TOTAL LICENSING
By the Power of Licensing! From Masters of the Universe to Iron Maiden, the remarkable 10-year journey of KOPA Carlos Andrés Carvajal Managing Director & Founder KOPA
carlos.carvajal@kopa.com.co www.kopa.com.co @kopa_licensing
Reflecting on these past 10 years wasn’t easy.This is an article I meant to publish in November of 2020, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of KOPA, but at that moment I couldn’t find the will or the energy to write it. Like most companies around the globe, we were heavily impacted by the pandemic. The story of KOPA started back in the mid-80s with Masters of the Universe and G.I.JOE. I was just a kid, and those toys blew me away and captured my imagination with their impressive illustrations on the packaging. It ignited a passion for graphic design that ultimately -and without knowing it- led me into licensing.
until one day my father suggested that I meet a friend of his that owned a printing company. Dvinni was known in Colombia for producing agendas (planners), but had recently launched a line of back-to-school supplies, mainly composition notebooks. I was hired as creative director. Looking back now I was actually more of a product manager because I ended up with the huge responsibility of looking after the content and appearance of all the notebooks that came out of the factory, including recommending the licenses the company should sign.
Through my teenage years, I ended up adding movies, television, rock music, comics and design to my passion for toys and illustration. When the time came to pick a career the closest thing in Colombia to that particular set of “hobbies” was advertising.
During that time, I met all the local agents and pretty soon I was talking on a daily basis about Spider-Man, Shrek, American Chopper, Happy Feet, High School Musical and Disney’s Princesses. By the end of 2007, the company received the Disney award for best product development for Disney’s Princesses notebook collection.
Between 2001 and 2005 I held different positions at advertising agencies,
Despite the good work and accomplishments, dealing with all the hustle
inside a factory proved to be life-consuming and I felt it was time for me to leave Dvinni to follow this new trail that I have found, licensing. In January 2008 I joined two former classmates on its entrepreneurial dream of running a creative agency. Originally the purpose of C14 Studio was web development and multimedia, but my partners supported me on this weird idea of providing graphic design services to licensees. It was quite a challenge, but we did a fantastic job. Every new notebook collection, every submission, not only was approved with minor adjustments but also praised by the licensor due to the graphic skills and creativity. Nonetheless, at the same time, something was starting to really bother me, the lack of interest of some agents for the properties they represented. It was inconceivable for me that someone would represent a superhero without any idea of who his archnemesis was. But it wasn’t only that they didn’t care about the characters, it was the poor service provided to their licensees. I thought we could do it much better as an agent, but what could we possibly represent? All the mainstream properties already had a local or regional agent, except one, the FIFA World Cup. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was two years away and I managed to contact someone from the Latin American branch. This person confirmed my suspicion, they had not yet assigned an agent and he was willing to meet me in New York at the Licensing Expo. I got on the plane and attended the meeting. I didn’t know what to expect, I’ve never been to the Licensing Expo and it was my first visit to New York. I remember walking into the Javits Cen-
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