Characters Count

It's harder to grab the attention of consumers today. Or maybe it's just harder to keep their attention. Whichever is true, tracking trends--and capitalizing on them--is anything but easy. What's hot one day could turn ice cold the next--and vice versa.

Nowhere is this shifting landscape more apparent than in the world of licensed properties for children. Who, for instance, could have envisioned the buying stampede triggered by those oh-so-rotund Teletubbies? On the flip side, last year's Babe sequel failed to live up to merchandising expectations. With so much riding on the hits, how do entrepreneurs know where to place their bets? We went looking for answers.

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