight, in December 2008.
Under Richard’s management, Eone Entertainment became the UK’s #1 independent theatrical film distributor in 2010 (source: EDI).Since 2010 Richard has become director and majority shareholder in children’s spy themed action adventure centre Si5 Spy Missions®, a Cambridge based leisure business, which has expanded to include 10 centres nationally. He has just started another business, Tararaboom Ltd., whose first release Mojo Swoptops® hit #1 for commissioning broadcaster CBeebies in just its second week of release.Richard is married with three children and lives near Cambridge.
