At New York Toy Fair this year, I had an interview with Samantha Ordoñez, Product Marketing Specialist for Entertainment Earth/Bif Bang Pow! She showed me around the booth and let me in on how Entertainment Earth caters to a variety of collectors.
Mike – With all of the items that Entertainment Earth sells, are there any memorable items that have come across your desk that has made you personally geek out?
Samantha – There are so many different items that I get excited about and want to buy but unfortunately, there’s a limit to what I can get. In general, I wasn’t a collector before coming to Entertainment Earth but, and it has done this to a lot employees, I collect now. I collect tin totes. I’m also a very, very big music fan and I’m a musician by trade from back in the day and so we have a whole bunch of fun lines from Beatles to KISS so I kind of go gaga for really great musical tin totes. They’re not really high priced or sexy but for me, that’s what I really like.
Mike – …everyone has their thing
Samantha – …and sometimes its really amazing, highly articulated figures and sometimes its the little tchotchkes and key chains and things of that sort.
Mike – And that’s what’s great about you guys because you really have a wide spectrum of choices.
Samantha – We really do try to be a home base for the collector and don’t discriminate on what kind of collector there is because we realize everyone has something that pulls on their heartstrings or feeds their addiction so we’re lucky to have over 30k products on our site.
Mike – Aside from Funko, are there any other vendors that you get to sell exclusives from?
Samantha – Yeah, we do Hasbro and Funko. We also have in-house products that are Entertainment Earth and Bif Bang Pow! brands. We also have Loungefly some others like Mezco so we are really not discriminative as far as who we want to work with if it’s a really cool, unique product. Our purchasing team kind of works with their product development teams to give something unique to the fans.
Mike – You guys have stellar customer service and I personally buy a lot of collectibles from you. Is there a process that determines the quality of a box or packaging to label new or near mint?
Samantha – I can’t speak to the specific checklist but I can tell you that every single item goes through kind of a QC. Jason Labowitz, one of our founders and presidents of the company, is really, really big on packaging. If it’s not something that he wants to collect and the packaging is part of the collecting then it’s not worth anything. Collectors know that if the box is in pristine shape then that’s going to bring you more value in after sale, if you choose, or it makes your collection look nice. You don’t want junkie boxes that have nicks and dings up on the shelf when it’s your favorite character or item in your home. So I just have to say they generally look for dinged corners or scraped windows to try and make sure that it’s in pristine condition.
Mike – Would you say that you are the biggest distributer of Bif Bang POW!?
Samantha – Yeah, it is our in house brand so pretty much its one in the same essentially. So if anyone wants Bif Bang Pow! or Entertainment Earth products, they have to come to us.
Mike – You guys don’t just do consumer online but wholesale as well, correct?
Samantha – Yeah, a little over 20 years ago in 1996, the company started off as an online retailer. It grew into Entertainment Earth distribution so we have a distribution arm now from Entertainment Earth that handles wholesale and they’re the premier distributer for Hasbro, Funko, Mezco, Diamond, and a lot of the different companies exhibiting here are also clients of ours and then we have our manufacturing side.
I want to thank Samantha and Entertainment Earth for the great interview. I know that Entertainment Earth has a lot of products but their catalog is incredibly extensive.
Check out Entertainment Earth’s Site
Photos by Michael Madison
