Speaker 1: You're listening to taking start with Kathleen and Pim Fox
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. What kind of event has people talking
Speaker 1: about such characters as a Doom Patrol Shade, the Changing Girl,
Speaker 1: as well as Mother, Panic, X Men, and a variety
Speaker 1: of comic figures well Comic Con New York Comic Con specifically,
Speaker 1: it also includes characters such as Harry Potter and here
Speaker 1: tell us more about the world of Harry Potter and
Speaker 1: business is Chris Davis. He is the chief executive and
Speaker 1: the co founder of lute Crate. They're based in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: but he joins us here in the studio. Chris, thanks
Speaker 1: very much for being here, Thanks for having me. So,
Speaker 1: how is Comic Con New York? Is that? How's that
Speaker 1: working for you? It's going really well. It's crazy. It's packed.
Speaker 1: There's a hundred thousand people running around in cosplay and
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, and some of the most of
Speaker 1: them are in custom. It's about half in costume half
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, what was your did you have a
Speaker 1: cost for lut Crate? I'm just rocking the Luke Crate
Speaker 1: T shirt. I have to keep it a professional. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: So let's tell our audience. Now, what is luke crate
Speaker 1: Because you're growing very rapidly. You started the twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollar investment. UH in your first year you generated
Speaker 1: a hundred seventy five thousand revenue and today you're generating
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty million dollars plus your run, right, So
Speaker 1: what is it that you do? So we package pop
Speaker 1: culture merchandise from the top entertainment, gaming, film and TV
Speaker 1: brands and deliver it to fans all over the world.
Speaker 1: We shipped to thirty five countries and UH have twelve
Speaker 1: different subscription lines. So if I want to get on
Speaker 1: lut crate and get a Spider Man accessory every month,
Speaker 1: I can do so. Yeah. So we our main product
Speaker 1: is literally we curate from the hundreds of hundreds of
Speaker 1: different I p s. We just today announced some specific
Speaker 1: ones Harry Potter, UH and san Rio Hello Kitty, which
Speaker 1: will be are one of our new initiatives of going
Speaker 1: for the super fans of specific brands. We're launching subscription line.
Speaker 1: So Marvel we just announced as well, so for the
Speaker 1: Spider Man fan and you you could get the subscription.
Speaker 1: So who is your customer? So eighteen to thirty four
Speaker 1: is kind of our core demo. Um, but it really is,
Speaker 1: you know, with properties like Star Wars, Marvel and d
Speaker 1: c uh, there's not a demographic that doesn't really consume
Speaker 1: this stuff. And you look at you know, most of
Speaker 1: the top movies from a box office perspective these days
Speaker 1: are all kind of traditional geek brands. Is this described
Speaker 1: as the subscription service, the curated subscription service businesses that
Speaker 1: how do you describe it in the industry? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it we we curate, So it's not there's you think
Speaker 1: about like Dollar Shape Club and Honest Company, they're doing
Speaker 1: refillable essentially subscriptions. This is across every consumer product category.
Speaker 1: So we do books, apparel, collectible figures, proper replicas from
Speaker 1: most franchises. So it's literally any item can end up
Speaker 1: in a box. Of course, and now you're unvailing the
Speaker 1: official sill crate for fans of J. K. Rowling's Wizarding World.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to tell you there's a lot more
Speaker 1: than you know. Eighteen to thirty five. You get kids,
Speaker 1: you get the parents of the kids who read those
Speaker 1: books to their kids growing up, and those kids are
Speaker 1: not teenagers. I mean, that's a vast universe. Oh, I mean,
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, I think is a lot like Star Wars
Speaker 1: in the sense that everybody is connected in some way,
Speaker 1: and we were doing we were looking into a four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million copies of the book sold. That's
Speaker 1: just mind blowing. I we have all of ours that
Speaker 1: we bought over the years as soon as they came out.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan. I remember reading those of the family.
Speaker 1: Your business, as Kathleen noted, has skyrocketed hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty million dollars and we did a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty million sales last year. Is it all relationships? I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you present yourself? How did you make the
Speaker 1: connections to have this? Intellectually it makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: but is it really about knowing who to call and
Speaker 1: went to call on how to make the deal? So yeah,
Speaker 1: we say, you know, we curate. We get to work
Speaker 1: with the best brands in the world. So we're putting
Speaker 1: we're fans like our subscribers. We're working with Marvel, the
Speaker 1: big Game companies. But are what we do that's really
Speaker 1: special I think is is build that community and curate
Speaker 1: all that content independent of those brands. So we bring
Speaker 1: together a lot of So we we've been to a
Speaker 1: hundred plus comic con esque shows like the one that's
Speaker 1: going on in in New York today. We travel to the
Speaker 1: Hong Kong Toy Fair, the German Toy Fair. We've have
Speaker 1: four suppliers across the world we've gone and met, and
Speaker 1: we use that pool and our partners on the media
Speaker 1: side to put together these boxes every month. You were
Speaker 1: talking about going to the rest of the world. Then
Speaker 1: how difficult is it to create the box that appeals
Speaker 1: to the kid in China, you know, the kid in
Speaker 1: Rio or are there are there certain aspects of this
Speaker 1: that are so universal? You know? It's it actually really
Speaker 1: is truly global. The more we as we've expanded and
Speaker 1: done a lot of research UM, both on the gaming
Speaker 1: side and on the film and television side. It's most
Speaker 1: of the same franchise of the people love UM in
Speaker 1: most markets. So we've been surprised by how easily things
Speaker 1: transition young men in same as young women. Do you
Speaker 1: needed you want more customers? Do you need to appeal
Speaker 1: to females more? Yeah, there's different genres and different franchises.
Speaker 1: You think kind of like Buffy and a few of
Speaker 1: the and shows like that have a more female centric audience,
Speaker 1: but still a ton of male fans. So we've always
Speaker 1: said about seventy percent male female um and we just
Speaker 1: market to the to the show and you see some
Speaker 1: interesting demographics coming out of that. Well, you've got some
Speaker 1: limited edition crates I note for example south Park Call
Speaker 1: of Duty loot for fan girls. You have a favorite
Speaker 1: crate right now, the Harry Potter one. I'm really excited for.
Speaker 1: The south Park one is going to be So it's
Speaker 1: a one time collector's edition for their anniversary and we
Speaker 1: worked specifically with Matt and Trey and their creative team
Speaker 1: on that, and it's going to be hysterical. What's a
Speaker 1: cost that's gonna be? Okay? Well, Chris Davis, and again,
Speaker 1: what was your background which you study in college economics
Speaker 1: and finance? This is I get to apply it to
Speaker 1: about the most one topic. Again, how come I didn't
Speaker 1: think of starting moot create. That's what's kind of superhero?
Speaker 1: Chris Davis, CEO and co founder of Lucreate based in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and our New York studio today. You can
Speaker 1: find him at loucrate dot com or follow at luke
Speaker 1: Create on Twitter. Thank you for joining us. Pim Fox,
Speaker 1: Kathleen Hayes, Thanks to our techic director Reggie Basil and
Speaker 1: our wonderful producer Samara Same sam linga people right here.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg