Malaysian customisable gifts and stationery brand Ana Tomy founders share on Mandalorian collection collaboration

KUALA LUMPUR, May 5 — This is the way indeed for local customisable stationery brand Ana Tomy following the launch of their new capsule collection inspired by the Star Wars hit series, The Mandalorian.

Ana Tomy is a local gifts and stationery brand which was founded in 2016 by three creative minds namely Cliff Leong Kok Kit, Fidella Ch’ng Pei Feng and Zeejay Wong Zi Jian.

They specialise in personal customisation of products and recently introduced a whole customisable capsule collection of The Mandalorian merchandise which includes journals, tote bags, keyrings, t-shirts and junior notebooks.

Although having to close down their newly opened physical store at the Zhongshan Building in Jalan Kampung Attap for a couple of months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the team at Ana Tomy, are finally seeing the rainbow after the rain.

They were approached by representatives from Disney Malaysia who offered them an opportunity to collaborate on one of Disney’s wide range of intellectual properties (IP).

Ana Tomy co-founder and director Cliff Leong Kok Kit said it was a clear choice for them to settle on none other than Star Wars as it was a personal favourite for them.

“This is also in conjunction with Disney’s 100th year anniversary this year. They wanted to have more different collaborations, different merchandise and different products for their assets.

“They approached us around the last quarter of 2022 and we had a discussion on how they can work together with our collections and how we can secure licences (on their IP).

“Then they asked us what we want to work on, because Disney has so many IP’s right. Mickey Mouse, Marvel and everything.

“And the first thing i said, we have to do Star Wars first. Above everything else, Star Wars first,” Cliff told Malay Mail.

According to Cliff, they had to get approvals from both Disney and Lucasfilm in order to gain the license to produce The Mandalorian inspired collection. — Picture by Raymond Manuel.

He shared that working with Disney required a lot of time and they had to go through several processes before securing the licences to produce the merchandise.

This also included their factory being audited by Disney’s representatives beforehand as well as having to get approval from Lucasfilm as well.

“We have to work with what Disney gave us. They have a huge archive of Star Wars from the very beginning during the 1970’s to the latest one which was artworks and designs from season three of The Mandalorian.

“So we have to take out everything they have in their archive and see what fits into making these. Our ideas are always the same, we want to have more offerings.

“Let’s say you have notebooks, normally there’s three or five designs, but we want ours to have around 20 plus designs and we want to make it customisable as much as possible,” he said.

Cliff added that this is a new challenge for them as well as the majority of Ana Tomy’s clients are female and added that the local Star Wars fan base is a bit male-centric.

However, he was surprised to learn that a lot of women actually enjoy The Mandalorian and most of their female customers love their new capsule collection.

Zeejay said that this unexpected collaboration is a new benchmark for Ana Tomy and they're hoping to bring Ana Tomy to international markets. — Picture by Raymond Manuel.

Ana Tomy creative director and co-founder, Zeejay Wong Zi Jian, who is also an avid Star Wars fan, admitted that they almost went with a different Disney IP due to their attachment to Star Wars.

“Because we are so in love with it, like personally I’m so in love with Star Wars and I sometimes feel like I might not be able to pull it off and you’re afraid of ruining it, so I was kind of reluctant at first to actually do it.

“But then what pushed us is that, this is kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity and we just said, let’s do it lah. This opportunity doesn’t come by so easily, if we don’t take it we might regret it.”

He said that the unexpected collaboration set a new benchmark for Ana Tomy fulfilling their dream and goal to collaborate with big IPs.

“It’s a big milestone and we will keep on striving for more collaborations with bigger brands.

“And we’re hoping to push this brand outside of Malaysia. That’s our whole vision and goal, which is to bring Ana Tomy out of Malaysia so that everybody around the globe can enjoy,” Wong said adding that they currently have international customers from the US and Singapore.

The Ana Tomy’s Mandalorian capsule collection will give customers the privilege of creating their own merch based on the wide range of The Mandalorian designs provided to them.

These designs include characters from the show such as the lovable Grogu and Din Djarin, to Lady Bo-Katan Kryze and even the infamous Moff Gideon.

After choosing the designs, the Ana Tomy's artisans will then proceed to craft their items based on their customers' preferences on the spot.

For more detailed information on Ana Tomy’s new capsule collection inspired by The Mandalorian, click here.