Brands See Benefit in Catering to ‘High-Value Enthusiasts’

When Mattel recently released one of its newest Hot Wheels — a collaboration with Gucci to recreate the 1982 Gucci Cadillac Seville — it was priced at $120, over 100 times the typical price for the company’s iconic toy car.

But the Gucci Hot Wheel wasn’t meant to be put under the Christmas tree for the kids. Rather, it’s part of Mattel Creations, a platform catering to collectors where the California-based toy brand can collaborate with artists and other brands to “reimagine and recreate some of the most iconic toys in the world.”

But toys aren’t the only types of collectibles that brands are focusing on. Sneakers, of course, have long had a collector culture around them — which Nike has been catering to for years — as have comic books and baseball cards. With eCommerce on the rise, though, brands and marketplaces are finding it advantageous to make a conscious effort to reach these enthusiastic consumers.

“We’re putting our focus and attention not just around the number of buyers that we have on the platform, but much more focused on how are we turning buyers into high-value enthusiasts,” eBay CEO Jamie Iannone told analysts on a conference call last week.

Related: eBay Downplays Continued Decline of Active Buyers

The reason for the focus on this niche subset of consumers is clear: Collectors and enthusiasts, eBay executives have said, typically spend more money than other shoppers. Additionally, many are high spenders in other categories, too. For example, Iannone said the average buyer who purchased sneakers on the marketplace spends approximately $2,000 in other categories.

“One of the great benefits of eBay is the cross-category nature of shopping,” he said.

The Mattel Creations platform also creates a more mature shopping experience for adults and cashes in on the nostalgia that many millennials feel for the ’80s and ’90s, when they were kids.

“Mattel Creations is the perfect platform for us to present limited edition collector products that speak to our incredible fan base as well as attract new fans to our vast portfolio of pop culture brands,” Mattel President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Dickson said in a recent news release. “Toys as art, and art inspired by toys.”

Digital Collectibles

Of course, as the economy becomes more connected and digital, collectibles have expanded beyond just items that sit on a shelf, especially with the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Burger King, for example, has teamed up with NFT marketplace Sweet as part of its Royal Perks loyalty program to offer collectible digital tokens to customers, and Shopify earlier this year said it would allow merchants to sell NFTS on its platform.

Mattel Creations also has a series of Hot Wheels NFTs that it began releasing earlier this year, with the next drop set for later this month. When the tokens launched in June, Dickson said evolving physical toys to “digital art through NFTs” was a logical step for the collector platform.

See more: Digital Hot Wheels And Other Outside-The-Box Moves To Keep Brands Relevant

To be sure, many on the internet are skeptical of NFTs, though signs that the market was cooling have abated. Reuters reported that sales on OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, reached $3.4 billion in August and $3 billion in September; sales were just $150 million in June and $326 million in July.