This episode, sponsored by Innov8 Creative Academy and Deddy Bears, sees Andy and Emily joined by two guests who met through a thoroughly Irish chain of mutual acquaintances and ended up building something genuinely unusual together. Gavin Lawler is the founder of Innov8 Creative Academy — a toy inventor and entrepreneur with over 250 IPs in his portfolio and a background that includes the Irish Fairy Door Company. Chris Dicker is a kids media showrunner and creator with a long career in the industry, including time at Jam Media. They're currently collaborating on Deddy Bears: a creepy-cute collectible toy brand that has sold over 10 million units in under three years and is now moving into content, with a YouTube series in production and a feature film in development.

Gavin opens by telling the story of the Irish Fairy Door Company — half a million units sold at twenty pounds each in Ireland, a business that worked brilliantly at home but struggled to translate internationally because the Irishness was too specific and the product too niche. The lesson he took from it was the need to design for a global audience from the outset. Since then, Innov8 Creative Academy has built a reputation as a rapid trend-identification and commercialisation machine — the Six7 plush is cited as an example of a product that went from a six-hour design turnaround to hundreds of thousands of units sold in a matter of weeks. The model is built on firing small bullets: get to market fast and cheaply, test sell-through, and only scale what lands.

Deddy Bears emerged from a 36-hour design sprint for a Walmart Canada Halloween brief. The buyer initially chose a different product, but when that proved too complex to execute, Deddy Bears got the slot by default — and promptly achieved 86% sell-through in its first season, opening doors to major retailers across 50 countries. The bears come in coffins with death certificates, each character has a backstory ranging from ancient Egypt to the modern day, and the whole thing sits in that now-familiar cultural territory occupied by Wednesday Addams, Stranger Things, and Five Nights at Freddy's: once-alternative content that has been thoroughly normalised for family audiences and is, as Gavin puts it bluntly, extracting cash from people's pockets.

The conversation that forms the heart of the episode is about what happens when these two worlds — fast-cycle toy invention and long-form IP development — collide. Chris describes arriving into a brand that already had a fandom and realising his first job was simply to listen: to go to New York Toy Fair, watch the fans and influencers, understand who was actually buying the bears and why, before writing a single word. What he found surprised him — a remarkably wide demographic ranging from children collecting blind bags to 20-something women forming deep emotional attachments to the characters, caring about packaging, wanting to know the lore. The Giphy page Gavin's wife Aoife created as a half-joke hit 10 million shares within weeks of launch, including a front-page feature on April Fool's Day, and neither Gavin nor Chris fully saw it coming.

There's a genuinely interesting structural argument running through the episode about the relationship between content and IP. Chris's view — shaped by coming into a brand that already had proven market demand — is that content doesn't always have to carry all the weight; sometimes it exists to support IP rather than create it. Gavin's perspective is that the toy market has always needed to fire small bullets and test quickly, and that traditional media could learn from this rather than committing millions upfront in the hope that an audience materialises. Both agree that character, not plot, is the fundamental unit of connection — plot matters the first time, but audiences return to hang out with characters they love.

The episode ends with a look at what's next: the YouTube series launches this summer, studio conversations for the feature film are underway in LA, and Gavin makes the point that the priority now isn't a money grab — the IP is already selling — but finding the right partners who respect and bring along the fandom that already exists.

Key Takeaways:

• Irish Fairy Door Company's international struggles taught Gavin a key lesson: a product built on cultural specificity needs to offer something universally resonant underneath, and Irishness alone isn't enough to drive global commercial scale.
• Rapid trend identification and small-bullet commercialisation is a replicable model: Innov8 Creative Academy's approach — spot a trend early, design fast, test at retail, scale only what sells — offers a very different risk profile to traditional IP development.
• Deddy Bears succeeded almost by accident, getting its Walmart listing by default when a more complex design proved undeliverable, but the 86% sell-through in season one validated the concept and opened up major global retail partnerships.
• The "creepy-cute" category is now mainstream, not alternative — Stranger Things, Wednesday Addams, and Five Nights at Freddy's have normalised it for family audiences, and there is clear commercial appetite that the kids media industry hasn't fully caught up with yet.
• Content doesn't always have to come first — Chris's argument is that in IP terms, content should sometimes support and amplify an existing fandom rather than being the thing that creates it. The audience for Deddy Bears existed before a single frame of animation was made.
• Character is the fundamental unit of connection, not plot. Audiences return to hang out with characters they love; plot is only new once. Both Gavin and Chris build from this principle outward.
• Listening to fandom before creating content is essential — Chris spent months observing the Deddy Bears audience before writing anything, recognising that those fans were there before him and that the content has to bring them along, not override them.
• Existing fandom is a golden ticket and a responsibility — the Deddy Bears Giphy page hitting 10 million shares weeks after launch (including front-page on April Fool's Day) is proof of concept, and both Gavin and Chris are focused on choosing partners who understand and respect the community that's already there.
• Traditional media has something to learn from the toy inventor's model — as producers take on more financial risk in a world with fewer broadcast partners willing to fund development, the ability to test cheaply, fail fast, and scale only proven concepts becomes increasingly relevant.
• The consumers want to hang out with their characters — Gavin's insight, crystallised by working with Chris, is that the emotional hook of a toy and the emotional hook of a TV character are essentially the same thing, and the two industries are more aligned than either has historically recognised.

