Mondo’s booth at Funkovil at Comic-Con 2022. Photo: io9/Germain Lussier
Growing up, we’ve all had a moment when something special and niche we loved officially goes mainstream and becomes a little less cool. Maybe it’s your favorite band that finally has a hit album. Maybe it’s an amazing little movie you discovered with a big Hollywood remake. The sad fact is, with anything smart and successful, it’s almost inevitable that something bigger will take over and ruin everything good.
For fans of collectibles brand Mondo, that was one of the initial thoughts when Funko bought the poster, vinyl, and toy company in June 2022. There aren’t many brands in the col space right now. lessons bigger than Funko. It is a name synonymous with having something for everyone and being available everywhere. Which is basically the inverse of Mondo. Mondo products are usually limited and available in one place. That’s a big part of making them great.
When San Diego Comic-Con 2022 was initially announced, Mondo, then owned by Alamo Drafthouse, was located on the west side of the convention floor, surrounded by small shops and distributors. But after being acquired by Funko, it was moved to the opposite side of the convention, part of a massive booth called Funkoville, which consisted of multiple showcases for Funko’s brands, large photo ops, and square footage that dwarfed them all. another house on the ground.
I’ve been collecting Mondo posters since about 2008. At first I would buy them online or at special events, and eventually that turned into queuing for gallery shows and conventions. I’ve also been collecting Funko for a while, most famously commenting on their decimation in 2015. But the brands feel so diametrically opposed to each other that when given the chance to speak to the CEO of Funko, Andrew Perlmutter, at Comic-Con, I had to find out why his massive brand acquired this smaller one from Mondo and what it meant for both of them. Read our conversation below.
Crowd entering Funkoville. Mondo is on the left. Photo: io9/Germain Lussier
Germain Lussier, io9: I’ve been a fan of Mondo and Funko for a long time, but when I heard they had acquired Mondo I thought “This is a very strange marriage,” because obviously everything is pop culture, but Mondo is a marriage very strange niche thing, and Funko is very, very mainstream. So to begin with I would love to know how this happened?
Andrew Perlmutter: We have been fans of the Mondo brand for many years, for the same reason as you. They make beautiful products, [there’s] a very unique look and feel to their products. And so we have admired them for a long time. We are always in conversations with various brands that we admire. So when the opportunity arose that we could have a conversation about acquiring them and bringing them into our portfolio of brands, we jumped at it. We had a conversation and decided that Funko would be a really good home for them and they agreed. So it was mutual. They were very excited about it.
And I think the most important thing for someone like you who is a Mondo fan is our goal is to build the Mondo brand. Our goal is not to turn Mondo into Funko. That’s not what we do. Because you’re right. We have an opening price, low admission to collectibles. That’s what Funko does. Not only do we do it at a great price, but we do it for 1,100 different licensees.
io9: Exactly. Yes.
Perlmutter: So we go a mile wide and sometimes an inch deep, which is why we’re still there and everything is going so well because we don’t have to optimize every SKU. So with Mondo, it’s a completely different proposition and we know that and we’re excited to help them grow in different ways. Could we put Mondo in every Wal-Mart store tomorrow? Yes. We’re going to? No. That won’t happen. We think of Mondo as an opportunity to grow globally and also do our direct to consumer, continue to build our direct to consumer business through Mondo[shop].how.
io9: That’s great to hear. Now, when I asked a group of Mondo fans online what they wanted to know about this new property, the biggest thing was licensing. As you said, you have access to almost all licenses. I’m sure there isn’t a license you couldn’t acquire if you wanted to. Maybe one or two. Mondo, regarding their posters, sometimes there are problems with that. They can’t get all the licenses, there are likeness rights issues, they need all credits approved. Fans want to know if being owned by Funko will make this easier for them? Is that something you’ve talked to them about?
