Special Feature - Mojo Fun

Koala-ty products at affordable prices

After 15 years in the figurine business, global brand Mojo Fun has found a way to balance high-quality products with cost-effective pricing, whilst providing first-rate customer service from both its Hong Kong and UK office and warehouse. Toy World’s Caroline Tonks sat down with the company’s managing director, James Connolly, to talk about the history of the brand, the unique processes that go into making Mojo’s products and much more.

15 years ago, when James Connolly started Mojo Fun, there was really only one significant company at play in the collectible animal figurine space. “I could see the category was dominated by a single player,” says James. “I thought, ‘There’s an opportunity here. If you don’t develop your own product range now, then you never will’.”

He was visiting the Hamleys flagship store in London when he found the inspiration for Mojo Fun: “I saw this range of animals that I’d never seen before. I fell in love with them, but when I looked at the price, they seemed extremely expensive.” James later got in touch with a friend who was a buyer at Hamleys; he wanted to look into making a range of his own, seeing what was possible – and what he could improve – and Mojo Fun was born.

The brand can now be found in over 40 countries around the world, including both independent and national chains and education suppliers in the UK & Ireland, Europe, US and Asia.

James and his UK team are based in West Yorkshire, and include his son, Christian Connolly, who heads up sales and marketing, and Jack Griffiths, who is the sales and customer service manager. They are a close-knit team, who are passionate about the Mojo brand and pride themselves on their customer service and their ability to deliver great products to their customers.

Since the beginning, it’s never been solely about how many pieces of product Mojo Fun sells. According to James, the market is driven by one key factor: quality. Compared to its main competitors, several of whom actually make their products in the same factory in China, Mojo Fun benefits from having its own dedicated factory, with an experienced workforce that was trained from scratch. “Hand crafted models are very difficult products to manufacture. We knew very little when we started up – we didn’t know exactly how to sculpt, paint or finish a model. We experimented as we went along. We got to the stage where we had it figured out and from there we’ve continued to learn and grow.”

The whole team has become a family. “In 15 years, we’ve only had two people leave for other opportunities, which is relatively unheard of in any business environment these days,” says James. “If times are tough, we knuckle down, work together and keep everybody on board.” Because of these long-standing relationships, the team that creates Mojo Fun’s figures truly cares about the quality of what they are producing. “I think it’s a unique situation,” James adds. “If we do something successful, we go back and share it with the team and they’re over the moon. We’ve been able to learn from our own processes over the years. We’ve made some mistakes, but we’ve also matured as a team and, because we have had that same team for 15 years, the knowledge has grown exponentially.”

When picking a product off the shelf, it’s easy for the consumer to overlook just how much work goes into making one of these small animal figures, and just how complicated the process actually is. “It takes a lot of time to make each figure; it is not just mass manufacturing,” emphasises James.

For example, there are 17 different processes that go into making a giraffe alone. The body is painted in a base colour, then hand painted to bring out the details. The pattern is then applied with a process called tampo printing, using little stamping pads. “The patterns all have to match and join together in certain areas,” says James. “You only need to look at the pattern on a tiger, giraffe or zebra. You’ve got to do that 10,000 times and not make a mistake; nothing can be off.”

What makes Mojo Fun’s factory stand out amongst its competitors is consistency. “Any factory can copy one of our figures; it’s how you finish it that matters. You need to be able to achieve the same quality every time and not be able to tell the difference. That’s the key.” This is why Mojo Fun has such a strong bond with its factory - the quality and consistency it delivers is paramount.

While the head office that produces the animal figurines is based in Hong Kong, all of Mojo Fun’s products are designed in the UK, with the company’s master sculptor residing in Bristol. In fact, everything on the technical, sculpting and design side is done in the UK. “To all intents and purposes, it is a UK product,” explains James. “The sculptors are fabulous. We do create some models now with 3D rendering, but 95% of our products are hand sculpted with clay.”

At Mojo Fun, no product is ever stagnant, with the team continuously trying to improve and grow. Each year, James sits down with the team, and they work their way through the catalogue, picking out animals that they think they can improve. It is the subtle changes that make the biggest difference.