Links referenced in this episode:

• InnovateCreativeAcademy
• TeddyBears
• DeaddyBears
• IrishFairyDoorCompany

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Innovate Creative Academy
• Teddy Bears
• Deaddy Bears
• Irish Fairy Door Company
• Kardashians
• Jam Media
• Stranger Things
• Disney
• Pokémon
• Five Nights at Freddy's
• Wednesday Addams
• Walmart
• Target
• Smiths
• 5 Below
• Amazon

This episode of the Kids Media Club podcast is sponsored by Innovate Creative Academy and Teddy Bears.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Kids Media Club podcast.

I'm Andy Williams.

Emily, we've got some guests today.

Yeah, we do indeed.

Unfortunately, Joe can't join us, but I was at Dingle a few weeks ago as I recorded and I was on, I moderated a really interesting panel about toys.

And in the course of organizing that panel, I met Gavin Lawlor from Innovate Creative Academy and I was also chatting to Chris Ticker.

These two guys are collaborating on an IP at the moment called Deaddy Bears.

It was just a really interesting panel and actually nearly the conversation started, as many things do, at Dingle in the pub the night before where I had met Gavin for the first time and we started talking about his background.

So he's not from the traditional media background and he comes from an entrepreneur and toy inventor kind of background.

So really different.

And I just thought it'd be good to have them on.

So, Nate, thank you for joining us.

Gavin and Chris, no problem.

Nice to be here.

Happy to be here.

Yes.

So, Gavin, fascinated to jump in with you.

Right.

Because like you, you.

One of your, one of your key products that has been of Innovate Creative Academy has been the Irish fairy door company.

Right.

So this is little doors that you can buy for your kids and your kids put them in the garden and they can give them their letters and their worries and that kind of thing.

Tell us a bit about that.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a really cool story and I could talk about it for hours.

But I'll give you the real shortened down version of it.

And change of children that believed in Santa Claus.

What a wonderful thing.

We managed to sell them half a million fairy doors at 20 quid each.

And I was really nice to be able to commercialize an idea and leave a smile on a child's face.

So it kind of worked really well on both ends of the spectrum.

An incredible company at the time didn't end very well, but it led to where I suppose our success today through learning within the business.

What were your key learnings then?

Look, I mean, Ireland is a very small place when you find the honeyhole in terms of viability for a product you can extract very quickly and very well, but it's really hard to sustain, sustain that sustained growth.

You need the international markets.

And that's what I learned because we were very pigeonholed.

We were Irish.

And we had the green jerseys on, and we were all about fairies, and there was Irish language, and it was mythical.

And that did.

Not as much as we thought it might.

It just didn't translate over into foreign countries like we thought.

You know, we had pockets of success, but we didn't have any real defense find success.

I mean, we had.

We had the Kardashians, we had the cast of Hook at the time with everybody and the penetration off the back of that type of success.

It just wasn't there.

It just missed a little bit.

So what it taught us was that we really do have to be more commercial than just that Irish kind of shamrock on a product.

And being in that environment, we really did have to commercialize it to focus in on more of a halo effect to kids all over the world.

Yeah.

Be a bit more.

Yeah.

A bit more international, I suppose.

Yeah.

Commercialized for.

For.

For different tastes, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's kind of the.

The Irishness is funny.

Like, selling Irishness is kind of a funny thing.

Right.

And I know what you're saying, like, obviously the d lie and the.

And.

And the language and all the rest, like, but it.

It's.

It's much deep.

Like, you need to offer something maybe a bit deeper than that.

Look, it is a superpower, Emily.

I'm telling you now.

The Irishness is an absolute superpower.

It's just.

The product's gotta be as good, right?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Come here.

So you have over 250 IPs now in your current portfolio.

How do you keep track of that?

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of all categorized.

So it's a funny world we live in.

Right.

So we've built up this reputation and a name for ourselves to be able to create really good IP in multiple different categories.

So I suppose the buyers around the world now have gotten used to our type of innovation.

They like to be on the top of trend.

And trend is fickle.

Right.

Trend comes and goes.

So they rely on inventors like me, who can spot trend early, jump in on it, and get out when the time is right.

And I suppose we manage to kind of find that cadence, to be able to do that.

And it's led to us having really meaningful business with the top retailers in the world.

Right.

And how do you.

How.

How do you kind of.

What's.

What's the secret to that superpower of spotting trends early then?

Yeah, it's.

It's not one person alone.

And, you know, that's real cliche.

And it's it's, it's.

You'll often hear that cheesy talk and it's not me that I'm winning an Academy Award and it's down to my team and, but it's, it's, it's true.

Like, like, you know, there's, there's a serious amount.

We call it fishing.

Right.

So it's hunting, it's elephant hunting.

We're looking for that big kill that, that is really going to change industry and, and allow us to get positioning on a shelf.

And honestly, it's, it's, it's two things.

It's, it's word of mouth and it's social media.

That's it.

There's no magic to it.

It's literally how deep can you go into a scroll that makes sense on a product?

Fascinating.

Great.

What, like, what kind of things are you looking for when you're looking for a product?

Like, what's the turnaround, Gavin?

Because like usually.

So when you're coming from entertainment, you're always told the toys take three years.

Right.

Like, how are we to kind of have a pipeline that goes from trend to product so quickly?

Like, how does that work?

I'll give you an example that I hate talking about it because I don't necessarily love the trend.

Right.

But.

So everybody in the world is familiar with six seven, right?

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

So I, I was the first person to bring Six7 plush to, to the market.

