The Voice from Colombia

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.

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.

Between 2001 and 2005 I held different positions at advertising agencies, 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.

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.

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-

ter on a hot summer day and the first thing I saw was Hasbro’s huge exhibition of their upcoming movie, G.I.JOE, The Rise of Cobra. I knew it then, there was no turning back, licensing was going to be my life from that day on.

We didn’t get to represent the World Cup, but the following year we signed our first properties, Charuca and Chicaloca. Unknown to the market and without any sponsor, things weren’t easy for the young independent agency, but we managed to close a respectful number of licensing agreements for both brands. Things terminated for C14 Studio by the end of 2010. For personal and financial reasons partners called quits and each one followed its own path. Broke and unemployed, I stubbornly decided that I wasn’t ready to let my dream die. That’s the day when KOPA was born.

One night I sat down with my Star Wars notebook and began drawing doodles and sketching ideas. I narrowed it down to two words, knowledge and passion. The two initials gave birth to the word KOPA. It had a real meaning and it could also be pronounced exactly the same in any language.

It wasn’t instantaneous, but after the summer of 2012 things started to finally move in the right direction. Martine Berreitter, from Striker Entertainment, entrusted KOPA with the hottest IP at the moment, The Walking Dead. Soon after other properties followed: Me To You, Maya the Bee (2103), Jewel B&L (2013), Pocoyo (2013), The Trash Pack (2014), Condorito (2016), Dakar (2015), Pacific Rim Uprising (2017), Godzilla (2018), Emoji (2018), Route 66 (2019) and Panini (2019).

For obvious reasons, 2020 proved to be suffocating. For a moment I really thought it could mean the end of our agency, but providentially we were helped by an organization that prefers to remain anonymous. It wasn’t only the financial aid; it was what it represented that brought us back to life. We felt appreciated and recognized. All those years of sweat, blood and tears were finally being acknowledged. By the end of the year, a former colleague, José Santiago, contacted us to check upon us. We exchanged a couple of emails and in the process; we discovered that we both were into rock and heavy metal music. Starting this year KOPA is representing the Global Merchandising Services roster in Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The metal head inside me couldn’t be happier and prouder. It’s been only six months since we took on our duties as agents and we already have signed with two apparel licensees, Toxic from Mexico and Arval from Peru. We also have several deals in the pipeline.

Right around the same time, while still struggling with the effects of the pandemic, we signed Megaplex, a manufacturer of nutritional supplements that launched the world’s first-ever Godzilla’s whey protein. The match between Godzilla vs. Kong and a protein is an idea that didn’t pop up by accident; it is the result of our knowledge of the property and our ability to creatively transfer it into the right product.

KOPA is a professional licensing agency and a creative powerhouse. It is also honest and sincere, like this article. Our motto, knowledge and passion, reflects across everything we do and defines our character as an agency.

If that kid born in Cali, Colombia, the one who kept the packaging of all his toys and later in the 90s used to listen to Iron Maiden at top volume, could look into the future and see what we have achieved, I think he would be very proud.

Properties currently represented by KOPA:

• Panini • Godzilla • The Walking Dead • Global • Route 66 • Marie Antoinette • Me To You

Special thanks to:

Martine Berreitter, Meagan Vaughan, Kalman J. Istok, Marie-Laure Marchand, David Recasens, Francesca Ash, Marty Brochstein, Maria Ungaro, Maura J. Regan, Carol Spieckerman, Jamie Kampel, Lisa Lilly, Rui Machida, Chris Mowry, Tony Verdini, Jose Santiago, Nahima Rujeles, Juan M. Agudelo