Company Profile - KAP Toys

What the Fuzz is going on at KAP Toys?

Cover star KAP Toys, which this year celebrates its 5th anniversary, has unveiled a major step forward in its company expansion plans – its first own-brand plush range, Fuzzballs. Rachael Simpson-Jones spoke to Nat Southworth, managing director at KAP Toys, about kawaii cats, Stranger Things fans and why a ‘nice thing’ can be everything to a child in challenging times.

Proudly adorning the front cover of this month’s Toy World, Fuzzballs is the brainchild of graphic designer Marc Sach. The property leans heavily into the trend for all things kawaii, pet-themed and popculture, with its adorably rotund characters, mainly cats, engaging in a variety of activities (eating and sleeping play a key role) and generally being cute. In their original comics, viewable online at Fuzzballs.co, the Fuzzballs share aspirational life hacks such as how to make a salad – ‘Get a salad bowl; Replace lettuce with pizza; Yeah! Pizza salad’ – and how to stay cool this summer (hint: it involves clearing space in the fridge by eating its contents), drawing fans into their consistently charming, inclusive and amusing world. Yes - KAP Toys appears to have once again picked a winner.

KAP Toys works quite closely with the specialist music and entertainment retailer HMV, which in recent years has been making serious inroads into the pop-culture category, much to the delight of its increasingly ‘geek’ consumer base. KAP’s Harry Potter ranges have done very well in HMV, as has Among Us and, of course, Stranger Things. And it was the retailer itself that tipped KAP off to Fuzzballs, which has now become the company’s first own-brand range.

“People communicate via emojis so much nowadays, and in 2019 Fuzzballs released its own social media stickers on Instagram, Facebook, IMessage, Line and other big platforms – and there have been over 1b downloads since,” says Nat. “HMV took on Fuzzballs merchandise in its stores in 2021 and it’s performed really well. HMV’s head of Pop Culture, Gary Williamson, told us we should consider the property when I said we were looking to acquire the rights to something new and step off, as it were, into a previously untapped area for us.”

Nat will have product on-shelf in time for Christmas. The initial range will focus on the core characters before broadening out in 2023. Price points will range from £5-£20, focusing strongly on the collectability element and featuring some of the most popular characters from the comics: the cat in the dinosaur costume (‘rawr!’) gets my vote. Waves of product will drop at regular intervals to keep fans coming back for more.

Nat says: “The property already has a huge fanbase, which is lovely from our point of view: we’ll be producing toys for existing Fuzzballs consumers and we’re sure they’ll be very happy to spread the word on social media. Marc [Sach] is so tuned in to what the fans want and can tweak the content according to emerging trends. But he manages to do so much more than that too, hitting multiple trends all at once to ensure Fuzzballs resonates with a global audience that spans a huge age range. Following our Toy World front cover, we’re really going for it. KAP Toys, Fuzzballs = big things. Conversations with retailers can begin now the cat is out of the bag, pun intended.”

KAP has made its name as a successful distributor, most recently with YuMe Toys’ Stranger Things Mystery Capsules. Sales of the blind-box toys based on Netflix’s phenomenally popular original series, which hit shelves four days before season 4 was released, have been incredibly high, and they’ve become something of a social media sensation too. Fans have been seen unboxing their Mystery Capsules mere moments after leaving the toy store, and those videos have mostly been destined for TikTok. Combining 80s nostalgia with collectability, each retro style TV-themed box contains a wealth of surprises including three scene trading cards, a character card, art card, TV display card and sticker reveal card, all featuring never-beforeseen artwork, plus a figurine based on one of the beloved characters from the franchise. These include Eleven, Hopper, Mike and Max, plus accessories specific to that character.

Stranger Things is a curious one, when it comes to toys. Anyone who’s ever watched it will know that for all its heart and underlying messages regarding the power of friendship and courage, it’s also dark, gruesome and genuinely quite scary. So who’s been buying all these toys? Teens and kidults, that’s who. Draw a line through all the sales of Mystery Capsules in the past month, Nat says, and he’d be surprised if it dipped into the ‘Kids’ age bracket at all. Echoing the sentiments of many an open-minded industry insider, it’s all about adaptation and evolution for Nat. Drawing on Dave Middleton at Midco Toys as an example, many of the most successful retailers are catering to a much wider assortment of consumers now, with a much broader range of products that appeal to people of all ages. Kids are getting older faster now, says Dave , while adults are trying to stay younger for longer. We saw this during the pandemic, during which consumers turned to toys in their droves as a means of escapism and relief from the challenges of day-to-day life, and the appetite for toys amongst non-kids hasn’t been sated yet. Fuzzballs plush, while cute and cuddly and certainly far more appropriate for young kids than Stranger Things, will almost certainly appeal to teens and kidults too, offering retailers an addition to their plush ranges they can be very confident will sell across the generations.