So we, we just developed it in, I'm going to say six hour design turnaround, probably nine days to sample.

The sales team are selling from a deck and then we sold a couple of hundred thousand pieces.

It's not a huge amount of money.

It might have worked out to half a million dollars or a million dollars at probably a 50 or 60% margin.

But they're the little trends.

I mean if you do 20 of them, your profit margin is really healthy, right?

Yep.

So that would be one example of a trend of 6 7.

Other stuff is like Italian brain rod and all that kind of stuff.

But for me it's more so like working with Chris and trying to figure out his world.

What I'm really excited about and what I'm really trying to achieve is meaningful IP to market quickly without content.

That's what really inspires me.

That's what really, I feel that we're trying to, you know, we're trying to, I suppose, shake the tree and see what happens with that type of ip.

For instance, like if know I came up with an idea, I know six weeks ago and, you know, we're going to LA now in a week and a half to.

For spring preview the following year.

And I'll be selling a brand called Flamingos.

They're, they're just like skeleton type flamingos that have this kind of fire effect and they have collector cards and the trading card game and, And I really pitch that IP into a trend.

And, and there's a huge trend out there, a massive trend out there for Summerween.

It's not Halloween anymore.

We got Valloween, we got Summerween, and Summerween gives us a long season to sell into.

So, I mean, Flamingos are evergreen in the trend and, and the whole skeleton thing is really cool for Halloween.

So I'm, I'm blending trends and I'm breaking ground and I'm coming up with these new concepts, being brave and kind of putting myself out there as an inventor.

And it's.

The response to it is really, really good.

The buyers are digging it because they see the same crap day in, day out.

Another version of somebody else's crap.

It's a series 25.

It's a, you know, with just.

It's mundane, it's not spontaneous.

It.

It feels laggy, it feels draggy.

It just doesn't hit.

And I suppose if I was to, if I was to kind of talk about it like, what, what.

What are they doing?

They're.

They're living in my moment.

I would say, like, that's, it's, it's just my moment for ip.

I guess that's kind of.

I know that sounds a little bit cocky or facetious, but look, I'm.

I'm big enough and bold enough to say that we're great at lots that are some things and we're crap at other things.

We just happen to be really good at trendspotting and to be able to commercialize that in a hurry, put it on a shop shelf and, and, and market the crap out of it.

So we're getting some.

Not only sell through, sell in into the retailers, but sell through from a consumer perspective.

Yeah.

And listen, we were talking about.

And like, I know what you're saying about bringing Trend into something bigger, bringing trend into an ip, which is what you're doing with Chris.

And we talked about this in the panel at Dingle about, you know, whether what comes first, the toy or the story and all that kind of stuff.

So how did you guys end up meeting?

Pure fluke.

Absolute fluke.

It was.

Do you know what?

It's funny.

It was kind of one of those Things.

I think that was meant to happen in a way, Gav.

Like, so Gavin's.

This is.

This is so Irish, by the way.

Right?

Gavin's best friend is married to my best friend's sister.

That is so Irish.

That is so Irish.

Right?

And that does.

It doesn't even end there.

And we were meant to meet years ago and it never happened.

And my best buddy kept saying, you should meet this fell called Gavin Lawler.

He's doing some good stuff.

And I was like, all right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then I.

And my kids football match dad and my kids football match knew Gavin.

Like, I don't know how they even knew each other.

Like, kind of.

You didn't even really know each other that well.

And he said, oh, you should meet this Gavin Lawler.

I was like, oh, here, I better reach out.

So we reached out and we kind of.

It was weird, wasn't it?

We didn't know what.

We kind of sused each other out for about a month.

We didn't know what we were going to talk about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We were.

We were intellectually sparring.

Like, as close as our worlds are, they're so freaking far apart.

Like, it's so weird because Gav thought I was coming to talk to him about teddy bears, and I thought he was come to talk to me about an idea that I had.

So we didn't know what we were actually talking about to begin with.

And Chris had a bloody counting in the room as well.

I was like, what's going on here.

For our listeners as well?

Chris.

Chris is a major background as a.

As a creator, showrunner, Jam media, you know, he's working on a number of projects.

He comes from the kids media world, right?

Like I.

You and me knocking around LinkedIn together.

Chris, for probably.

Yeah, for a long time.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

So you two just met through your.

Your best friend's mother's sisters.

Sisters.

Cats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seventh son of a seven song.

Yeah, it was.

It was a 41.

But, like, I suppose what interested me about Chris was like, I knew.

I know this sounds really stupid, right?

But I love intellectually sparring because I'm the type of human being that puts my hand up and kind of admits if I'm wrong.

But I love the debate part in between.

I fight my corner fight, my corner fight.

And then at the end of, I go, okay, you won, like, you know, your fairness, like that type of person.

But when we get in with Chris and we were kind of back and forward and I was like, holy crap.

The way this guy thinks is just.

I hadn't experienced it before because I'm so used to my own bubble, right?

Like, I live in a bubble of creating an instantaneous trend, bringing it to market.

If the IP is relatively good, we can have some conversations around your world, which is bolting in content.

And it was just interesting to hear Chris's side of it.

And, like, I think at the end of our second session together in the middle, that Chris was just, like, sketching.

And at the end of the session, and it was only a chat session, and he just turns the page around and he goes, what do you think about this for an idea?

And I was like, Chris, what the f. What the.

Don't worry.

I was like, media Club podcast is not listened to by kids.

You can.

All right.

So I was like.

