icolas Loufrani, CEO of the Smiley Company, has sharp features, and a sharper grin. I find him in his London office wearing grey pin-striped dungarees, beaming energetically, clutching a poster that says: “Take the time to smile.” Around him, the room fizzes with iterations of the icon – you know the one. Fluorescent lights in the shape of that unmistakably simple, upbeat expression. Clothing, homeware, bottles of prosecco… all stamped with it.
Today, the Smiley Company is ranked one of the world’s top 100 licensing businesses, with 458 licensees in 158 countries. It boasts thousands of products across 14 categories, from health and beauty to homeware. This year it celebrates its 50th anniversary, which means – you guessed it – smiles all round; 65 new partnerships and collaborations with everyone from Reebok to‘We do a lot, but we also don’t do that much’: Nicolas Loufrani, CEO of the Smiley Company, photographed in Milan.
It can be difficult to imagine how such a simple icon could even be owned, but whether through genius or luck, Franklin had struck gold. The Smiley Company has fielded criticism for staking a claim to something so pervasive, but there don’t seem to be too hard feelings on Ball’s part. He died in 2001, but was “not a money-driven guy”, according to his son, Charles Ball, who told the: “He used to say: ‘Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time, drive one car at a time.
When it came to the business of selling smileys, however, it was the birth of acid house that sent sales stratospheric. The smiley first permeated the club scene after the designer Barnzley Armitage made a run of smiley T-shirts. The DJbought one and started wearing it in Ibiza. When Rampling launched his club night, Shoom, in London, in 1987, a flyer design featured smileys raining down it like ecstasy pills. Soon the smiley was reborn as a symbol of utopianism for a new generation of ravers.
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