Forbes writer Marty Swant profiles Paul Budnitz in his recent piece Meet The Vermont Startup That Amazon, Gucci And Google Are Betting Could Be The Disney Of The Metaverse.
He writes:
“Budnitz, a 54-year-old serial entrepreneur, has built a content studio of zany, multimedia characters designed to thrive in the coming metaverse. The noir-themed world of Superplastic feels more like The Matrix than Wonderland. Its colorful inhabitants have gained millions of their own social media fans. They’ve also made $20 million from selling tens of thousands of NFTs with Christies and others.”
Watch Superplastic’s first Kickstarter video.
Watch Superplastics’s second Kickstarter video.
These two appeals raised over $1 Million, from over 6,700 backers!
In a fascinating presentation from October 2018, Budnitz summarizes his life and credo and, at 28:30, outlines the Superplastic strategy for the next five years:
“Superplastic… we have a secret plan… we’re not really making another toy kind of streetwear company. What we’re doing is we’re… making all these characters. We are making toys, but they’re just sort of an excuse because they’re awesome. What we’re really doing is we’re making these characters. Then we’re animating them in 3D but then putting them in the real world. Like, there could be one sitting right there in that empty seat, right? But you would only see it on Instagram. Then we take a picture of it; then we 3D model it and then render it and then put it on Instagram. And then we turn these characters into celebrities (we haven’t done this yet but we’re doing it — we’re in the process) and we make them celebrities. And then, they can, like, we can do cartoons and I can make movies again. We can make movies and then we can make more toys and all that kind of stuff.”
I’m not even going to go into the whole NFT side of the Superplastic Global Entertainment Brand.
My take: this is a hard one for me. My problem is that I’m such a bad consumer! I don’t collect toys or anything, and don’t buy much. I tend to use things until they wear out. Sure, I’m frugal but I also value sustainability.