Barbie has ruled the fashion doll scene for a half-century. Now, some new girls want to play.
Westwood startup Popstar Club LLC is preparing to launch Beatrix Girls, a doll band made up of musicians Brayden, Ainsley, Lark and Chantal. The 12-inch dolls are set to debut in Toys R Us and other specialty toy stores nationwide this fall. The line’s design complete, Popstar is close to securing a second funding round to support the rollout.
Like Barbie, whose creator Ruth Handler was inspired by her daughter at play, the Beatrix Girls are the product of a father’s observations – but with a decidedly 21st century twist.
“Through the eyes of my children, it was pretty easy to see what kids are looking for and need,” said Zack Zalon, managing partner at incubator Elevator Labs.
What he saw watching his two young daughters at play was that kids today are not content to have their toys live only as dolls. The Beatrix Girls are intended to cross platforms – making music, starring in online videos and eventually living out their adventures on television.
To realize that complex commercial life, Zalon brought in Sherry Gunther, a 20-year veteran of the TV animation business, as chief executive of Popstar. He charged her with developing the brand.
Gunther, who served as a producer on popular animated TV series “Family Guy,” “Rugrats” and “The Simpsons,” was also the head of Hanna-Barbera Productions when it launched Cartoon Network in 1992.
The first step, she said, in creating a brand for an already crowded market was to differentiate its design. Popstar used animators to craft the characters’ look, rather than traditional doll designers who might have preconceived notions of what a doll should look like. But Beatrix Girls’ oversized heads have nevertheless been said to resemble Van Nuys toy company MGA Entertainment Inc.’s Bratz dolls.
Isaac Larian, MGA’s chief executive, declined to address the potential competition.
Gunther said the Popstar dolls are distinctly different.
“We didn’t try to copy anyone else,” she said. “In fact, our entire M.O. was to be completely original and different by nature.”
With the dolls’ look developed, Gunther hired a songwriter who wrote eight original songs for the band. The tunes, available on the dolls’ website, TheBeatrixGirls.com, will be joined by other original tunes as the toy pop stars gain popularity.
One-hit wonder?
While a line of dolls might seem far afield for an incubator whose other investments are Hello Music, a social commerce platform for musicians, and FatCloud, a cloud application management system, Zalon and his partner in Elevator Labs, Brendon Cassidy, have backgrounds in music and design.
The pair left Virgin Digital, the online music sales business of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, where Zalon was president and Cassidy was chief technical officer, when that operation was shuttered in 2006.They formed Wilshire Axon, a digital product design firm, before turning their attention to Elevator Labs in August 2011. They formed the new company, which they described as an “innovation factory,” with $20 million in backing from Chicago private equity firm KGC Capital.
Yet even with an experienced management team, a cross-platform development plan and a reasonably deep-pocketed backer, breaking into the $2.6 billion U.S. doll market is no easy feat.
Richard Gottlieb, chief executive of toy industry consultancy Global Toy Experts in New York, said the fashion doll category, dominated by Barbie, could prove particularly difficult.
“They’ve got a real challenge ahead of them,” he said. “I’m not saying lightning can’t strike, but the people they’re competing with have a lot of money in promotion and brand equity.”
Sean Windle, an analyst at Santa Monica market research firm IBISWorld, said the industry is ruled by a few big companies with significant market share. Mattel Inc. in El Segundo and Hasbro Inc. in Pawtucket, R.I., for example, account for about 16 percent and 9 percent of the doll industry’s annual revenue, respectively.
“These companies have an advantage because they’re large and able to source materials cheaper,” he said. “That puts smaller regional manufacturers at a disadvantage competing with them.”
Gunther said that she expects to manufacture between 75,000 and 100,000 dolls in Shenzhen, China, to fill initial orders, and that online retailers have already begun placing preorders for the dolls, which will retail for $24.99 each.
Barbie and Bratz dolls both retail for from $12 to $27, and each brand has branched into other media as well.
Gunther would not say how much the company was seeking in its current funding round, only that money raised would be used to pay for a marketing campaign that would allow the company to compete with doll industry heavyweights such as Mattel and MGA.
That could be what makes or breaks a newcomer, said Global Toy Experts’ Gottlieb.
“To be successful with a doll in the toy market, you are going to need to have a lot of capital behind a TV advertising campaign or online advertising,” he said.
Popstar has begun putting together ads. Earlier this month, the company spent two days shooting footage of the dolls, which they plan to cut into commercials of various length. The ads will complement a series of online videos the company has already created and uploaded to YouTube.
Popstar, which recently hired a head of sales, now employs four people, including Gunther. It has a distribution deal in place with Tween Brands Inc.’s Justice stores, a New Albany, Ohio, clothing and accessories chain aimed at girls age six to 12. There it will sell special holiday packages of the dolls complete with miniature instruments.
In a move toward further growth, the doll company said it has already signed a couple of licensing agreements with manufacturers eager to sell Beatrix Girls-branded shoes and bedding.
Gunther said she’s also got deals in the works to license the brand for categories such as clothing, jewelry and back-to-school accessories.
It’s unusual for a new company to get interest from licensees so early on in the process, but she thinks it speaks to the strength of the Beatrix Girls brand.
“It’s early, but very exciting,” she said.
