Characters Count

"The moment I saw them, I fell in love with them," says Kenn Viselman of the stars of the popular Teletubbies TV show. Viselman, whose New York City-based The itsy bitsy Entertainment Company markets the PBS series in the United States, attributes much of the program's international success to its uniqueness. "They're original; they're funny. They really [look like they're] figments of a child's imagination."

"The key for determining whether a property will succeed, in many cases, is originality," agrees Rob Felton, associate editor of the monthly trade magazine License!. "We hear from retailers constantly, `Don't show us this year's version of last year's hot thing.' Retailers and consumers know when they're being pandered to."

This article was originally published in the June 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Characters Count.