Far from a move away from its distribution model, the launch of Fuzzballs plush marks the next natural step forward in KAP Toys’ own evolution. From its inception, Nat has maintained that the company should work on its own lines in tandem with its valued distribution partners. He’s watched other companies do that and do it well – he highlights Darran Garnham’s success with Toikido as an example – and while he says Fuzzballs isn’t equivalent to Among Us (at the moment, anyway), there’s huge potential for KAP to take the property further.

“I’m also always looking at long term prospects,” Nat adds. “I know I’ve waxed lyrical about it before, but it’s why I love Harry Potter so much. It’s the 25th anniversary of the first book this year, and it’s still selling. It’s a brilliant licence, a huge property. We want good quality product to align with good quality content because that’s what produces stayers. Rather than flash in the pan licences or toy ranges, we need to pick the ones that are most likely to stick around and become best-sellers – but that’s very tricky. That said, I think we’ve got one here that we can sell in across the board.” It might be hard to pick the winners, but it’s fair to say that Nat and his team manage to, regardless. I asked him what it was about Fuzzballs that made him sit up and take notice, and ultimately decide to turn it into KAP Toys’ debut own-brand toy range. First and foremost, he says, he pays attention to the people. Who is he dealing with? Who will he be working with on a regular basis? By all accounts, Marc Sach is an intelligent and passionate individual, and he’s obviously been heavily involved in dotting the Is and crossing the Ts on the deal, as have Rocket Licensing’s Charlie Donaldson and Rob Wijeratna. Nat speaks very highly of all three, noting that Rocket Licensing is particularly discerning in the properties it represents – in itself a confidence booster.

Content is key, of course, but more so is how well that content, and the characters that feature in it, lend themselves to the chosen medium KAP Toys is looking at. Nat says he’s seen a lot of fantastic IP that just wouldn’t work in toy form, and that’s OK. You have to be both selective and realistic about the chances of turning a property into a success at retail. And when it comes to Fuzzballs, a big draw has been the existing, loyal and product-hungry fanbase. It’s a luxury to go into production with a readymade consumer demographic waiting in the wings to snap up the toys you make, after all.

Consumers are also crying out for nice things and happy stuff at the moment. Fuzzballs, being as lighthearted and cute and positive as it is, is the perfect balm for a chafed soul: other best-selling plush ranges have highlighted the role of challenging times in their success. Add this to the list of reasons why KAP Toys believes Fuzzballs to be one to watch.

KAP Toys is five this year and growing all the time. 2021 was another record year for the business, up double digits yearon-year. Stranger Things has played a big part in this, of course, a case of the ‘right product at the right time’, as Nat puts it. KAP’s business skews towards the autumn/winter period by virtue of its brands, but Stranger Things landing in May resulted in the calendar year getting off to a strong start. Among Us sales have held up much better than expected outside of the autumn/ winter period, which has helped matters heading into the second half of the year, and Kid Made Modern, KAP Toys’ popular arts & crafts line, has made its way into retailers that lie outside of the norm, such as the Royal Academy of Arts. On top of all this, and the pre-Christmas launch of Fuzzballs plush, a major new distribution line currently under NDA is set to be revealed later in the year.

Although he notes that there are plenty of hurdles to overcome, none of which are restricted solely to KAP Toys, Nat remains buoyant about the future – albeit characteristically humble. “It’s hard to see the good sometimes because of all the negativity in the news, but we just need to keep doing what we’re doing: working with our key partners, bringing in the right products at the right time, and selling them through. We’ve had a good run this year, but the challenge lies in maintaining this momentum. Ken Goodisson at Maxx asked me recently if I was happy with our year-end. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but it’s over now – we have to do it all again next year, and the year after that!’”

Nat also says that some very exciting conversations are taking place behind closed doors, one of which he lets me in on. Readers will have to stay tuned to find out more about that in the coming months. But clearly, KAP has a lot to look forward to and Fuzzballs is just the latest in a long line of company developments that will continue the company’s momentum for years to come.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Fuzzballs or any of KAP Toys’ other lines, contact Nat Southworth on nat@kaptoys.com.