I was like, what the actual.

Is this?

And he's like.

He's like, yeah, just something I was thinking, because I was showing Chris, we.

We did a lot of some work for the World cup for.

For Chachki, cheap in and out, Palet on the floor stuff in America.

And, like, one of them was called flag balls.

They were little footballs that had flags on them.

Nothing crazy good about that.

But I was the first person that, when you press it, it plays the national anthem.

That's.

That was.

It was that simple, right?

We sold hundreds of thousands of.

It was that simple.

All we did was press it.

And everybody thought I was a freaking genius.

I'm sitting there going, what?

I was like, this is shit.

Like, but, I mean, Chris.

Chris kind of showed me a picture of an item, not going to talk about the item.

And I was like.

I was just like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, my God.

Like, there's something.

There's something more about this guy.

This guy could very easily live in my world, like, very easily.

And then I suppose I got this feeling.

I'm a very emotive person, so I. I only work with people that I can connect with.

And.

And.

And I wouldn't say, like, emotionally, like, deep emotion.

We have to hug before we work together.

I'm saying just a feeling.

Just a feeling I've got to.

I've got to really trust.

And I learned that the hard way.

And that was true.

A lot of shit that happened in.

In the Irish Fairy Door Company, which at the time was a huge company, I know, with a massive valuation on the business.

So there was still scars there, walls were quite high.

And Chris came in and just got a sledgehammer and broke those Walls down.

When I saw his talent, I was like, right, okay, so, Chris, forget about everything.

We're talking about.

What can you do for teddy bears?

Because at this point in time, Del Bears was 24 months in the marketplace.

I think at the time, we'd sold 2 or 3 million units.

We were in all the major retailers.

We were building fandom.

We knew we had established a foothold in the creepy, cute, creepy collectibles.

We had just won, I think, collectible toy of the year.

We bet Pokemon, we bet Disney.

We bet.

Just play some of the big, big players who I.

Who I really look up to.

Like, I really, really get inspired from these guys.

I wouldn't say the companies, more so than some certain individuals within those companies inspire me.

Like, I work with.

With some of these guys, and they're just.

They're just brilliant people and girls.

So I just again, found something to Chris.

He broke the barriers down.

I just said to him immediately, right, can we make a plan for Daddy Bears?

Win, lose or draw, I actually don't give a. Chris.

I just want your brain in it.

We sat in a room, and he spent then, like, you know, he spent weeks just sitting in the.

He set up a room downstairs in my.

In my office building.

And I wouldn't even know he's there half the time.

I just walk by and I'd be whistling.

And then he was just walking in the.

In the room.

And.

And then he'd come up at the end of the day and he might say, gavin, what do you think of this story?

And I'd be just like, if the world finds out that I'm a fraud, like, with my own brand, because this dude is.

This dude is just producing better than me.

I was like, and that's the hardest thing for me to admit is that somebody's better than you.

It's the hardest thing for me.

Like, so.

So I just said, you know what?

I'll interrupt.

You're doing yourself at the service.

To be fair now, I think look for me, anyway, from my side, it was like looking at something that I just.

When I.

When I first seen the teddy bears or heard the.

The words teddy bears, I was like, that's a killer.

That's a great name.

Killer.

Killer name.

You know, no pun intended.

But it was a killer name.

It was so obvious, you know, it was just one of those things that.

Was like, you know what it means?

You know what.

You know what you're like.

You can imagine it.

Yeah.

It said exactly what it did on the tin.

And then they come in their little coffins and they were like so cute.

But at the same time, like my kids were big into they.

And even I shouldn't probably say this, but my, my nine year old at the time had just finished Stranger Things.

Like so like, you know all of these things that like kids are into.

Like that kind of like I kind of, I kind of like think of teddy bears as like almost having one foot in the shadows and one foot in the warmest day possible.

So like half of the thing is giving you a big warm hug and the other half is like lurking in the shadows as this kind of being a bit weird cute thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

So I don't know, it just struck that, for me, it just struck that, that, that kind of sweet spot that I think kids are, are kind of interested in.

Like they want to be like, you know, we're gonna laugh them to death.

That's kind of like where we're going with this.

You know what I mean?

It's a comedy, but at the same time it's, it's, it's playing in that space where you, you can get frights and you can't like kind of, it's.

Quite, it's quite, it kind of feels like a reflection of our relationship.

Chris.

It's just like you can laughing and I suppose there's a lot of humor in what we do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're trying to find the tone of it.

Where did he come from?

Gavin?

Like what was the kind of origin.

Story of was it was a 36 hour design frenzy.

I, I, I, as I said earlier, I, I, I, I was working with Walmart Canada at the time.

We had pockets of success around creating Christmas brands.

Got on really well with the buyer.

She, she was a brilliant person and, and a visionary and she, she just got me right.

And anybody who gets me, gets the best of me is what I would say.

Right?

So she, she was like, right Gav, can you, can you design me some brands for Halloween?

So I came up like in, I think it was, I remember the clock was on like the chess players who were doing speed chess.

It was like 36 hours and I came up with three or four brands.

Daddy bears was one of them.

And, and at the time she didn't even choose it.

She chose, I had another one called Little, Little Frankenstein's or was it Dr. Dr. Fixums or something like that anyway, and, and she chose that one.

But I was way out of my debt.

It was too complex.

The complexity of the Artwork that I created was just.

No, no, I just, I was almost like I was just showing off to.

Haven't done a handler.

