For a long time, I had a distaste for Mondo for various reasons, which I will expand upon below. This affected my purchases of anything with a Mondo logo on the back, and as a result, I only have a few of their releases, such as the LPs for Mad Max Fury Road, Speed Racer, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
The reason for my bitterness was that their success in selling limited edition swag was in direct competition with the record company Heela and I started in Orange County, California, in 1999. Mondo began as MondoTees in Orange County around 2004, and I couldn’t help feeling bitter that they became a global sensation when we had a five-year head start on them.
Obviously, when you’re selling household names it’s easier to sell more products since the followers are already there. Mondo seemed to have started out as a Threadless competitor, but once they took off, they pivoted to posters and then later vinyl and toys. While our label was working on underground music and bands, Mondo began licensing huge global properties and paying through the nose for famous artists to do the art.
I’m not disgusted by the business model, in fact, licensing and promotion with world famous artists is a very smart way to make tons of money. Some merchandise licensing deals may generate only a few thousand dollars per year, while others may generate millions or even billions of dollars in revenue. It just seemed like too much of an “it takes money to make money” situation. If I had tens of thousands of dollars myself to license big movie scores and then turn around and spend tens of thousands on the art, production, and promotion of limited edition swag, well, I’d be just as popular too. Instead, we were over here releasing records from amazing bands no one has heard of, and so of course, it was much harder to sell those and make a mark in the music industry.
Then I got a little more jealous when they moved to Austin, Texas, and started becoming San Diego Comic-Con darlings. Right around the time I was covering SDCC for Verbicide Magazine and Rise Up Daily, 2012-2016, Mondo grew their presence with huge booths where they would sell all kinds of records and limited edition swag, with lines as long as the eye could see.
For a recent record that we put out on our label, I reached out to a past Mondo vinyl cover artist for a quote on how much it would be to get them to provide original art for the project. While I won’t tell you who it was or how much they quoted, let me just say that the quote for the cover art alone was five times more than we were going to spend on production of the records alone. Had we sold 100% of those vinyl records their fee would have resulted in a loss, and so we went to someone else who was just as good but cost what we could afford.
After Mondo merged with Alamo Drafthouse, it seemed like their reach was going even further, but apparently in 2021 they were bought out by toy maker Funko, and as of 2023 layoffs have begun.
According to TheWrap, “Earlier this month, Funko revealed that it suffered a loss in the fourth quarter of 2022 and that it would destroy between $30 million and $36 million worth of inventory and lay off 10% of its staff. TheWrap has learned that many of those cuts landed on Mondo. This followed the announcement in December that Funko company founder Brian Mariotti would return as CEO and that former Walmart.com CEO Steve Nave would serve as Funko’s COO and CFO.”
Now that the heads of Walmart and Funko are calling the shots and dismantling the company, I no longer feel envious. Unlike our rivals, our record label hasn’t spent a fortune on licensing world famous music or hiring A-list artists to attract collectors. Instead, we are proud to remain a 100% family-owned business that has been operating for over 23 years. We continue to work according to our own vision and rules, with no one to answer to except ourselves and our partners.
The lesson to be learned here is that there’s no need to covet or resent the success of a rival company, as it may come at a cost behind closed doors. Be happy with your own successes and don’t ever forget that the grass is always greener on the other side.
