Congrats to our Monday Giveaway winner, no.16!
He sent her doodles. She sewed him a doll. Ten years later, Sun-Min Kim and David Horvath are sitting pretty across their quirky Uglyverse.
by Oliver Saria
all photos courtesy of Pretty Ugly, LLC
It’s been nearly a decade since Sun-Min Kim sewed the first Uglydoll, and her company—Pretty Ugly LLC/Uglydoll, co-owned with her husband, David Horvath—has grown in (measured) leaps and bounds. What started off as drawings David included at the bottom of love letters he sent to Sun-Min have evolved into a plush phenomenon.
At different points along the way, however, Uglydolls, which play off oddball characteristics and perceived ugliness, may have never seen the light of day.
The Ugly saga began at Parsons, a design school in Manhattan, where David, now 40, and Sun-Min, now 35, met as students in 1997. Both studied illustration (Sun-Min more diligently than David, who spent most of his time doodling bizarre creatures and dreaming up kooky narratives). From the moment they met, they bonded over the mutual belief that toys were the perfect vehicles to tell stories.
Their initial meeting, however, was not love at first sight. Though they shared many interests and marveled at each other’s artwork, it took some time for Sun-Min to reciprocate David’s affection. The turning point came when Sun-Min broke her arm while snowboarding at the end of 1999. During her convalescence, David offered to make her an apple pie and rode the subway in the dead of winter from New York to her apartment in New Jersey with bags of apples tied to his arms. Apparently, it was stellar pie because they started dating shortly thereafter. But by 2001, Sun-Min’s student visa had expired and she returned to Korea, unsure how she might find her way back.
The answer came in a chance visit David made to the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles shortly after Sun-Min had sent him a felt, 12-inch, plush version of his illustrated character Wage—an orange, apron-clad grocery store worker. By that time, David was living in the West Coast where he had befriended the Giant Robot store owner (and Giant Robot publisher) Eric Nakamura. As David recounts, “I was just showing him [the doll], but he thought I was pitching him a product. He was like, ‘I’ll take 20.’” Soon, the dolls flew off the shelves.
In a matter of 18 months, Sun-Min—still stuck in Seoul—hand-sewed nearly 1,500 felt dolls, an even more amazing feat considering that she had never sewn anything prior to that. (Incidentally, a doll from the original hand-sewn collection now fetches upwards of $1,000 at auctions.) Meanwhile, her friends in Korea ribbed her for doing piecemeal work normally reserved for housewives who earned extra cash sewing eyeballs onto dolls at 10 cents per eye. “She studied in America,” her friends joked, “but now she’s [back in Korea] sewing eyeballs.”
Meanwhile, David pounded the pavement looking for boutique stores across the country that would carry their line. In the process, he cultivated a network of retailers whose clientele got the whole Uglydoll vibe: the oddly shaped bodies, the snaggle-tooth overbites, the perplexing deadpan look, the understated positive message that being unusual is actually pretty cool.
More importantly, David recognized that the dolls were Sun-Min’s ticket back to the States. He told himself, “You better get your ass out there because if you don’t, then she’s gone.” For David, Sun-Min was the missing piece of the puzzle. She breathed life into his drawings and was the one who came up with the line’s simple, self-deprecating brand name.
Had David and Sun-Min never met, had he given up trying to woo her, had she never broken her arm, the attractively ugly dolls may have remained doodles. David admits, “Sun-Min was the main motivation.”
For her part, Sun-Min sewed constantly—furiously, in fact. Meanwhile, her parents never discouraged her. “They were just amazed how many dolls were piled in my room,” Sun-Min recalls. In short order, the characters expanded to include, among others: Babo, Wage’s best friend, a loyal, protective toothy lump who loves cookies (and, yes, he’s named after the Korean word for “stupid”); Cinko, a round-headed, triple-eyed oddity who prefers to stay dry; and, Target, the oldest, hairiest and arm-iest of the dolls (since old age can come with extra appendages and whiskers).
Fortunately, in 2002, Sun-Min returned to the United States for the Toy Industry Association’s Toy Fair in New York, the same event where four years later Uglydoll would win “Specialty Toy of the Year.” After a successful debut at the fair, Sun-Min and David split time between Los Angeles, New York, Japan and Korea until they wed in 2005. They settled in the Los Angeles area and have a 4-year-old daughter named Mina, who also pitches in with the family business. She even named one of the characters: Tutulu, a well-mannered, straight-A student with psychic powers who can share your fortune with a wobble of his ears or a wiggle of his feet. It remains her favorite doll, natch.
Almost 10 years after Sun-Min sewed that first doll, the Uglydoll empire boasts a huge warehouse in New Jersey, a freshly 
launched line of ceramic merchandise, popular fan conventions known as Uglycons (the next one is slated for 2012), new offices in Los Angeles, an inaugural flagship store in Korea, and a celebration in the works for Wage’s 10th birthday. The Uglydoll site—a frenetic, colorful page that sometimes feels like you’re watching cartoons on acid—is where the dolls are sold and blogged about.
Though mass-market retailers have come calling, the married creatives politely keep turning them down. They still remain fiercely loyal to the small specialty stores.
Perhaps, it is this unwavering sense of integrity that has attracted the company’s legions of fans. Avid collector Lee Runnels of Costa Mesa, California, likes to retell the story of the first Uglycon she attended at the Giant Robot store with her son, Griffin, who was 6 at the time. She and Griffin waited in the rain to buy the latest doll, only to be told that the dolls had sold out when they got to the front of the line. Incredulously, a doll scalper (yes, they exist) in line ahead of them had used his friends and relatives as mules (yes, doll mules exist, too) to purchase more than his allotted two-doll limit and refused to relinquish a single one even after seeing Griffin reduced to tears. Word got back to David, who sent Griffin a Sailor Babo doll just in time for Christmas with a personal note. Runnels attests, “It wasn’t a PR move; it was a genuinely nice thing to do for a 6-year-old kid. Part of the reason that I love these [dolls] so much is that I know the people behind it are good. There aren’t a lot of Davids and Sun-Mins. They’re special people.”
Runnels also recognizes that the dolls have a certain cache. “They have this hip credibility. It’s very cool… and they’re still a little bit of a secret.” The secret is certainly starting to get out, perhaps nowhere more importantly than in South Korea, where the saga has come full circle with the opening of the first Uglydoll store in August 2010. Tucked underneath a staircase in a touristy, traditional neighborhood in Seoul, the store is a sentimental milestone for both David and Sun-Min.
“I really wanted there to be a shop [in Korea],” David says, “because that’s where it all came from.” Sun-Min adds, “We always dreamed of having a store. As a Korean, it’s really amazing, and it makes me happy.”
Moreover, the store is helping to change perceptions. The friends that once made fun of Sun-Min are now beaming with pride. According to her, toys in Korea were mostly bought for babies. Growing up, she didn’t have many playthings and would fashion dollhouses out of recycled paper and boxes. “Now, people [young and old] are collecting our dolls in Korea. I see that there are changes in the perception of toys. Not just toys, the message.”
The message being: We should embrace what makes us unique. It’s a lesson that—like the toys themselves—one should never have to outgrow.