Perlmutter: Yes. I would say one of the benefits for Mondo, for the Mondo brand, of partnering with Funko is the idea that we can help them with certain things that were difficult for them to unlock as a small, niche company. Obviously, we work very closely with licensors. Licensors love working with Funko. So we think there will be some unlocks. Some things like resemblance are always going to be a problem, aren’t they? And so I can’t say we have a silver bullet for likeness. But I can say that whether it’s expanding the opportunity to access different licenses or whether it’s unlocking certain things that have been an obstacle for them, I think we can help them.
io9: Yeah, I guess with Funko Pops, you don’t really have to worry about the likeness, do you?
Perlmutter: No. We’ve had conversations around that. We don’t ever have to worry, but every now and then it comes up, which is why I say I don’t think there’s a silver bullet for posters, but I think we have the ear of a lot of our licensing partners who are open to have conversations
Display of Massive Squid Game Pops. Photo: io9/Germain Lussier
io9: One of the things Mondo did so well, and Covid really hurt, was in-person events. They had a gallery, they had MondoCon, they had mystery movies, are those things that you hope to bring back?
Perlmutter: Absolutely. You know, it’s very basic in our DNA. We love interacting with our fans. So you can watch more.
io9: Where do you see Mondo in the next five years?
Perlmutter: I would say, as you would, you’re going to see an expansion of their licenses that they’re working with and I think we’re going to try to make it easier for international Mondo fans to get the products.
io9: Yes, sometimes they can only be shipped to certain countries.
Perlmutter: It’s also very expensive. And we have distribution in all these places. So if we can locate the inventory closer to the fans, they will pay a lot less for shipping. So we believe there are opportunities to grow globally. Obviously, we will help grow Mondo[shop].how. Funko.com has just been named one of the fastest growing e-commerce websites in the collectibles industry, which is very exciting for us at Newsweek. And so we think there are a lot of synergies to help them grow. But again, grow the Mondo brand. That’s important to us and we’re making sure the brand continues to thrive because that’s what we acquired. I mean, we could have made high-end collectibles. We could have made posters. We could probably have done vinyl. I do not know. But it wouldn’t have been Mondo. And that’s what was important to us.
io9: Mondo started with posters and has continued to expand into vinyl, toys, games, do you see that expansion continuing?
Perlmutter: Absolutely, yes. And, like us, we have our eyes open to what makes sense. Like, do we make Mondo shower curtains? Probably not. But when there are opportunities to expand and serve Mondo fans, we’ll look at it.
The Mondo Booth Photo: io9/Germain Lussier
io9: We’ve talked about what Funko can do for Mondo, but what can Funko learn from Mondo?
Perlmutter: We can learn a lot from Mondo, right? Like what an amazing brand. I think the way they present their products is something we can learn from. Again, we have a different demographic. We’re talking about two different ends of the spectrum when it comes to pricing. But I mean, they just make such… It’s a work of art. They make beautiful works of art. So yes, I think they could teach us as much as we could teach them.
io9: As a fan, it’s really nice to hear all this. I know a lot of fans were just like, “We don’t want Mondo posters with Funko Pops.”
Perlmutter: Neither do we. Like I said, we don’t want Mondo to be distributed the same way Funko is distributed. We don’t want pop posters. We could do it ourselves. We are not interested in this. So we don’t want to, like, take album covers and turn them into pop covers. This doesn’t happen, so don’t worry.
io9: One last thing. With Mondo, because everything tends to be so limited, that means the brand requires people to stand in line. It’s all about waiting in line. Funko also has lines, but you also do sweepstakes and I know this year at Comic-Con, a lot of the fans were disappointed because when Mondo moved to Funko, it’s a lot harder to win a sweepstakes than just getting into row a poster Is this something that will continue or possibly be reconsidered?
Perlmutter: I think we’ll continue to evaluate that. The idea is that we want to make sure that we have this portfolio of brands together and we want to give access to as many people as we can. So we’ll continue to evaluate that as we go forward. Maybe there is an opportunity to have a specific line for Mondo.
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