She goes, yeah, I'll take that.

Well, I can't actually do it.

So we by default.

By default, Teddy bears got it.

And by default, like, yeah, we, we.

There's a story behind that.

We'll go into another time.

But there was 86% sell through in its first season.

That gave me like a green slip, a go card that Go Kard then got me into the biggest retailers on the planet.

Fifty countries, millions of units sold.

Fandom.

We, we were able to kind of scale our marketing as we went and, and we kind of hit that right too.

So, yeah, kind of.

That's, that's how it started.

It was 36 hours.

It was first.

I think I have the first eight characters.

Yeah, because he sold through like a small batch to begin with.

But, but that ended up like.

That was kind of a hairy moment as well, wasn't it?

And then, but.

And then the sell through came.

Yeah, there was a very hairy moment.

I mean, Walmart had run out of budget at the time and I ended up selling, selling them.

Like, I think it was like a penny or a cent or 2 cent.

Took all the risk myself and it paid off.

Thank, thank God, you know, so.

But yeah, it's, it was, it's an interesting story behind that and I'm very proud that again, being Irish again, here's the, the emotive side or the emotional side.

But that's my story.

And yeah, it, it, it's like a badge of honor for me because I genuinely took that risk.

It seems like it was a hundred years ago now and would I take that risk?

And now I'd probably crap the bed.

Right.

I'll be like.

But at the, like, it's still part of my stories.

I'm proud to be able to tell my kids.

I'm proud to be able to talk about that.

And as you alluded to at the start, it's a combination of right place, right time, and an absolute killer entrepreneurial attitude.

And that's what I have.

And like I said, I'm crap.

That's so much stuff.

I'm a, I'm a terrible at being present for my family.

You know, I'm, you know, there's lots of things where I suck, but we just happened.

And my, my wife as well in this.

My wife Eve is a creative director in the business and works exceptionally close with Chris as well.

She's a genius.

Like, so she's Great.

Yeah, it's.

It's kind of mixing that blend in and coming up with the magic, you know, that's incredible.

How much were.

How much.

Did you have an idea of the, the story and the universe around those characters at the start?

Or is that something that's really kind of, really kind of grown out of this moment?

That's a.

That's.

Andy, that's a really good question, and it's one that not many people ask in my world.

So I kind of.

I'll answer it as best I possibly can in my head.

When I start an ip, it's got to.

It's got to have potential to be more than just a toy on a shelf.

It's got to have the potential for story.

So we always dip our toe in.

We always give them bios or we might develop a backstory or some type of story arc or some type of episodic two minute kind of piece that we know that we can jump into if there's success off the shelf.

And it's so different to your world.

So.

So that's how I do when I sit down to create.

It's like, right, first thing, can this be a feature film?

Can this be a Netflix?

Can this be a.

A short on YouTube?

And if the answer is yes, I can typically run out of it from there and, and almost half build it to make sense in my world, right?

Get it to where like daddy bears is.

Get it to where some of my other ips are.

Like, we have with another incredible brand called you Go the Unicorn, which is like a.

A unicorn version of.

Of ET and then we have another one called the Reindeer feeder, who basically swaps position with Santa up and down the chimney.

And when Santa comes down, he goes up and he feeds the reindeers, right?

And there's just so much good, healthy, honest stories.

And that's why when Emily asked me down in Dingle, you know, you know how important the story this is kind of where the panel was discussing, I was like, look, I was on both sides of the fence because I really do see both sides.

You know, you can do it with story and you can do it without story.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that makes a lot of sense because I feel like a good toy or a good something.

You kind of want to pass that baton to the kid to.

So they'll continue the imaginative play themselves.

So they need something to kind of.

Andy, this is not rocket science.

Andy, the market tells us whether you have a brand or not.

It's, it's.

Do you know how Hard it is to get a group of people to buy a million pieces of something.

It's.

It's 10 times, 15 times, croak, pack filled.

Walking into a store, pulling up your product off a shelf and the tail ringing.

It's really freaking difficult to do that.

The market tells us.

Hence the reason why Chris is even entertaining assholes like me.

We got like, it's sold millions of units.

It makes sense.

It has a fandom.

In theory.

If we execute the story part right, the people who traded dollars with my products in the stores will trade dollars with Netflix, or they will trade dollars with the feature film, or they will Trade dollars with YouTube.

That's the theory.

It's connecting that and creating the marriage that.

That makes sense.

But the market tells us that there's an audience there.

They're buying our shit.

Right.

And they're happy and they're playing.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's.

That.

To be fair, that's.

That's one thing that I touched on with you, Emily.

And Dingle was like, you know, from my side of it, it was like, okay, well, it felt like in our industry, on our side, Andy, that, like, IP lived and died on content.

And I feel in the new world, content should be there to support ip.

It doesn't have to take all of the pressure all of the time.

I mean, it can.

I'm not saying it can't, but at the same time, there is cases where content is there to support, and if you already have a fandom in place, it's about then taking.

Taking that into consideration.

So for me, it was a completely different experience because I'm coming into something that already has, you know, I don't know how many fans, but there's like 10 million units sold.

So, like, I have to sit back and try to work out then, well, who are those people that are buying this?

Because if we're going to make any ip, are we going to make any content, I need to make sure I'm speaking to the right audience.

So it was really important for me to just actually shut up and say nothing for a while, you know, and to just try to understand Gavin's business and understand who actually is buying these.

Who actually is buying these teddy bears.

And the fascinating thing, just from a story perspective is.

