Staying Strong: Hard Hero

The first project that Hard Hero ever landed was the development of a Conan the Barbarian collectible statue. That was 10 years ago. Since then, Rob Potts' Murfreesboro, Tenn.-based company has picked up some of the industry's most sought-after licenses for its incredibly detailed statues—everything from Transformers and Pokémon to his all-time favorites, the Marvel superheros.

Potts, a collector himself, started his business with the goal of eventually working on some of the Marvel characters he most loved as a kid. And having achieved that goal, he keeps fellow collectors in mind when developing new items, from the statues themselves right down to their packaging and the poly foam surrounding them inside the box. It's that understanding of his consumers (and their interest in attention to detail and quality) that has made Hard Hero such as a success in a world full of collectibles manufacturers, Potts says.

“You can get anything made for as cheap as you want, but do you want to stay in business?” he tells Playthings. When the company is your baby, he says, you're the one who is going to take the blame if attention to those kinds of details slides. “We started from nothing. I took a hobby and turned it into a business, so I'm the guy who gets in trouble when we've messed up, or a pat on back when we do good,” Potts admits.

Yet with more than 100 loyal retail clientele in the U.S. and additional vendors and customers in Europe, Hard Hero has done little 'messing up' in the decade-plus it has been in business.

When asked, Potts says he won't compare his company to others in the market—he's more interested in providing quality product than critiquing his competitors—though he notes, “since we were on the topic” that his company is one of the only manufacturers offering collectibles at 1:6 scale and 1:10 scale. Hard Hero was also the first to make statues based on some of the lesser-known cult favorite characters like the Sub-Mariner, Hawkeye, Iron Fist and Hercules.

These days, the primary focus for Hard Hero's four in-house sculptors remains on those Marvel characters that have never been turned into statues before. Potts says he likes to offer collectible versions of the more secondary characters at lower editions to his customers, and always provides dealers exclusives to thank them for their support.

“There are scores of properties under the Marvel brand, and many are worthy of 3-D,” he says of his efforts to release versions of niche characters while other manufacturers focus mainly on the most marketable must-have characters, like Spider-Man. But there are markets for both, he says.

“There are all kinds of collectors,” he says. “Some buy solely because they like something and some buy only once others deem something worthy. To me, the purest collector collects what he likes, not necessarily a fad at a time.”

More villains and female characters, as well as a statue of The Human Torch, are definitely on the horizon, Potts says, although he won't reveal what other offerings might be in the works for 2008. However, he does confirm that his favorite superhero is Captain America. “I like what he stands for,” Potts says.

As for the future of the company, “It's not my goal to be top of heap,” Potts says. “I don't focus on that. It's not part of my philosophy. I want to make as nice a Marvel statue as we can make.

“For us, it's about the properties, not Hard Hero. Some people react to what other people do, while others just do. We have our plan.”