Figuring Out Figurines: One Step Further

This year I’m turning 60, and for most of my life I’ve done one thing: I’ve sold toys. I’ve watched thousands of figurines pass through my hands, from factory to shelf to the final customer. But about five years ago, a simple question crept into my mind and refused to leave: Why have I never made them myself?

It sounded so straightforward at the time—almost naïve. In my imagination, figurines fell out of machines, landed in a box, and my job was simply to place them and sell them. I knew how to talk about them, market them, stand behind them. But making one? That felt like a completely different universe.

Maybe it’s my salesman brain, but when the thought settled in, I also knew something else immediately: if I ever made toys, they couldn’t just be the same as the ones I’d sold for decades. I wanted to take one step further—do something different, start from zero and see where that road leads.

It turns out that road is steep. It begins with material science, something I had never claimed to understand. But after all these years of dealing with industry leaders, I knew quality when I saw it—and I also knew where the cracks were. I knew children deserved safer toys, the planet deserved better materials, and manufacturers deserved a healthier workspace. The problem: figurines aren’t wooden spoons. They’re plastic. And plastic is complicated.

What I found surprised me. The solutions existed—some of them even beautifully simple—but they weren’t being used. Not because they didn’t work, but because no one wanted to take the first step. Fear of cost, fear of change, fear of being the one who tries.

For me, that fear turned into motivation. Together with our material partner and ISCC+, we developed and certified a material that finally ticked all the boxes: sustainable, safe, high-quality, and suitable for real figurines—not theoretical ones. Through mass-balance offsetting and water-soluble paints, we were able to create something that isn’t just better for the planet, but also better for the people producing it.

And then another truth revealed itself: sustainability isn’t only about material; it’s also about distance. Toys shouldn’t have to fly around the world twice before reaching a child’s hands. By building a supply chain close to home—Europe and the Mediterranean—we found a way to create something responsibly, right on our doorstep.

Today, we are finally here. The launch range is finished, real, and ready. If you’re walking the fair, come by our stand, see what we’ve made, hold it in your hands, and—hopefully—help us put it into many more hands together.