Was, like, me going to New York Toy Fair and just sitting there for a couple of days and, like, there's a couple of days or does a day on it where they let in all the influencers and fans and stuff like that and just engaging with those People, because that's my way in.

Like, if I'm making content, they're the people that I have to bring on the journey with us.

Like, and I think that's the difference.

When you're just creating IP on its art, content on its own, you're kind of just shouting into a void and trying to connect with somebody or anybody that you feel you should be connecting with.

But this case, it was completely different.

So it was really interesting, just from a.

Just from a story perspective, how you could.

But I think we have a.

We have a.

We.

We have.

It's like.

It's kind of like an honor to kind of, like, take on something like this, because you have to bring them with you.

You can't.

You can't just forget about them.

So everything that Gav has set in stone, and Aoife, it's almost like they're like the mom and dad of this thing, you know?

But then the fans or the fandom are, like, really close relatives, and, you know, you can't.

You can't just forget about them or not listen to them.

So I think it was that from a content perspective, it's really interesting.

You know, I find it fascinating.

I find your world.

It's fascinating to me because I can't understand how you.

You guys put so much money into such a long build.

And then when the build is done, you're like this.

Oh, my God, your fingers are crossed.

You're like, I hope it sells, or I hope people watch it, or I hope, like our world.

I guess what makes us successful is we can fire small bullets, right?

Fire short bullets.

We can bring an idea to the market quickly, inexpensively, and if it wins, it can win big.

And if it fails, it can't hurt you.

Yeah.

And Gavin, but I think.

I think our.

I think the traditional media has a lot to learn from your approach, particularly in this moment, where I feel like that old model where you raised 7 million to do a series that risk was all on was often on the broadcasters or the distributors, not on the producers.

And now we're moving into a world where the producers are taking more of that risk on themselves.

So they kind of need to operate more like an entrepreneur like yourself, I think.

I mean, I'm almost afraid to give away secrets here, but I've aligned myself to the fact that your industry needs a little bit of help.

And I'm not saying that I'm perfect in any stretch of the imagination, but what I am saying, and I make this bold statement, when you guys figure out my World, people like me and my world are in trouble, and rightly so, because real stories, real storytellers, real script writers coming in and creating toys is, is kind of feels like full circle.

It kind of feels like you're the guys that should always have done it.

That's what it feels like to me.

It's like, why the hell would somebody else make something that came out of your mind all the way back here?

It's just, it doesn't.

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't, it's not full circle to me.

It's like a braids halfway.

I don't know.

I think, I think.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Emily.

No, I feel like that was like one of the things we crystallized on the toy panel was that like, you know, Toy Story, Toy Story, Toy Story.

But actually the bottom line was connection and emotion and both of those things do that, right?

They have the same outcome, if you know what I mean.

So it makes sense that they're so aligned and there's so much in common with, you know, when you're creating one versus when you're creating the other.

So your, your budgets run millions, right?

So here's, here's a prime example of how I would, how what I would be doing, right?

I would work with Chris or another or whatever means hopefully it's always going to be Chris, right?

And I would say, well, here's my, here's my concept for a toy.

I want you to write 10 minutes of content and we might spend 200 grand on it.

And that's the risk, right?

The 200 grand is mitigated by, by guaranteed placement of 4 or 500 grand.

That 4 or 500 grand comes out of 50% margin.

It's a six month trial period.

And if it fails, everything is even, right?

Perhaps even, perhaps even a small bit of profit.

So that's the new world for me.

That's.

And then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Should, should the 200, should a 200,000 investment into that piece of content work immediately?

The green card is there to scale at retail and you can then scale the Chris side of things.

I know there's a little bit of reverse engineering in that, but I walk up to a buyer and I say, hi, this IP doesn't exist.

Here's the idea.

Here's a 30 seconds clip of, of, of what it's going to look like on YouTube.

I want you to be my launch partner.

We're going to get, we're going to guarantee a 5 million, 10 million views in the first two weeks.

We're going to pay to play in that.

We're not going to get them.

Organic will be a mix, but we're going to guarantee eyeballs on it.

And if it checks, it checks hard and checks means if it sells.

And that's the risks that the retailers are starting to take because some of the Disney stuff that's gone out is flopping.

Some of the.

Some of them, the Mattel stuff that goes out, some of the moose, all these.

All these massive big guys.

Not everything works, right?

Not everything works.

Consumers.

Consumers are looking for choice.

They're looking for variances in price points.

And honestly, they're looking for something to hang off their bag clip.

And Chris taught me this.

I love this saying because it's so true.

And it's only when Chris said it to me, I started to change and shape IPs in a different way.

The consumers, they want to hang out with their characters.

Yeah.

The story genuinely, on a lot of occasions come second.

If they hang out with their characters, then you can build a story and build a franchise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think.

I think that was what, like, we, we were all.

We were all having to chat about, like, story or toys first.

And really, character is the one thing that, you know, along with, like, obviously connecting emotionally with things, but, like, it's always a character.

Everybody goes back for character.

The best movies in the world, the best shows in the world, you go back.

You don't go back for plot.

Like, I'm not, I'm not saying plot doesn't matter.

It's massively important and storytelling, as we all know.

But, like, everybody goes back to hang out with characters.

And I think when a kid picks up a toy, they go to hang out with that character.

I think that's the one thing that connects just from a character perspective in an IP is kind of like where we're going with the daddy bears is like, you know, why do people constantly want to hang out with these cute, weird, weird characters?

