Darran Garnham started Toikido from his kitchen table in 2020, creating a job for himself that would afford him more time with his three sons.
Now, four years and nearly £100 million in retail sales later, the entertainment company is behind the mascot for the 2024 Euros – which will be seen by some 300 million people.
Albart the teddy bear, who coincidentally shares a name with Darran’s youngest son, was a collaborative effort that has now paved the way for Toikido to branch out into mascot designing.
Toikido was approached after Fanatics, retailers of officially licensed UEFA products, saw Darran’s previous work on Pinata Smashlings – animated characters for children that are now the face of toys, a Roblox game, and an upcoming series.
He told Daily Express: “They saw our characters and the design work that we’ve done and said, ‘Do you want to pitch for the mascot rights?’ Designing mascots is not what we do, but we’d become good at it.
“And we’ve now been approached by other federations, sports teams, and brands. We created about a dozen different mascots for UEFA, and then over a period of time they were whittled down to what has become Albart.
Toikido designer Antony got to work in his shed in Northampton, and in a matter of weeks, Albart was created. The small team had regular meetings with UEFA to make any tweaks to the design, and 10 weeks later, the finished product was ready.
Darran said: “I’ve been told by people who have worked on other mascots that it was almost ludicrous how quickly we did it. And that really comes down to the way we run the business like a game studio.”
Acknowledging the sheer amount of luck that has come his way since starting Toikido in 2020, the former Tesco shelf stacker appreciated how different his life is now.
He puts his work ethic down to the influence of his parents – growing up with a dad who was a security guard Monday to Friday and bought and sold cars on the weekend, and a mum who worked as a cleaner and in a nursing home.
Taking it upon himself to also earn a little bit of pocket money, Darran would resell Beano comics and collect glasses from pubs while London Irish rugby games were on, all the while carrying out three paper rounds.
His appreciation for hard work has clearly paid off, as Toikido has now made over £79m ($100m) in retail sales alone, and is due to be valued at £395m (half a billion dollars) very soon.
He explained: “I want to grow this business to be a half-a-billion dollar business as a minimum. That’s really my first hurdle of what I want to achieve. And we’re definitely putting the right foundations in place to get to that in the next two to three years.”
“It’s quite humbling actually, some of the rooms that we find ourselves in and the discussions that we find ourselves in. We do it humbly.”
