The Wiggles Pty Ltd

The Wiggles Pty Ltd is the business created by the founders of the Australian children's music group The Wiggles. The group was protective of their brand, and adopted many of the same business practices as The Cockroaches, the former band of Anthony Field and Jeff Fatt, two of their founding members. They remained as independent as possible, and retained full creative control and ownership of every aspect of their business. As Field stated, The Wiggles Pty Ltd was "not your regular 'corporate culture'." The group made decisions by consensus and made business decisions based upon their experience as performers and their knowledge of early childhood education. They did not tour with a large troupe of dancers, cast, and crew until the late 1990s, and had high expectations regarding the behaviour and attitude of everyone associated with the group. They made careful decisions regarding their endorsements of toys and other products, and avoided over-extending their brand by only licensing products that correlated with their image.

The Wiggles formally consolidated their business in 2005, and consistently appeared in Business Review Weekly's yearly list of Australia's richest entertainers. They faced difficulty in producing a television show with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, so they created thirteen episodes of a self-produced television series. By 2002, they began airing their TV programs exclusively with the ABC and became "the most successful property that the ABC has represented in the pre-school genre". In 2009, they partnered with the digital cable channel Sprout to broadcast their TV shows. In 2012, due to the effects of the worldwide recession, they cut back on much of their international expansions.

Other ventures of The Wiggles Pty Ltd included franchising their concept to South America, Taiwan, and other countries, opening "Wiggles World" sections in theme parks, and online offerings.

Despite Anthony Field's expressed dislike of the term "branding", preferring to refer to it as "preserving the good name of The Wiggles", the group has stressed the importance of, and were protective of, their brand. Field, along with bandmate Jeff Fatt and Field's brothers Paul and John, were in the pop band The Cockroaches in the 1980s; as Field reported, The Wiggles adopted many of The Cockroaches' business practices. They chose to remain as independent and self-contained as possible. The four original members retained ownership and creative control over every aspect of their business, and used outside companies to assist them as their business and popularity grew. As Field reported, "...Our venture developed organically. We weren't put together in some sort of Hollywood studio executive's office". They used Field's family members and friends in the early years: former Cockroaches such as Field's brothers and Cockroach drummer Tony Henry (Wiggles character Henry the Octopus was named after him) for musical support; Field's nieces and nephews to perform in their inexpensive videos; their girlfriends to perform as their costumed characters. The wife of founding member Murray Cook made their first costumes. As Fatt reported, "it was very much a cottage industry". They served as their own roadies and travelled in Fatt's van, which he drove, towing a trailer with borrowed equipment. Fatt did their bookkeeping on an old computer the first five to six years of the group's existence. They did their own merchandising, which consisted of selling albums, toys, and t-shirts out of a suitcase set up on the back of a trailer.

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