Reviving Classic Cartoons: The Success Story of Spirou and Dupuis Editions

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[...] The restoration of cartoons multiplied by ten the gains of the company Dupuis Editions, which is one of the most important today. To conclude, this article shows the link built by publishers between old cartoons and new technology and new business. In my opinion, it is very important to pass on the inheritance of the cartoon for our society. Restoring the book business has the double advantage to protect our patrimony and to maintain the cartoons business. But as the article showed us, some tries by publishers to renovate cartoons are not very conclusive. [...]

[...] And they are developing towards multimedia and television. Spirou, a character from 1938, when legendary cartoonist Franquin created him for traditional rigid comic books published by Dupuis. Now, Spirou has gained a new life and become a new source of income, maximizing profits on plush toys, pins, new adventures and TV series. As a result, Dupuis is number one, with 25% of the shares of a 400 million dollar francophone comic book market in Europe and Canada. Ten years ago, the marketing director launched a new generation of cartoonists. [...]

[...] In fact, the restoration of classic cartoons is important for the publishing companies. Moreover, the impact of this cartoons heritage on the companies is fundamental for the new business. The cartoonists made the rich years of publishers with few characters such as Spirou or Tintin. Their adventures became very famous until the years 1990 when the sales collapsed. The business was in decline for two decades. But since about ten years, a new selling system is set up by historic publishers. [...]

[...] The company also bombards readers with mailing offers and point-of-sale promotions for Spirou dolls and keychains. Over the past decade, licensing and marketing revenue has doubled to $8.4 million and is expected to double in the next five years. Dupuis acknowledges having made some mistakes, particularly in its multimedia policies last year. 'We thought CD-ROMs were the best medium for comics,' explains Patrick Pinchart, director of technological development. But at $36 each, the Spirou CD-ROM cost four times as much as a comic book and couldn't be distributed in stores. [...]