Nov 23, 2011

Sanrio Announces Licensing Agreement with Up With Paper

Sanrio has announced a licensing agreement with Up With Paper, the world’s leading marketer of innovative three-dimensional greeting cards. Up With Paper will develop a new line of pop-up stationery products featuring pop icon Hello Kitty®. The collection will be launched at winter gift shows and at Toy Fair; the agreement is effective immediately.

This new licensing partnership will make Hello Kitty available in a variety of pop-up formats. Produced under the new UWP Kidsbrand, and featuring the top quality mix of design and paper engineering that Up With Paper fans have come to know and love, these Hello Kitty pop-up products will include a mix of new formats and formats that have been proven at retail. The Hello Kittypop-up stationery line will be launched in five product formats: Pop-Up Boxed Notes, Pop-Up Desktop Notes, Pop-Up Notepads, Sticky Notes Pop-Up Portfolios, and Pop-Up Portfolio Note Cards. Retail prices will range from $6.99 to $15.99; the stationery will be available at specialty retailers beginning in February 2012.

“We are thrilled to announce this new licensing partnership with Sanrio for one of world’s great brands, Hello Kitty,” said George White, President & COO of Up With Paper. “The multi-generational aspect of the brand, and the strong emotional ties it engenders, make it ideal for our industry. Our new partnership will enable us to introduce legions of Hello Kitty fans to our pop-up stationery products, driving new interest to our category, and our specialty retailers.”

About Sanrio
Sanrio, best known for global icon Hello Kitty and home to many endearing characters including Chococat, My Melody, and Keroppi, celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2010. The worldwide lifestyle brand was founded on the “small gift, big smile®” philosophy — that a small gift can bring a big smile to people of all ages. Today, over 50,000 Sanrio-branded items are sold in over 70 countries around the world. In the Western Hemisphere, Sanrio character-branded products are sold in upwards of 12,000 locations including department, specialty, national chain stores and over 100 Sanrio boutiques. For more information, please visit www.sanrio.com.

About Up With Paper
Originally founded as PopShots, Inc., in 1978, Up With Paper has been recognized for design excellence more than 55 times with the International Greeting Card Association’s highest honor, the “LOUIE” award, including the “Card of the Year” LOUIE Award in 2005. Up With Paper’s Panoramics, Treasures, Sight ‘n Sound®, and Tres Panache® lines of pop-up greeting cards, as well as the company’s Tres Panache Imprintables, Trinkets® and Tres Petites® gift enclosures, Pop-Up Boxed Notes, Travel Globes, Pop-Up Snow Globe Greetings®, Pop-Up Notepads, and Jumping Jack Press® pop-up books are available in thousands of specialty retail outlets throughout the United States and around the world, and may be seen on the company’s website at www.upwithpaper.com.