“The appetite in the industry is for a conveyor belt of new products, but sometimes you need to go back and look at what you’ve already done to see if you can do it better,” says James. To explain this better, he brings out a selection of animal figures that are currently for sale from Mojo Fun, from dogs and bears to horses, camels and birds.

“This is our current golden retriever,” he says as he places the first dog onto the table. “I sat there and looked at it and thought, that’s not right. So, we modified it.” A similar, but more detailed looking golden retriever is placed next to it. “Different base colour, less paint so you can see more of the texture. These are all techniques to make the details pop. They’re tiny changes, but when you see the two of them side by side, it’s a massive difference.” The figure has gone from a one dimensional yellow-brown to a lighter, more realistic golden retriever coat, with clear shading that brings out the texture of the ‘fur’.

Eye contact is also a key detail when making these figures. If an animal is looking down, meaning there’s no eye contact, it impacts sales; eye contact connects the product with the consumer. Even when the figures are up on the shelves, they have to be facing a certain way to be able to have that direct eye contact with the customer.

James and the UK team at Mojo Fun have learned to listen to customers, changing Mojo’s shipment model to accommodate retailer demands. In the UK, some competitors were taking two to three weeks to replenish stock at key times. The team knew they had to do better. “Places like zoos have a peak period over the summer, so if those racks aren’t full, then they aren't making any money.

We make sure that at any one time we have an 85% fill rate during the summertime for zoos. We opened an account with Dudley Zoo a few months ago. It placed an order on a Monday, and it was delivered in full on the Thursday morning, ready for the weekend.

“We want to be that kind of business, so we put stock on the floor and are confident in it. We give the retailers the margin they need and supply what we say we’re going to supply, direct from a UK warehouse.” James declares that one of Mojo’s biggest strengths, alongside the quality of its products, is its ability to get product to customers in just two to three days. That strength is provided by Jack and Chris, who offer support and advice as well as making sure the orders are turned around with minimum delay.

From the UK side of the business, Mojo Fun has never lost an account. “If we’ve taken an account from a competitor, they’ve never gone back,” explains James. “The team makes sure that it’s not just one range or two or three models that are good – the whole range is good. We make sure quality runs throughout our entire portfolio, so when the consumer gets their hands on one of our models, they like it. It’s a slow build, but when we get the accounts, we keep them.”

“Ultimately, you live or die by your product,” he notes. “It’s no good if the product doesn’t resonate with the consumers or doesn’t look as it should, especially when you’re dealing with the adult collectors; it needs to be so authentic.

“If you customise the product for the local market, children will buy what they see every day,” emphasises James. “If you look at all our top sellers in the UK –Peregrine Falcon, Golden Eagle, Hedgehog, Red Fox, Rabbit – you’ll see they’re all local wildlife.”

While Mojo Fun has established its integrity and ethics as a brand, it is still looking to expand and cement its place on the wider industry supplier ‘map’.

“Mojo Fun has over 300 figurines in all the major categories. For most retailers, that’s more than enough to cover what they can dedicate to the space, providing plenty of choice for their own customer bases.”

With this expansion comes reflection on Mojo Fun’s environmental impact, something that is as important to James as it is to today’s consumers. The team is currently working on developing some non-PVC products, but the quality of the product produced is paramount and, like other companies, James has found some materials lead to compromised quality and with it, longevity.

“The ideal manufacturing material is still a little way off, but there are things we can do in the meantime to improve our impact on the environment, such as reducing the number of polybags we use or, ideally, completely eliminating them from the production process. This is a work in progress, but we hope to see some results in this area over the coming months”

Looking forward, 2025 will see an expansion into the Kidult market for Mojo Fun. The team wants to discover how it can bridge the age gap with some of its new ranges so that different age groups with varying interests will be drawn to the display stands. “I want to double or triple our engagement,” says James. “We’re doing some projects for next year that are really exciting; the aim is to attract a wider audience. It’s a new approach and I don’t think it’s been done before. Ideally the hard work the whole team has put in will be rewarded.”