An Interview with the Director of Walt Disney Art Classics - Lee Zoppa
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LP: Have you been able to find licensing partners?
LZ: We did find a licensing partner for Pooh and Friends and that deal went into effect on June 1. Cast Art, based in California, is the new US licensee for that line of porcelain bisque figurines. We’re still negotiating with potential licensing partners for our Disney Fine Art portfolios (giclees, sericels, hand-painted animation art cels, serigraphs, etc.). However, I want to stress that no matter what - - we will continue to produce all of our hand painted cel art here at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and, in particular, using staff from the original Ink and Paint Department.
Peter Ellenshaw "Spring - Kite Flying Days"
(c) Disney
Our 2D art portfolio can easily be divided in a couple of different ways. We have our traditional reproduction hand-inked, hand-painted cel art; our high-end sericels (serigraph printing on acetate cel); our limited edition fine art giclee prints featuring such artists as Disney Legend Peter Ellenshaw and, of course, our Art of Disney Storybooks (fine art prints of classic Disney book illustrations).
LP: Will you tell us about your background?
LZ: Actually we can go all the way back. I studied journalism at Northwestern University and received a Bachelor of Science degree; then I decided to go back and get my Master’s in business so I have a Masters in international business with emphasis in marketing and advertising. I love marketing and advertising. I’ll always be involved in those areas in some way, shape or form. Anyway, I went on to work for Enesco Corporation for 9 years -- Enesco has been in the past one of the premier leading gift and collectible companies in the United States. They also have distribution worldwide, and I basically started as the first non-Precious Moments product manager / marketing manager. When I left Enesco a little over nine years later, I had created department of 30 marketing people. Everything that I learned about gifts and collectibles, I learned at Enesco because they’ve been around for 40 years and are steeped in the business.
I came to Disney four years ago in July as marketing director and have been able to learn a lot about the Disney brand in conjunction with gifts, art and collectible. I’ve had a couple of different roles within Walt Disney Art Classics over those four years, including working on different product lines, different portfolios. The challenging thing about the collectibles business within The Walt Disney Company is that it’s the polar opposite of what Disney’s other units are accustomed to doing - grow, grow, grow! With collectibles, it’s a supply and demand situation since we only sell about 85 percent of what the demand wants to buy. But what collectors love is hunting for things and that’s what makes this business so interesting, and fun. They love trying to find things on the secondary market. So, what I’m hoping to do is get Walt Disney Art Classics as a business unit and the Walt Disney Classics Collection as a collectible line back more into the mindset of what a true collectible company or a true collectible brand can be.
LP: Are you concerned about people who are only buying to resell and have no interest in the pieces themselves?
LZ: There are people that abuse the secondary market - - they’re not buying the pieces because they love them or want them, they are buying them as an investment. We hope people buy the pieces they love, or a piece that they want to display in their home. A piece that represents a fond Disney memory or the emotion felt from a particular movie moment.
A lot of people want to create a collection and hand it down to their children or their grandchildren; that’s something that is very common. There are over 31,000,000 households that identify themselves as "collecting" households in the United States. They collect anything from stamps to coins to Ty Inc.’s Beanie Babies®, as well as high end art or sculptures, but there’s no doubt that it’s a growing phenomenon. There’s also a family collecting trend. Each member of the family has their own personal collection, which may vary in price. These days, we see a lot more families kind of collecting as a group.