Movie and comic figures supply action for Simi Valley toy company

By Michele Willer-Allred
May 07, 2016 — Ventura County Star
Among the myriad collectibles on display at the
Entertainment Earth corporate office are 12 vintage action
figures from the original 1977 “Star Wars” movie.
Those miniature figures were the impetus behind the
founding of Entertainment Earth by brothers Aaron and
Jason Labowitz in 1996.
Their website went live as a one-stop source for the Star
Wars action figure collector.
Today, the Simi Valley-based company, which employs
more than 125 people and recently celebrated its 20th
anniversary, sells more than 27,000 items, including action
and bobblehead figures, toys, gifts and collectibles, across
every major license brand today to gift buyers, fans of the
latest blockbuster movie and serious collectors.
Movies such as “Captain America: Civil War,” which
opened Friday, bring calls from customers looking for the
latest in toys and collectibles, a rarer occurrence 20 years
ago.
“When we started this business, collecting action figures
was off the radar,” said Jason Labowitz, 45, president and
co-founder.
It was he who at age 7 started collecting the original 12
Star Wars action figures after seeing the movie.
“I got one, and wanted another one and another one. I
played with them, but I kept all the packaging,” said Jason
Labowitz, who continued collecting into college.
Aaron Labowitz, 47, was more into collecting Star Trek
figures, and both brothers said that as they got into their
20s, they didn’t want to go to toy stores or other retailers to
find what they wanted.
The Internet was still in its infancy, and you couldn’t just
order what you wanted online.
“These mail-order companies with these catalogs would
just gouge you. And I said, ‘How can I get them at regular
retail price but have them sent to my door when they came
out?’ There was no solution to that,” Jason Labowitz said.
Aaron Labowitz already had a master’s in business
administration and was working for other businesses,
while Jason Labowitz had a computer consulting business
after college.
They decided to merge their expertise and start a
business that would sell action figures to collectors on the
Internet.
“We learned that Hasbro and all the major companies
want to sell to big-box stores, and weren’t interested in
selling to a tiny startup. We were online before any toy
manufacturer, so they thought it was weird,” Jason
Labowitz said.
They eventually were able to attract manufacturers to their
business model. They launched Entertainment Earth in
April 1996 with a website that featured an automated order
form and detailed information about 35 products.
Aaron Labowitz said there was no Internet software in
existence at the time to process orders, so they had to
create their own.
“It took awhile for us internally to get our systems to where
they could process orders,” he said.
The business was also one of the first to sell new
merchandise at Comic-Con in San Diego, beginning in
1997.
The brothers said they ended up being successful
because of innovations such as selling collections by the
box, allowing customers to pre-order before figures would
come out and guaranteeing mint-condition delivery.
“People ask us how do we survive with Amazon and
others selling the same kind of products, and these kinds
of services separate us because these are the things the
collectors want,” Jason Labowitz said.
They now have a wholesale division called EE Distribution
and formed the company’s own manufacturing arm called
Bif Bang Pow! They also distribute more than a half million
Entertainment Earth catalogs each year.
A cape featuring superhero themes that you place on your
work chair is one of the many items Entertainment Earth
has patented and received licensing to manufacture.
The privately held company did $55 million in sales last
year, and has grown an average of more than 30 percent
a year for the past four years, the owners said.
It is now four times larger than when it moved to Simi
Valley from the San Fernando Valley in 2011.
Upcoming plans include manufacturing more items that
will be sold at major chain stores. The company is also
redesigning its website, entertainmentearth.com, which
will have a number of cutting-edge features.
“The general public has caught up with what we’ve been
doing for 20 years,” Jason Labowitz said. “It’s very
exciting.”