Special Feature
Bildo
Bildo a passion
for creation
Founded in 1989, Greek toy company Bildo has grown from a domestic manufacturer and supplier of building blocks to a globally distributed and highly respected maker of quality licensed toys spanning blocks, roleplay, dough and cosmetics. Toy World spoke to Georgios Fotopoulos, commercial director, and Savvas Mouratidis, CEO, whose father George founded the company more than three decades ago.
How did Bildo start? Bildo is a family-owned toy business, one of very few in Greece. It all started back in 1989 when George Mouratidis, Savvas’ father – who was always very interested in toys despite having trained professionally as a pharmacist – decided to take the bold step of starting his own toy company in partnership with his son. His first ever product was a bucket of building blocks.
When you launched, what were the strengths of the company and its core ranges? What makes us stand out, and the reason we’ve weathered all the challenges thrown our way, is that George Mouratidis is a very hard worker. He never quit or backed down because he loves what he does – he’s 75 years old now and still spends a lot of his time playing with Bildo toys. His passion for toys has never wavered, and that passion has filtered down and through to other members of the family too, who have joined him in the business and grown up with it. The family is heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the business, and not purely from a managerial ‘oversight’ aspect. Each member of the 65+ strong Bildo team is considered part of the family and treated as such, and this helps bring out the best in them. When it comes to business, there’s no ‘us and them’ mentality and the atmosphere is very
welcoming as a result. When we look at company growth and strength, this is vital. We’re in an area of Greece that’s quite rural, Veria, and Bildo has made the conscious decision to remain here - where it all started - supporting the local community and providing employment. It could have been easier for us to move to somewhere like central Thessaloniki, which is a big, densely populated seaside city, but our team has been selected from the local area and leaving them would mean losing that talent: our ‘newest’ employee has been with us six years. We value loyalty, from their side as well as from ours.
How has the company evolved since the early days? From its earliest days, when George and Savvas were simply producing blocks, Bildo now has presence all around the world and boasts some huge licensing collaborations with the likes of Mattel, Hasbro, MGA Entertainment, Disney and many more. It’s been an intense and exciting journey for Bildo. Our original generic blocks were a big success; our customers could see their retail potential in terms of enhancing their toy offering with new play patterns. This success ultimately opened the door to the world of licensing. Our first licensing deal was inked with Disney in 1991, starting with Disney Princess, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Frozen and more. For a young company that was also new to licensing, this was a massive deal for us and really helped kickstart the licensing side of the
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business. Sanrio followed with Hello Kitty, Hasbro with Peppa Pig, and Mattel came on board in 2017 with Barbie, Hot Wheels and Fisher Price. In 1992, Bildo entered into Girls Role-Play toys with categories like cooking, baking and beauty, with Boys Role-Play following suit in 1995, and more recently the company invested in tooling to start manufacturing dough and cosmetics. Factory capacity doubles each year, from machinery and moulds to production and output, and now we’re entering a new year off the back of aggressive +40% YOY growth. Bildo’s expansion is set to continue, too. We’re always looking for new categories we can move into, as well as new territories. Our products are now in retailers across EMEA, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, giving us a truly global footprint in over 620 stores, and this year we’re also exploring North America further.
What have been the key developments that led to the company growing from a domestic supplier to the Greek market into a major global supplier? In the early years, our licensing deals were limited to local activity in southeast Europe – Spain, Italy and Greece – but in 2017 we struck up a major collaboration in the Middle East. The year after, we saw dramatic growth and that has continued apace for the past three years despite the many challenges
