About 8-12 months ago, I was trolling sherdog.com and saw a post by a company called Round 5 who was making MMA figurines. When I saw the initial pictures of the product specs, I was pretty blown away; I had to get a few of these bad boys for my desk.

Round 5 launched a series of figurines that included 4 of the world’s most popular mixed martial artists: Quinton Jackson, Tito Ortiz, Matt Hughes, and Randy “The Natural” Couture.

Based on the success of Series 1, Round 5 is launching series 2 next week, and has already completed plans to launch a series every quarter in 2009.

Series 2 features Wanderlei Silva, Anderson Silva, Sean Sherk, and Rich Franklin.

I had the opportunity to speak with Damon Lau, President and Co-founder of Round 5. Damon was friendly, informative, and an all around nice guy. One thing that I really liked about Damon is that one of his main goals is to protect the fighters interests, financially, as much as his own. A lot of companies seem to be capitalizing on the popularity of mixed martial arts, making their number one prioroty to line their own pockets while leaving the fighters high and dry.

Here is a question and answer transcript from my conversation with Damon.

Q: Were you in the sports collectible business before you launched the round 5 figurines?
A: No, actually, we weren’t. It’s a new venture.

Q: How did you come up with the idea?
A: This is a pretty interesting story. My primary background, I’m a marketing and advertising guy and through different types of relationships and different types of work I had done work in the MMA industry, I am actually really good friends with Randy Couture. The beginning of last year, me and Randy were having dinner one night because he was in town. We were sitting down and talking. We were really joking around about funny business ideas. Randy was telling me about this business idea that he had.

He said “Hey Damon, you know what I think would be the most funniest thing? I’ve always wanted to do this thing where you could sell plastic cauliflower ears. Wouldn’t that be hilarious?”`

We were just chuckling and coming up with ideas back and forth that were really silly and stupid and we were just joking around and I thought in my head, wouldn’t it be really cool if someone did MMA figurines or action figures? And then we both sort of paused for a second and he [Randy] said “That’s a really good idea Damon. Let me know if you ever do something like that. That might be kind of cool. “

And literally the idea started from that. The reason I brought it up is that I have always been a fan of those PRIDE figurines. I guess that is the nerd side coming out of me, because I always thought those were kind of neat.

Q: Is it difficult obtaining rights to create certain fighter figurines? How does that process work?
A: You know what? In the end I have worked with so many different guys. It’s a lengthy process. I guess you can say it requires the same things that any typical endorsement contract or fight contract for that matter. You deal with the standard difficulties that you have whenever you do any type of negotiation with anybody. I think the one thing that has been really simple for us though, is that our program is so much common sense. We remove a lot of the red tape, and it’s really sort of the contract and the company that is really fighter friendly. So typically speaking, although the process is fairly long, in regards to the negotiations it’s always been so simple for us because we keep our contracts standard for almost everybody. It’s very plain, black and white; we keep the standards the same among everybody so our program has been very good. It’s not like you are paying someone 10,000 dollars to fight and someone else 100,000 to fight. We keep our program the same among almost all the guys. It has its cons, but as a whole it has it’s pros also and has been very simple compared to other licensing deals.

Q: Did you have to deal with the UFC at all, or is it Round 5 dealing solely with the fighters?
A: We don’t do anything in regards to the UFC. We are sort of the one company that isn’t trying to play off the whole UFC type thing. If anything, actually, we believe that the brands of the fighters are one of the strongest, and we are not pertinent to any organization in regards to licensing. Whether it be EliteXC or Affliction or Strikeforce, what we have done is address the fighters directly so we didn’t have to deal with the UFC at all with this one.

Q: It’s a pretty unique idea to have the sponsors on the shorts of the figurines, how did you come up with that idea?
A: I think in the end, it sort of went back to making the contract friendly. The fact of the matter is as
a business we sort of understood that for a lot of fighters, the industry has evolved. We wanted to make sure that the fighters could benefit from it as much as possible. From the advertising standpoint, from my background, I can see that a lot of the guys make a lot of money doing the sponsorships on the shorts and the ring. When we end up creating the product, we want to create that same opportunity. When I look at the product, I go, hey, if I were a sponsor or advertiser of these fighters, I’d love to get on the figurine. Instead of them getting 5-10 minutes in the ring, imagine someone who is a fan of Randy Couture and you have it [the figure] sitting on your desk at work, you can look at that logo all day long. In my mind, it’s sort of an advertisers dream. I want to make sure that the fighters see the most benefits from it. Actually when I talk to the fighters, sometimes they don’t even realize. I say, “Hey guys, if you have any sponsors that you want to give props to, you can sort of do it yourself”. We sort of created the program specifically so the fighters could benefit from it.

Q: Do you plan on making any figures that are more playable and less collectible?
A: As a company it’s probably unlikely that we are going to be heading towards that direction. One thing that is for certain is that whenever we actually create these figurines, a lot of it is based on the feedback on how we search the market and we actually even go to the forums online, and we talk to all the people we can, and from the general feedback we have, we don’t feel that the demographic is really looking for something to play with. We find that most of our clientele, the guys that do purchase our product, it’s not really 4-8 year old children who are playing with children’s toys. The product is really meant to sit on your desk at work, keep it on your TV at home, keep it beside your UFC poster, all that sort of stuff. Our focus is more towards the collectible market, not so much children’s toys. For us, there really are no plans to create a more kiddy version. If anything we will stay with the current type of style and go more realistic.

Q: How long does it take to launch a series from start to finish?
A: We have two series planned right now. We are actually planned all the way up until series 5 right now, so we are going to be launching quarterly every single year. Every single quarter of next year you are going to see a new series come out. If everything is planned properly, typically speaking it’s about 3-4 months. But with the product planning that’s required, going through the cycles of distribution, things of that sort. It can go upwards towards 6-12 months. It really changes depending on the situation. But you are going to see us launching a series every quarter next year.

Q: Are you releasing any names [from the new series] or are you keeping that under your hat until the series is released?
A: We are keeping that under wraps right now, but for us, looking at the first two lineups you can have a strong idea of who it is that we are going to be releasing. We are going after fan favorites. We are going after A, fighters who have become champions before or B, fighters who have been number one contenders. We are picking the most favorite guys first, and just going through what the fans want in the end, really.

Q: What was the best selling figure from series 1?
A: Actually, dude, I don’t even know. I’d have to go ask the sales guys to go run a report. Off the top of my head, on activity I’d imagine, Randy and Quinton would be the most popular at the moment from series 1. But, that is not me stating a fact, that is just me on a general standpoint.

Q: Do any toy retailers carry the figures or do you have to get them online right now?
A: Oh, no no . They are going to be available at Toys R Us this Christmas; it’s also currently available at KB Toys. It’s available at FYE, it’s available at Champs Sports.

Q: Was it hard to get major retailers to sell the figures?
A: To a certain degree, yes, but also to a certain degree, no. More so from the standpoint that certain retailers are slowly recognizing MMA as a mainstream sport. On the second note, over the past two years that is the general consensus and the market is sort of changing. Initially when we first launched the product, there was a lot of skepticism in regards to will the product show the results that you want to. But if you look over our track record over the past 6-9 months, the sales have been fantastic so all the feedback we have been getting has been going great. You will probably see a lot of distribution over the next year as well.

Q: Do you have any plans to make figures of fighters who compete outside of the UFC?
A: Actually, 100%. 100%. There are already guys lined up who are not in the UFC right now.

Q: When is the official release date for series 2?
A: Series 2 hits stores next week.