The China Experts: Matt Wills of Floob Creative on Brand Mascots and Building a Studio in Shanghai
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
In this episode of The China Experts, Kristina Koehler-Coluccia is joined by Matt Wills, Founder and Creative Director of Floob Creative Ltd in Shanghai. Matt arrived in Beijing as a design intern on an unpaid placement with a three-hour daily commute, and left it running his own studio building brand mascot characters for the Chinese market. The hardest part of that journey, he says, was not the design work.
Who is Matt Wills?
Matt Wills is the Founder and Creative Director of Floob Creative Ltd. He taught English in Japan before retraining as a graphic designer, took an internship in Beijing, then moved to Shanghai as a senior design manager for a major film company and later spent three years as creative director at Dark Horse. He started his own company in 2020, initially as what he calls an IP warehouse for registering a character he had created, and turned it into a full creative agency about six months later. He joins The China Experts to talk about brand mascots, client education and what it takes to run a small foreign-owned studio on the ground in Shanghai.
What this episode covers
Why Matt believes brand mascot characters outperform logos with Chinese consumers
The education problem: convincing clients a character is not just a cartoon
Registering character IP first and building the agency around it afterwards
How Hong Kong company formation compared with the paperwork of setting up in China
Working through referrals with internationally minded clients to avoid payment disputes
Why he meets people face to face at least three days a week and will not leave Shanghai
Where the business went next: NFT projects and licensing his mascot to a Beijing shopping mall
Selling the idea before selling the work
Matt's biggest obstacle was not competition, it was explanation. Companies are comfortable spending five or ten thousand dollars on a logo because the value of brand identity is culturally understood. Put the same budget in front of them for a brand mascot and the response he kept hearing was that it is just a cartoon, or that somebody's teenage daughter could draw one. His argument is that a character carries a human face, speaks to people and can interact with them across platforms in a way a static mark cannot, and that the same spend produces far more usable creative assets.
There is a practical consequence for anyone building a brand for China. A character that becomes commercially valuable is an asset worth protecting, and Matt's own company started life as a vehicle for holding exactly that kind of IP. Getting trademark registration in China under way early matters, because China operates a first-to-file system and a mascot that starts appearing in shopping malls is a visible target.
Two jurisdictions, two very different set-up experiences
Matt is blunt about the administrative side. His Hong Kong company was formed in roughly two weeks. Doing the same thing in mainland China meant far more paperwork and far more restrictions, and the same pattern repeated with banking and with visas. His conclusion was not that it is impossible, but that it helps enormously to have people who have done it before, who can file with the right department and deal with the authorities directly in Chinese.
That is the gap Woodburn fills, whether the route in is Hong Kong company registration or full China company registration. Matt also handed over the finance function entirely, which is a reasonable choice for a founder whose value lies in creative output rather than bookkeeping: ongoing cloud accounting and financial reporting and tax and audit compliance are exactly the areas where a small studio loses time it cannot afford.
Presence, networks and hiring on the ground
Asked how important it is to be physically in Shanghai, Matt is unequivocal. His work could in theory be delivered entirely online, but he meets people face to face at least three days a week and says he will not leave until the business is genuinely thriving, because trust builds faster in a room than on a screen. For companies whose leadership cannot travel, his advice is simple: find someone on the ground you trust to represent you. He also makes the point that the network worth building is wider than a client list, taking in partners, chambers and friends, because introductions in China tend to travel through people rather than through advertising.
Putting a person on the ground is where most foreign companies stall. Woodburn handles recruitment in China for firms that need a local hire, and offers employer-of-record hiring for those who want someone representing them before a legal entity exists.
Watch the full interview
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Woodburn Accountants & Advisors helps founders and international companies enter and operate in China and Hong Kong, from company registration and trademark protection through to recruitment, employer-of-record hiring, payroll, accounting, tax and audit.