But, yeah, it's character.

It's always character from my side.

Yeah, yeah, you said that when we.

And you know, because he said, we go.

You know, the plot, the plot.

Plot's only relevant the first time you watch it.

The next time around, you know, the plot.

Right.

Like.

And like, you say you're going back to hang out with those characters.

So what's on the plan then for daddy Verse from a content point of view?

What are you.

What are you guys cooking up?

So we're currently.

Well, we're in production.

We're just wrapping up our first kind of season on YouTube and we've got 10 minutes of content coming out this summer.

Obviously then once the wheel starts spinning, we're going to keep going and keep on producing, hopefully as long as it does well.

Again, it's one of those things that like, we don't know.

Hopefully it'll do well.

And in the meantime we've been developing a feature film.

So we've been, we've been getting quite a lot of interest.

I mean it's one of those things that.

It's like a unicorn at the moment.

It's a brand that's selling and like, you know, 10 million units in less than three years is massive.

You know, from a, from a story perspective.

Again, it was just really interesting to just like not do too much to begin with.

Just try and understand the brand, understand their way in.

We now know like what our audience, who our audience is.

So that was really helpful just from a, just from an observational point of view for the first six months or so, kind of understanding that.

And then yeah, we're, we're currently getting ready to pitch in LA in the next couple of weeks.

We've had a couple of calls from studios.

We're, we're, haven't.

We've started conversations last October Gav was.

Or September, whenever LA Toy Fair was.

And then.

So we're just following up now in the next couple of weeks with, with some of the studios.

So it's good.

We're like the brain.

We're going to take over the world.

When you're talking about the audience before, was there any surprises for you in that research period where you really trying to get to know the audience?

Oh, incredibly.

Like it's such a, it's such a.

What was the big surprise?

It's such a diverse, it's actually such a diverse group of people that are collecting these.

We've got blind bags that like, you know, anywhere from 5 to 9 year olds collecting these little boys.

And then when you go on to the bigger ones, the bigger plushes, we're getting like 13 to like 29 year old females who are just loving these characters and actually taking care of them, like actually wanting to like look after them and care for these bears.

And it's weird, like just the, from a collector's, just understanding the collector's point of view, how important the packaging is to the collectors.

Like that blew my mind.

Like packaging is a huge thing.

The fact that they all come from these coffins and have death certificates and the level of like kind of, I guess the depth of connection from the death certificates, which sounds weird, but, like, they want to know more about their past.

They want to know where they came from.

So from a.

From a.

From a content point of view, it's like reverse engineering and world building.

The.

The history and the lore and the mythology surrounding the teddy bears.

Because we've got teddy bears, like, you know, from the Egyptian periods, like a character called Bundle, who.

Who, like, literally lived in the time of the pyramids being built.

Like, you know, so that's how far they go back.

So there's these kind of like ancient lores attached to some and then some are more modern, like, you know, Skid Mark who got run over by.

By a truck, like, so there's all these kind of like, levels and depth to them, which is.

Which is great.

Like, it's great for somebody like me to be able to play in because it just gives me a really nice sandbox to.

To kind of like, know.

Yeah.

Little bits about each character, but not too much, so allows me to kind of expand on them as well, you know.

So it's great from a.

Just from a point of view and.

And you're really serving the fandom there on you as well.

Oh, yeah.

I think you have to.

I think like.

Like I said that they own it.

They were here before me, you know, and they.

They connected before me.

So, like, I have to be respectful of the fandom, which is.

Which is great.

And I think, like, look at.

We all know that's the way the business is at the moment is like, you know, you.

You're a fool to ignore fandom.

You can't ignore it.

Like, it's.

It's almost like if you have it, it's like you've got a Willy Wonka golden ticket.

Like, you know what I mean?

It's at your own peril to kind of.

To not have them as part of the conversation.

I think that's why.

Was really just from a different perspective for me, developing this product was like, actually just listening a lot.

Like, I think you have to listen and engage with them, you know, so it's been great.

Like, even just for example, we launched the.

As kind of as a joke.

Aoife came up with the Great Eve.

It's like, why don't we have a giphy page?

And we were like, yeah, why don't we have a Giphy page?

So we went and just hired a couple of animators.

I bought a couple of licenses of, you know, of what did I buy?

We did it in Moho and just bought Moho couple of licenses, got a rigger, rigged all the characters, animated them.

We launched the Giphy page a couple of weeks ago.

In the first 48 hours, we had 350,000 shares on our Giphy page.

And then two weeks in, we're over.

I think we're at, like, two and a half million Giphy shares.

And it's like.

Chris, were.

Were you.

Were you asleep for the last week?

Chris, it's at 10 million.

No, I was in New York.

Oh, really?

I.

Sorry.

I was in.

There you go.

Where we.

We.

We went viral on April Fool's Day.

Wow.

Yeah.

We got the front page of gippies on April Fool's Day.

It's.

It's absolutely insane.

And I guess that's like.

For me, like, again, I was away all week last week in New York, so I didn't realize that.

But, yeah, like, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, well, like, there's actually people that are digging this, like, that are kids and adults.

I don't know.

Like, it's just a weird moment where we know we have this brand.

Like, and like, Gav didn't even really touch on it.

Like, those book deals.

We've been offered some book deals and stage shows, and there seems to be like a. I don't know, there's just.

It's having its moment, and it feels like it needs to be protected now.

