Table of Contents
Toggle
Blue-chip NFT peripheral products enter retail channels
Pudgy Penguins focuses on the infant doll market, collectors have the opportunity to authorize
Boring Monkey canned water APE Water enters convenience stores
Pudgy Penguin NFT holders extract profits from physical product sales
Early founders exit, new founders are legendary teenage entrepreneurs
Entering physical channels is a strong challenge
The NFT market has experienced ups and downs and constant fluctuations and controversies in the past three years. The majority of teams have quietly exited under the accusations of being rug-pulled and scapegoated. The authorization and development of peripheral products for NFT avatars was once a hot topic. Currently, Pudgy Penguins and Ape Water are the only ones that have successfully produced and launched products in mainstream retail physical channels. The former has successfully entered the children and teenagers toy market, while the latter has placed mineral water on convenience store shelves.
Pudgy Penguins is considered an outlier in the NFT world. While boring monkeys and other blue-chip NFT holders are busy earning money through pledging, Pudgy Penguins has shifted the market towards physical retail. Pudgy Penguins, translated into Chinese as “胖企鵝” (Fat Penguin), is a highly attractive toy for children among many avatar NFTs. The penguins’ chubby and cute appearance, simple lines, and casual clothing are very soothing, loved by both adults and children.
Pudgy Penguins’ plush toys with penguin designs have been gradually placed on the shelves of Walmart, the largest retail chain in the United States. Walmart has a market value of 542 billion US dollars, second only to e-commerce giant Amazon’s 1.9 trillion US dollars. Pudgy Penguins announced last month that it will also enter another department store in the United States, Target (NYSE: TGT). Target has a market value of 67 billion US dollars, ranking eleventh among all retail channels in the United States. The main customer base of Pudgy Penguins is young people aged 16 to 24, both male and female.
PMI Children’s World, a toy factory specializing in collaborations with video game brands, has developed the second series of Pudgy Penguins products, which are now stocked in Walmart and Target. Target recently stocked six different designs of Pudgy Toys. The designs of these penguins are all authorized by NFT avatar holders. Each Pudgy Penguins toy includes a QR code that can be linked to the penguin characters in the Pudgy World Web3 game. In addition, Pudgy World is an online adventure game developed by blockchain company zkSync Era. Players can customize their penguin characters and participate in quests. The sales volume of physical plush toys of Pudgy Penguins is claimed to have reached 1 million units. They have also started cooperating with South Korea’s Lotte Market.
Ape Water recently joined the Thank Ape accelerator, hoping to open the door to the food industry for NFT authorized products.
The once dominant Boring Monkey series in the NFT world also started looking to make money through IP and metaverse games. However, the only company that actually authorized and produced products featuring the monkey avatar is Ape Water, a startup based in California. APE Water promotes its product as natural spring water from the American mountains, with packaging design and materials all made in the USA. Its distribution channels include 7 Eleven, Terrible’s, Green Valley Grocery, and others.
In terms of avatar designs, Boring Monkey anthropomorphizes monkeys, and the expressions and accessories may not be suitable for mass market development. In contrast to the simple lines of Pudgy Penguins, the products produced by Boring Monkey require specific representation of monkey details, posing a major challenge in packaging design.
Through the OverpassIP product authorization platform, Pudgy Penguin NFT holders can apply for NFT IP authorization to develop new Pudgy Toys production lines. Pudgy Penguin holders can earn 5% royalties from authorized plush toys. Pudgy Penguin NFT holders not only own NFTs but also continuously receive income generated from the real world.
The early founders of Pudgy Penguins were Cole Villemain and Clayton Patterson. Cole Villemain was accused of constantly making empty promises to the community, failing to deliver on token, game, and educational book projects, and hoarding funds for personal gain. He was voted out and subsequently sold the company’s equity to Luca Netz.
In April 2022, Luca Netz acquired Pudgy Penguins for 750 ETH (equivalent to 2.5 million US dollars at the time). This 25-year-old entrepreneur appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine, with the headline “Fuzzy: Forget about Boring Monkey, thanks to Walmart for signing this non-flying plush bird. The 25-year-old entrepreneur created the world’s most popular and adorable NFT series.”
Luca Netz’s rise to success is quite mysterious and inspiring. He was a street dweller at the age of 16 and slept on other people’s couches. Born in Los Angeles, his impoverished family forced him to drop out of high school. At the age of 18, he founded his first company, selling fake gold necklaces on Shopify, making him a millionaire at the age of 19. He invested in the Von Dutch leisure cap brand and has good experience and taste in the retail market and e-commerce. Before taking over Pudgy Penguins, he was the marketing director for Gel Blaster toys, demonstrating excellent public relations skills, making it easier for him to enter retail channels.
As for the early founders who have exited, what are they doing now? Cole Villemain (X @ColeThereum) announced today on X that he is selling his penguins for a price of 8 million US dollars.
The US retail industry is facing unprecedented inflationary pressures. Transportation, warehousing, and manufacturing costs have all risen. In recent years, due to poor security, many department store retailers have chosen to close their stores due to a constant stream of robberies. Coupled with supply chain and product promotion problems, Pudgy Penguins founder Luca Netz is preparing to expand into the Korean and Japanese markets in Asia. Perhaps he will face another challenge in the geopolitics of economics. The anime and toy markets in Japan and Korea have long-standing loyal supporters. It is worth continuing to observe whether Pudgy Penguins can establish a place in these markets.
Ape Water
Pudgy Penguins
Related Reading
NodeMonkes floor price approaches 1 BTC, surpassing Boring Monkey to become the second largest NFT project
NFT market crashes across the board! Blue-chip projects have plunged more than 30% per month. KOLs point out the problem: Who is speculating on NFTs in a bull market?