Interview With David Horvath

David Horvath is an illustrator, comics artist, toy designer and author best known for creating the popular Uglydoll characters and Bossy Bear with his wife, Sun-Min Kim.

His success hinges on flipping the script of traditional aesthetics in toy design, proving that there's a substantial market for products that champion the unconventional and celebrate the beauty in imperfection. Uglydolls, with their distinct, anti-cute charm, disrupted the market by becoming a cultural phenomenon that transcended age groups, while Bossy Bear captured the hearts of children with its bold, assertive character, both reflecting Horvath’s genius in tapping into the zeitgeist of contemporary youth culture. His creations are not mere playthings; they are icons of a countercultural movement within the toy industry that reverberates with a message: uniqueness is not just accepted, it’s embraced.

David has an extremely valuable Substack where he gives great in-depth; actionable advice on how to build character brands that last. We interviewed him today, with some NFT-centric questions and he gave advice that founders in this space can learn from.

David Horvath:

1. "To create a superfan, someone who deeply loves your brand, what steps would you take to do that?"

I can only speak with clarity in the IP character space, and this may not apply in other avenues of brand building, but in the realm of lifestyle character brands where I operate… the business of Sanrio and Snoopy, Uamou and Moomin, is it important to be found in places which already hold meaning for your potential fans and future tribe members, so that meaning may be assigned to all which is discovered there.

When fans of the giant robot magazine of the 90s first walked into the giant robot store in Los Angeles, they felt as if they were walking into a physical manifestation of their favorite publication, and upon discovering our uglydoll brand there, immediately assigned those feelings to our brand and associated us with all encountered next to us. There are more museums in the United States than there are McDonald’s and Starbucks combined… and most of them have gift shops, and most of those gift shops are quite nice…and if you curate well enough, you can be on as many shelves as if you went to Walmart, without ever having to go to Walmart.

When you are discovered in special locations of meaning, you also benefit through the association of what you are found next to. At the giant robot store in Los Angeles 23 years ago, our brand was sitting between Takashi Murakami watches, and Miffy. To those walking in for the first time, spellbound by the giant robot shops existence, we were subconsciously lumped together in the same universe as all else discovered there. Discovery being the keyword. Your brand brand must be a source of such in the formative phases. Rather than broadcasting outwards towards potential fans in an attempt to grab their attention, be a source of discovery,.

2. "Most NFT brands are based around thousands of similar looking characters, what approach would you take to get people to love the underlying IP?"

The character business has very little to do with the attention economy. In the lifestyle character brand business, we are in the falling in love industry. You have to make it your potential fans idea. When they find you on their own and fall in love, they tell absolutely everybody. We always make it known when we are in love. Be found in the breath of fresh air away from the noise and the subconscious, if what you have connects, will continue to seek you out.

3. "You speak about not going big too fast if you want to last, what actionable things would you do to grow slowly?"

It isn’t a matter of speed. To grow properly, rather than relying on some big opportunity to “put you on”, which is close to never how it works, execute through thousands of micro culture transactions. You don’t put your brand on the shelf at target on day one because there’s more eyeballs there. You go to target once a certain percentage of their existing consumer is already in love with you. If you put your new character on a T-shirt and hang it on the shelf at target, their customer will perceive it to be a “design”, like my sons dragon monster truck shirt.

Looks cool, but you’re not a brand to that customer, and they don’t go back looking for more of what the dragon monster truck is up to. Many of these culture micro transactions on their own, on a case by case basis, might be called too small or insignificant to do much, but cumulatively they tell your brand story.

The very nature of this path takes time. Rather than looking at the Snoopy collaboration with Starbucks in Japan, and saying “we need to be doing that”, look at what Snoopy did from 2018-2022 to earn such. (Yes earn… snoopy is never snoopy “because Snoopy”. All brands are fragile.) Forget how hello Kitty is collaborating with H&M now… look at what Sanrio did from 1979 to 1999 to earn the ability to do that, so such could be of benefit to the brand vs something which could very well be damaging to the long term.

4. "If you could give one piece of advice to NFT founders creating character brands, what would it be?"

I have one piece of advice in two parts. First know what business you are in. Sanrio is not in the same business as Mattel, nor do they go near the same consumer , while they both produce products via character IP.

Is your character brand story driven? Then publish great books and it doesn’t matter what store you go to. Animation? Tell great stories, it won’t matter what screen I first find you on, big or small. Toy “brands” like what Mattel and Hasbro do all day?

Go straight to mass, but be clever about it. Study the journey of Squishmallows. They didn’t simply ship to Walmart. Not by a longshot. You thrive and survive through play patterns and design. You can become “brand adjacent” if you reach a certain level of success, enjoenjoying fully functional Licensing programs just as SpongeBob does, but your exit is always coming around the corner the moment your play pattern design dynamic falls out of favor, make no mistake. You are not in the same business as Sanrio. Lifestyle, character brands like Sanrio or Snoopy? In formative years, or perhaps, forever, stay away from the mass market. Avoid association with the noise at all costs.

That cost will most likely be time. When I wake up in the morning in Tokyo and step outside on the way to the train in the morning, I no longer see the visual overload you experience as a tourist on your first trip there. It’s noise. I bring up Japan because it’s a wonderful way to physically experience what we all undergo, from New York City to the smallest farm town where I’m standing now in Texas. From the Shibuya crosswalk to the character at the bank, I don’t notice any of it. Then, when I step into my own “stomping ground”, I snap into hyper attention mode, and note with clarity all which I find there. I associate that which I find there with the feeling that I already have about such places. For me, it’s loft in Ginza, for my wife it’s the marui department store, for my uncle in Connecticut it’s his local comic book shop, and for my cousin, it’s the walker art center. For his daughter, it’s a band. We all have our stomping grounds. Brand collabs once functioned as such. Murakami with Louis Vuitton, or Toki through leSpirtSac… But I can’t pull off a Sanrio collaboration now the way I did in the USA 11 years ago or in Japan shortly after. Most brand collaborations now are perceived as noise: something done to sell something to us.

It will come back around, but for the most part, with the exception of rare outlier situations (like everything Bobby, hundreds does), while brand collaborations can be quite romantic… to be an individual sitting in a room, alone, unknown, and suddenly receive attention from Nike, or Disney, it reaches deep into our ego… but such movements are rarely beneficial long-term and could contribute to a shorter lifespan if such actions are not supplemental, purposeful, and rare. We need to know who you are first. Collaborate with a place instead. When I walk into the Dallas Museum of Art gift shop, I even say it out loud sometimes, that “this place gets me”. I say the same about giant robot on sawtelle Boulevard in Los Angeles or Mandarake in Nakano. In formative years, avoid being associated with the noise.

The problem isn’t the advertising, the issue is being associated with it. Don’t let me associate your brand with an attempt to sell something to me. Even if you have the most incredible “IP” in the world, the connection you are creating with me is different. In the 50s, our eyes were glued to the television commercials of the age because it was all new. By the 80s the TV commercials had to be funny and by the 90s they had to be on the Super Bowl. Now I can’t remember the last time I’ve even seen an ad. My subconscious protects me from the noise and I doom scroll in real life as much as I do on the screens. We all do. We know when we are being sold. Don’t advertise to me and don’t add me to your collection of followers and view counts. Let me find you on my own while visiting my stomping grounds, and my own personal Safe-haven away from the noise. We all have them. …make it our idea and we will tell everybody.