And I guess just from our goals going forward, it's like making sure we get the right partners.

It's not just about.

It's not a money grab because the thing is already selling.

It's not like.

And it's a different.

Again, it's a different hat where when you're a producer on our side, which Andy, I'm sure you'll know yourself, is like, you're always looking for those extra deals to kind of like bump up your.

Bump up your budget and to get you there to make your product.

Whereas we don't have that.

We don't have that problem because the IP is making gift.

So it's exactly.

So it feels like now it's like, okay, well, it's the right people has to be the right people in.

Because again, we have to protect it.

And it's not even protecting.

Protecting us or the brand itself.

It's almost protecting the fandom and making sure that they're going with it as well.

They have to buy into the fandom as much as the.

The product, you know?

So, yeah, it's really.

It's really special.

It's important that we get the right people involved.

You know, that makes a lot of sense.

I feel like it's like fandom is like the nearly the opposite of broadcast, if you know what I mean.

We used to broadcast TV shows.

You said like edict to people.

You know what you're watching and do you want, you know, it's one way, it's a one way street.

Whereas fandom is the opposite of that.

Right.

It's getting the feedback right away, you know.

Yeah.

The giphy thing is going mad, you know that the products are selling and it's, you know, you're, you're like, you see a bit more bulletproof there because you've got the proof of concept.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the most kind of powerful feedback group and the most amazing marketing team that you've got.

Yeah.

And I think if you respect them, like, I think, I think if you go into that conversation open, they, they kind of like, they love the ownership.

They want to, to, to help you build it.

I think that's the thing is like that they're there to help.

They're not there to like, kind of like, you know, stop you doing things.

It's just about having your ears open and listening, I guess.

You know,.

It's just going back to something Andy said earlier on.

Like 10 years ago, you would have had to be walking to Temple Bar into an alternative type of store and buy something like a teddy bear.

Yeah, this is what, this is the new world that we live in that I feel that your world hasn't caught up with yet.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Walmart, Target, Smiths 5 below Amazon.

The alternative now is really cool and really acceptable for family moments.

And that's, that's where we are finding our pockets of success.

If you can identify that there's two things you need.

And I often say this and it sounds stupid, but it's, you know, everybody talks about a gap in the market.

Is there room for a creepy series or a creepy feature?

More importantly, is there a market in the Gap?

Is there kids and families who are willing to spend money?

So, and this is what, this is what you guys are missing.

It's like, it's there, it's in front of front of us.

Stranger Things, Five Nights at Freddy, Wednesday Addams.

All these things have completely normalized what used to be deemed alternative.

And it's extracting cash from people's pockets, creating great family moments.

And this is what Chris, I feel, sees.

I feel he sees this.

And that's why I think We're a good partnership because we're aligned to the strategy of the new.

The new world.

But saying that as well, Gab, I do think there's an authenticity there.

Like, I think that's the, like, teddy bears comes from you and Aoife, like that.

That, like, that alternative is you.

And.

And I think it's because.

Because it.

No edges were knocked off it and you're able to get the market with a true, authentic kind of vision for.

Helped.

It was so Crack company.

Come buy my daddy bed.

No, no, no, no.

I do think it's.

No, I think there's an authenticity there that, like, in your world, doesn't.

Didn't knock off edges.

And.

And I think it.

It's.

It's.

That's the new world.

Is that, like, that connection.

I think if you can cut through and be as true as you can, you don't realize how many people in the world are like you and how many people are going to connect to the same things you're connected to without any of those edges cut off.

And I think that's.

That's how you hit those little pockets of.

Of fandom that can then grow and more people fall into it, like, organically.

Well, because you're 100% right.

Because there's.

There's psychology at play here.

And like, we discussed this as well.

Guys, teddy bears, if you really analyze this right, take the teddy bears, move it here.

What is it?

It's.

Everybody in the world has felt rejection.

Everybody in the world has felt at some point in their life like they weren't enough.

This is the deadi.

This is.

When you think about the ip, how do we connect that emotion to the human being?

Because everybody has felt vulnerable.

The dead, even completely vulnerable.

It's like they are.

They are not supposed to exist in society.

And most of us, when we feel like that, we feel that way.

So that's.

That's why it's successful.

That is the backstory, that is the emotion coming out in the bear that people recognize.

And I also think maybe the vulnerability is.

Is empowering for the.

The people that buy.

Buy the teddy bears as well, because.

It's a statement, Andy.

It's a statement.

They clip this to their bag.

They feel.

They clip this to their bag, and it's like a bulletproof vest.

And that's weird, but it's okay.

It's how people protect themselves and at the same time, giving themselves a dopamine hit.

We all need it.

Yeah.

I also feel.

Back to Chris's point about edges, though.

I feel like if corporate media had come up with this, the edges would have been buffed off.

Right?

Like, it would have been like completely.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

You can see it.

We've all seen it done.

The name.

The name alone.

The name alone wouldn't have worked.

Yeah, that's a really good name, but, like, can we just call them something else?

Yeah, no, that.

That won't get by for brand management.

Listen, lads, it's really good to chat to you.

Best luck in la.

Preview previews the next few weeks and yeah, come back and update us.

Let us know how it goes.

We're very interested.

Story of Denny Bears.

Thanks.

Thank you for the excellent questions.

Awesome.

Do you want to do the sign off, Andy?

Okay, so thanks very much, Gavin and Chris.

That was fantastic.

I really enjoyed that chat and we hope you all enjoyed listening at home and please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week.