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Simone Legno: The biggest small business in pop culture
Simone LegnoThey are everywhere
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Simone Legno
They are everywhere. The darkly cute animals and Asian girls are printed on cloth baby diapers, backpacks and sneakers.
Large installations of various tokidoki figures are the main attraction in a mall in China, and their images decorate slot machines in Macao, Singapore and Los Angeles. The sky's the limit.
'I'd like to see the characters on airplanes,' said Simone Legno, the creator of tokidoki, in an interview at the Indonesia Comic Con in mid-November.
'It would be nice to partner with airline companies, but that's for later. I'm not in a hurry anyways. I still have a lot of other things to do now.'
In its 10th year in business, tokidoki was preparing to open a flagship store in China and was in the middle of talks about partnerships around the world while expanding distribution to South Korea and Southeast Asia.
A cult Italian brand, tokidoki is heavily inspired by Japanese pop culture ' the biggest influence for Legno growing up.
Born in Rome, Italy, on June 16, 1977, Legno had always been mesmerized by Japanese pop culture and lifestyle.
'I've made drawings of Japanese characters and robots since I was 4. The influence of Japanese pop culture in Italy at that time was so strong, stronger than what you have here.
'My mother, she is now 60-something years old, is familiar with the name of the robots and Doraemon.'
Tokidoki, which means 'sometimes' or 'from time to time' in Japanese, was chosen for the blog name where Legno posted his designs because he believed that there would always be a life-changing moment for everyone.
His moment came when his blog grabbed the attention of entrepreneurs Pooneh Mohajer and Ivan Arnold who later convinced him to move to Los Angeles and to build a brand.
Since it emerged in the market in 2005 it has grown big as an effective marketing tool for global brands.
In turn, the global brands' values, customer bases and, lately, social media further opened new markets for tokidoki.
'Our strategy is we don't want to go to mass market because we're afraid we'd burn the brand. Instead we prefer to grow organically and not impose the brand on the public. We prefer them to do research on us and to fall for the characters.
'As the result, tokidoki fans are really engaged with our products,' said Legno.
The cult-like following is the main reason Legno refused to work on an animation series in fear of being categorized as a kid brand.
'My mission is to make it relevant to any age. I'd love keep on doing collaboration with fashion brands, museums. If we limit the brand as a kid brand, we will lose the artistic charms of it.'
Legno created a series of characters to meet the needs of the brand partners, the most famous of which were the Wild Boys for Onitsuka Tiger shoes and the combination of tokidoki characters with Marvel designs and Hello Kitty.
Tokidoki's characters come in a wide range: the Cactus Friend, Doughnuts, Death, Wild Boys, Punk, the Moofia and the Unicorns series.
They appeared on LeSportsac bags, New Era caps, iSkin for iPod covers, Strangeco and BE@rBrick for toys, Smashbox for cosmetics alongside Sephora, Levi's jeans, Asics sportswear, Ride's snowboards, SkullCandy and Solrepublic's headphones and, last but not least, on the fashions of iconic designer Karl Lagerfeld.
The latest partnership was with Mattel's Barbie, which came out in a cute but edgy doll sporting street wear and a tattoo on her back, walking a cactus-costumed cat on a leash.
'I created the 12 monkeys' characters for a mall in Shanghai celebrating the Year of the Monkey.
'I always work on new characters based on a certain product, a certain collaboration, which is exciting. I couldn't stop with what I have.'
In contrast to other creators who preferred working on a single character or product and make it popular, Legno said his work style would be more about expanding the universe of the character.
'For me, tokidoki is the diary of my life. It's just continuous like a snowball that rolls and become bigger and bigger.'
The characters really tell the story about the creator.
Although Sandy the Cactus Girl was the iconic one that propelled the popularity of tokidoki before the unicorn reigns ' the series of characters his 2-year-old daughter loved the most, the Onitsuka Tiger Wild Boys were always his favorite.
'They are edgy, funny, cute and playful at the same time. They are more like me.'
As a mature brand, tokidoki is still on its way to meet Legno's ambition of making it a small version of Japan's giant brand Sanrio.
'With a smart marketing and licensing business, we're currently the biggest of the smallest of its kind. We're entering a new game; that's where we are now.'
Legno is into boxing and soccer on his downtime. He will be going back and forth to China until early next year to create installations and add another entry into his portfolio as an artist.
He made acrylic paintings of the characters on canvas, which have been exhibited by many arts communities.
'It's important for me to strengthen my artistic position,' he said.
For artists aspiring to follow in his steps, Legno shared his experience of working 16 hours a day and designing websites for small enterprises in the Philippines and Sweden while promoting his own works through blog-design portals.
'I started in a different time with not so much social media, which was unfortunate but the hard work and dedication helped me to gain more experience little by little that led to better quality products.
'Create interesting content and start from there. Go for small artistic collaborations and do everything step by step. If you're too much in a hurry, you will not be ready for the big thing.'
' Photos by JP/Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak
