Kay Kamen, every mention

The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired Jun 23, 2026 · 13 mentions

• ▶ 1:03:24 David Rosenthal So they contact an ad man in Kansas City that Walt admired named Kay Kamen, who had owned an advertising firm, and they agree to do a deal where Kay becomes the exclusive commercial products agent
• ▶ 1:03:47 David Rosenthal And the deal they do is that Disney would get 60% of the first 100,000 dollars in royalties that Kay is able to generate from licensing Disney brands and mascots.
• ▶ 1:04:15 David Rosenthal I mean, there, there is a real case to be made that besides Walt and Roy and, and, uh, I works too, but at least on the business side, besides Walt and Roy, Kay Kamen was the third most important person in the first, you know, half century…
• ▶ 1:04:35 David Rosenthal So within six months, Kay takes Disney merchandising from this hodgepodge of
• ▶ 1:05:17 David Rosenthal So the most successful and famous example of this is the deal that Kay does in 1933 right after he takes over with the Ingersoll Watch Company.
• ▶ 1:05:46 Ben Gilbert I don't even really understand how Kay lined up 40 merchants and got all this stuff manufactured and distributed in such a short period of time.
• ▶ 1:06:13 David Rosenthal So most deals that Kay would do would be for five percent
• ▶ 1:06:32 David Rosenthal Disney and Cayman are splitting five percent of that number between them.
• ▶ 1:06:46 David Rosenthal And K.
• ▶ 1:07:57 David Rosenthal Compare that to, you know, half of basically two million dollars in pure margin, almost pure margin revenue coming in from Kay.
• ▶ 1:08:36 David Rosenthal The deals that Kay is doing.
• ▶ 1:51:12 David Rosenthal I read, are 2183 separate SKUs of Snow White merchandise that get pumped into the global markets by Kay Kamen's consumer products organization.
• ▶ 3:03:48 David Rosenthal Kay Kamen had tragically passed away in a airplane crash in 1949, after which they in-house all of this within Disney.