Cool Cats Founder on Balloon Debut at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, NFT Outlook

Americans are gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday and tomorrow Cool Cats will be the first NFT collection to feature in the iconic Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Joining us now to chat is Cool Cats founder Colin Egan. Welcome to the show. Colin Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Now, the Thanksgiving Day parade is tomorrow. You won a competition to feature in the parade and rope against Boss Beauty G Money. Sub Ducks and V friends. Talk to us about what you had to do to win the competition and what we'll see in the parade tomorrow. Yeah. So it was a competition amongst a bunch of NFT projects and you had to get your community, get together to vote. Um And whoever had the most votes won a balloon in the parade. So our community almost activated itself and, and went door to door just asking, you know, all of the community members who might not know about this, who were kind of out of NFTS and Web three for a little bit um and got their votes. So we ended up winning right in the end. It was a really close race with Sub ducts, you have to pay for the balloon. Like, who pays for the ball? It was Macy's all, all Macy's so, Macy's pays for the balloon. You just say here, here's the balloon. Here are the specs, like, what, what do you do? Like, how does that work? Yeah. So, it, it's a fun process. We, the, the balloon was free. We immediately started going to work just almost directly after we, we won. Um, And, you know, we started talking about things like uh this was December of last year. So it's been a whole year in the process. And, and, and so then you, you send over the, you like here, we want AAA big giant inflatable cat with like a milk carton and they're like, OK, that is like what happens then? Yeah. So that's almost it. Uh I had a sketch and I knew I wanted blue cat holding chugs in his hand, giving a peace sign like Superman style over New York City. Just a classic balloon look. Um And then you start going into things like what are the aerodynamics of this balloon? And I'm like aerodynamics. That's something I've never had to think about. And so you have to like adjust certain parts of the balloon so that, you know, the wind can flow over it. I mean, it literally killed somebody, I think a few years ago it was like, you know, uh yeah, these things are deadly. It's not fun, especially for those of us who go to the Upper West Side to watch this. H um, so like, uh, ok, so, so you, you give, you give the designs in and then they're like, ok, we'll see you, we'll see you in November. I mean, that's, that's it. I mean, do you have to do anything else in any time? No, there's definitely stuff in between and there's like a whole process of, you know, what does the balloon look like? And that went through a few ideations and then there's what your balloon handlers are gonna wear and there's a whole tab that you have to draw. Uh, um, you know, we actually, I'm wearing it now but there's merchandise we needed to create, um, all of the new balloons who are participating in the parade kind of have their whole line of, of plush and toys that they'll have in the Macy's flagship stores. Colin what happens to the balloon after the parade. Uh, it, it goes into storage, into Macy's storage and so they actually reuse balloons a lot or use them as training balloons in the future. But, um, you know, there's, there's a chance maybe we make it into the next year. Uh, and, and years after that, so we'll see, it's not like you take it home, like, use it for like, no, I wish, yeah, I'd hang it from my apartment in L A and that way everybody knows where my, where my House is, well, Colin does winning this competition and featuring in the parade. Mean you have an extended partnership with Macy's now, I know that there was, um, a competition recently. The Color Me Cool Contest. Do you have an ongoing partnership with the brand now? Yeah, our relationship with Macy's has definitely grown. Um, I think both teams are really excited to see what we can do in Web three together. And one of the first things we wanted to do was the Color Me Cool campaign, which is, you know, we're sending out thousands of blank statues to artists or whoever wants to join and it's up to them to design this as much as, as much as their hearts desire. Um And then it's a whole competition and we'll see who ends up winning. Um, and post all of this. We're gonna like digitize some of the best statues and turn them into NFTS. All right. And we got to get one serious question in here before we wrap the show about the state of NFTS. As you know, trading volume has plummeted Open Sea has been devalued by one of its largest investors. What do you think the future of NFTS looks like? And how are you future proofing the collection? Yeah. So I think NFTS and Web Three as a whole is in a very, very much learning uh process. We are facing our first big Bear market and I think a lot of brands realize that they need to find different revenue streams. They can't just depend on royalties the whole time. But all of us still really believe in the technology. So we're trying to find that balance between having the technology exist and making a profitable business. And so for us, we just recently released our first big animation that we worked with. Tit Mouse for with and it's the story of Blue Cat Chugs, Joe and Artie and their adventures at the milk chug, which is a coffee shop that they work at. And we're really trying to make our way into content and mainstream media. Um And from there making merch and all sorts of things.