The (legal) Force is Strong with Mighty Wallets®

Ten years ago I was randomly “surfing the net” and saw some wallets made of Duct Tape. It seemed like a cool idea, Duct Tape being something that was said to “hold NYC together”, but I wondered what else could you use to make a wallet? Tyvek® sprang to mind.

Within hours I was working on a new product concept. It took me about 9 months to find a way of making them that could be manufactured and then I was sitting on 25K Tyvek® Wallets that no one wanted.

The designs were based on simple paper parodies, Airmail Envelope, Dot Matrix printer paper = essentially nerd art. After a few years I got the selling pitch down, I had videos on YouTube selling the first Tyvek® Wallet and I had enough success that I was knocked off. BTW — That’s when you know you’ve been successful!

I still had first mover advantage and I had to secure the concept in the marketplace so I went into Licensing with no idea how it worked but I did understand that even though I couldn’t afford big corporate lawyers myself, the licensors I was working with DID have legal staff on hand and they were ready to pursue any legal threat to their property.

This gave my little company some much needed legal leverage with any knock offs and had the added advantage of opening up new retailers who might not know Mighty Wallets but loved Superman. It gave me a legal protection in exchange for the royalty rate and even had an upside on sales. A fair deal in my books.

Today I’m proud to say Mighty Wallets are known the world around in large part due to the success of my ability to lock in some major licensing opportunities early on. But nothing could be bigger or more exciting to me than the recent licensing we secured with Star Wars.

For those boot strapping companies out there I’d suggest trying out some smaller licenses first, getting comfortable with the obligations and commitments, then step it up a notch with larger brands.

Even if you’re small, the key to keep in mind when presenting or negotiating with a Licensor is they have needs to fill as well. They want to reach different market niches and so if you have a unique item and some decent sales history you can still walk out of a boardroom with a deal memo you just have to convince the licensor that you can give them a new audience or market share, and then you have to deliver!

Good luck and BE MIGHTY!