15 December 2008

No Christmas without light

Christmas is the high season for ASP-HOLMBLAD, which is Europe's biggest manufacturer of candles. Chas. Hude protects the company's brand.

"Christmas is absolutely our high season. In December, we light up extra candles and cozy up in our candlelit homes. It is impossible to imagine the Christmas month without Advent candles, Advent wreaths, Saint Lucy's Day celebrations, tea light candlesticks, lanterns, and Christmas candles. We can definitely see that this has an effect on the demand for our products," says Mette Poulsen, head of global marketing at APS-HOLMBLAD.

Quality is our hallmark

ASP-HOLMBLAD traces back to the year 1777 when Jacob Holmblad founded a candle factory in Copenhagen. Today, the company has a purchasing office in China and factories in Germany, Portugal, and Sweden where ASP-HOLMBLAD has the world's biggest candle factory.

"Quality is - and always has been - our hallmark. We are Denmark's biggest brand name supplier of candles, but we also make other products within table arrangements and acces-sories for the house, for example design table napkins, tablecloths, glass dishes, and can-dlesticks," says Ms Poulsen.

Managing the brands

"We have co-operated with Chas. Hude in connection with designing our trade mark strat-egy and protection of our intellectual property rights. We have deliberately chosen to out-source the administration and handling of our trade mark portfolio to an external cooperating partner who is in full control of the legal aspects of our brands. We are extremely satisfied with our partnership with Chas. Hude," says Ms Poulsen.

"In addition to registering trade marks in relevant markets and in the relevant classes, you can protect products by for example having the design of the packaging and labels regis-tered as designs," says legal consultant Ellen Breddam.