Two new executives are taking the helm of Amazon-backed collectibles company Superplastic – and are looking to bring the brand and its “synthetic celebrities” to more platforms and audiences.
Superplastic is a creation studio and a consumer brand in one. Founded in 2017, the company sells a variety of limited-edition designer toys and collectibles inspired by its original cartoon characters – a group that includes the cat-like Janky and the bunny-like Guggimon. The collectibles, which have their own personality and are aimed at adults, typically sell for up to $200. Superplastic says it has made millions of dollars from high-end stores such as Selfridges and direct-to-consumer, the latter including its brick-and-mortar store in New York City and its website.
Now the company is trying to expand its intellectual property business with the help of Amazon. Superplastic is working to turn its physical collectibles into virtual celebrities — ones who can steer multimillion-dollar content franchises ranging from games to apparel to music. To expand the brand, Superplastic has appointed two new executives in recent months: Jennifer van Dijk as CEO and Brian Scotto as Chief Creative Officer. Superplastic founder Paul Budnitz, who founded Superplastic after founding the collector company Kidrobot, remains available as a consultant to the creative industry.
With this new C-suite, Superplastic wants to establish a stronger place in areas such as sports and entertainment. The company’s goal is to transfer the existing characters to other formats – such as video games and streaming – and to create new characters. Superplastic, for example, plans to launch a gaming experience featuring its Dayzee character sometime before the end of 2024. Janky and Guggimon, who appeared in a 2021 iteration of “Fortnite,” will reprise their roles in a new edition of the game. With this expansion strategy, “profitability and high profitability are certainly the goals” in the next few years, van Dijk told Modern Retail.
Superplastic’s content deals and partnerships will be critical to this effort. In February, Amazon’s Alexa Fund led a funding round investing $20 million in the brand, bringing total funding to $58 million. Superplastic has also signed a deal for a first-look TV show from Amazon Studios and is currently in the process of writing a pilot starring Janky and Guggimon. In a statement, Paul Bernard, director of the Alexa Fund, said Amazon sees Superplastic “as evidence of a new class of intellectual property that will become increasingly relevant among younger generations.”
Collaborations are also an important part of Superplastic’s business. It has collaborated with luxury brands such as Gucci and Mercedes-Benz, as well as music artists such as Gorillaz, Vince Staples and Post Malone. In September, The Weeknd and Superplastic released a capsule collection of three vinyl figures to celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Weeknd’s debut album. This year, Superplastic ventured into music by launching its first record label, Superplastic Records, and signing its 3D animated hip-hop duo Ghost Kidz. (Ghost Kidz, who attended a real music festival in Miami, are voiced by “two prominent hip-hop artists who have chosen to remain anonymous at this time,” according to a press release.)
Today, the majority of Superplastic’s sales come through direct-to-consumer sales, which represents a “big focus” of future growth, van Dijk said. “That said, we will continue to look hard for other partnerships, be they wholesale relationships or licensing relationships,” she added. Superplastic is present in department stores such as Selfridges and Harvey Nichols. It could be expanded to other retailers at different price points in the future, van Dijk said.
“But right now we also feel like most brands are feeling this way,” she added. “Owning this customer data and understanding who these customers are can help inform not only our sales strategy, but also our brand and content strategy or our character development strategy.”
While it works with real celebrities, a core element of Superplastic’s business model is the idea of a “synthetic celebrity” – a fictional character who is essentially an influencer in his own right. Janky and Guggimon are among Superplastic’s biggest “synthetic celebrities” and have their own social media accounts. They currently have 12.1 million followers on TikTok. In total, Superplastic’s “synthetic celebrities” have 19 million followers on social media, according to the brand.
Scotto emphasized that “synthetic celebrities” provide a level of reliability in brand building. “I’ve worked with influencers for the last decade, and influencers change the things they want to do and they also cancel themselves,” he said. “Working with Superplastic and characters like Janky and Guggimon offers an interesting opportunity to create something that will last forever… But you can also constantly create new characters as you see fit.”
Superplastic is one of a growing number of brands creating intellectual property that bridges the digital and physical worlds. Claire’s Shimmerville franchise creates characters for her Roblox game and then sells merchandise featuring those characters in her retail stores. Last fall, Forever 21 began selling products on its website that tie into its Roblox game Shop City.
Drew Haines, director of sneakers and collectibles at StockX, told Modern Retail that Superplastic is “highly regarded” in the collectible space. While Superplastic isn’t the biggest brand in StockX’s collectibles business (which is owned by Disney and Mattel), it does well on the platform, Haines said. “From a StockX perspective, any time there is a tight release, we would support it in our catalog and we would see trades on it,” he said. Although it is subject to change, the average selling price of Superplastic items on the site is between $75 and $717.
The most popular Superplastic collaboration on StockX in the last two years is with the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club. Superplastic x Bored Ape Yacht Club products remain available on StockX, with asking prices ranging from $69 to $290. “I think this just shows that there is a lot of interest not only in the collection space, but also in how the collection space merges with Web3, social media [and] the rise of the AI influencer,” Haines said.
In fact, AI is something that Superplastic’s new executives want to explore. “If you think about the high-quality animation and character sculpts and things that we have, in many ways AI is not yet available as a plug-and-play solution,” van Djik said. “But we feel like we can stay on the cutting edge by using this to accelerate our storytelling.”
Scotto is also enthusiastic about experimenting with new technologies – and the breadth of the company’s business model. “We can do something in high-end luxury,” he said. “We can do something that is central to the music sector. We can do something nuanced in the toy world. We can live in all these different spaces. And I think that’s one of the brand’s superpowers.”
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