Designing Doom

Gayle Middleton and Jay Kamhi are not interested in making the next shiny toy; they want to create a new world. Their latest creation, Vamplets, is not your typical warm and fuzzy toy enterprise like Disney Princesses or Cabbage Patch Dolls. This world is focused on the creepy.

Vamplets are “cute, cuddly, and rotten-to-the-core babies,” Kamhi says. Their world, Gloomvania, is full of baby vampires, werewolves, ghost ponies and dragons.

Creating a large-scale successful toy enterprise isn't too far fetched for the duo. Middleton is famous for designing billion-dollar brands like My Little Ponies and Littlest Pet Shop. Kamhi has manufactured everything from Silly Bands to Beanie Babies to talking pens and dolls for merchandise branded with Napoleon Dynamite, “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons.”

When Clearwater-based Kamhi saw Middleton's dark designs for the vampire babies in 2009, he knew he wanted in. Investing $100,000, Kamhi became a 50/50 partner in the brand to help bring Middleton's dream to market. Since, he's invested more than $500,000, and he's convinced the brand is on the brink of making it big.

Kamhi says they've been approached by Toys“R”Us three times to put their designs on the shelf chain-wide. But they haven't liked the marketing plan to set Vamplets next to other dolls. “There's a whole world, and people won't get it,” Kamhi says. Rather, he wants to build an environment to display the babies, including their carriages, coffin beds, medieval cages, and baby bottles of blood.

Kamhi says Middleton tells him, “I don't create products. I create worlds because a million products can come from that.” That's why the two are hoping to sign a movie or television deal to bring their characters to life. They've already heard from one major studio in the U.S. and an Indian animation studio that wants to buy a piece of the company, according to Kamhi.

A television deal could take the company from a $1 million company to hundreds of millions, Kamhi says. With Middleton's designs, Littlest Pet Shop grew from $60 million to $600 million in five years.

So for now Vamplets is only selling on its website, through tradeshows, and a few boutique stores like ThinkGeek.com and FAO Schwartz in New York. Last year the company made $300,000 in revenue from the plush animals, which sell for $20 to $25 a piece. The pieces are produced in a factory in China, with each stuffed baby costing around $6 delivered.

They are pulling in most of their revenue through large trade shows like San Diego's ComicCon and Dragon Con. Last year they made $21,000 in four days at ComicCon. At the trade shows, Vamplets cosponsors blood drives and donates a portion of its profits to a bat sanctuary in Texas.

Creating an out-of-the-box design is not without its challenges, according to Kamhi. “Everybody says, 'who's going to buy this? Who wants monster babies?'” Kamhi says. But backing from big names like licensing agent Carlin West, who brought Pokemon to the states, has kept the brand alive.

“At certain points we were completely broke. We were inches away from stopping because there was no money,” Kamhi says. “It takes years to become an overnight success.”

But the company has slowly grown a following through Kickstarter campaigns and social media. It has 100,000 fans on Facebook and recently exceeded a $15,000 Kickstarter fundraising goal, with nearly $25,000 in pledges. It licensed rights to Action Lab Comics to partner on a couple comic books to tell Gloomvania stories.

The Kickstarter campaigns have helped secure money for inventory before the products are made, Kamhi says. It takes about 90 days to restock the plush creatures with hand-stitched and embroidered details like bibs and bows.

“Gayle's world is as big as anything Disney,” Kamhi says. “To us the world is real. You have to have that, otherwise it's just a product.”