Helen of Troy enters licensing agreement with office supplies co., drug maker

EL PASO, Texas A company that designs, develops and markets brand-name personal care and household consumer products plans to license one of its brands to an office products company and a drug maker.

Helen of Troy announced Friday that its OXO brand had entered two licensing agreements with Staples and pharmaceutical company UCB. The 19-year-old brand makes consumer products based on Universal Design, and products resulting from the relationships with Staples and UCB will use OXO’s resources and design philosophy.

The office tool line, OXO Good Grips, will be available in all Staples stores and on www.staples.com beginning this month. The line includes items such as push pins, staplers and staple removers.

“With these partnerships, we were able to apply our design principles in a different setting,” OXO president Alex Lee said in a statement. “Both were collaborative processes from beginning to end and executed as if they were internal OXO projects.”

With UCB, OXO has developed a syringe and packaging components for the drug Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) designed to accommodate rheumatoid arthritis patients who self-administer their medicine. The Food and Drug Administration approved Cimzia as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis earlier this week.