Meet the Londoner: Caitie & Joe from Collectable Cities

Last Updated on 3. Juni 2023

In today’s episode of Meet the Londer we have a chat with Caitie and Joe who just recently celebrated the first anniversary of their start-up Collectable Cities. How the idea for the collectable figures started, what they have planned next and which London tips they have to share – all this and more in this post. Enjoy reading and exploring!

Meet the Londoner: Caitie & Joe from Collectable Cities

Please introduce yourselves briefly.

Who are you?

We’re Joe and Caitie – we run a small creative studio in Hackney and are also married. Joe is from just East of London and Caitie moved here from Canada 11 years ago. We both love travelling, music, food and the arts, so we were always looking for a project to combine our interests.

Where in London do you live?

Most of our time in London has been between Shoreditch and Victoria Park.

What makes this part of area of London special?

Hackney is a very creative area with tons of events, and an amazing selection of green space. We love all the neighbourhoods joined together by regent’s canal, huge selection of bars / restaurants & shops, and colourful markets.

About the figurines of Collectable Cities

When did you have the idea to create your little figurines?

Most of the idea came together last year. We’ve wanted to do a London-themed project for a long time, and finally settled on art toys as a great way for visitors to take a piece of the city home with them.

How do you decide which celebrity gets the honour to be represented by your figurines?

We were aiming to make the typical souvenir figure much cooler and higher quality, so it made sense to us to start off with famous historic figures that had interesting back stories, along with a high-traffic location they’re associated with. We’ve got our Shakespeare figure in The Globe Theatre now and Sherlock in the Sherlock Holmes Museum, so hopefully we’ll start getting good momentum with visitors! We hope to do many more diverse and obscure figures in the future but we’ll need to be confident in interest levels first, which will come with a bigger audience!

Why only 1000 per each of them?

With the way our figures are made, each run is minimum 1000, so we started with this in order to be able to do a number of different characters for our launch. We may do ‘second editions’ of figures that sell out. We can have some fun varying these  slightly from the first editions, but they won’t come with the numbered collectors’ cards.

How difficult was the crowdfunding?

Kickstarter is not very difficult in itself, but generating the buzz and ensuring you have enough content prepared for the duration of the campaign takes a fair bit of time. We were only trying to raise a small portion of our total project cost, so it wasn’t a lot of pressure. It was very good for brand awareness!

How many London themed figures do you currently have?

Five – The Queen with her Royal Corgi, Henry VIII with a leg of ham, Beefeater and Raven, Shakespeare, and Sherlock Holmes.

Which one is the most popular?

The Queen & Corgi, and then Sherlock.

Are you planning on adding new ones? If yes, which one might be next?

We’re looking to do musicians and artists next, just trying to sort out any necessary licensing and investment.

When did you start sending out the first boxes?

We were finally able to ship preorders (The Queen and Henry VIII) in December, some of which had been ordered in May! They were very patient as our production took longer than expected. Kickstarter orders went out in January, and we then launched our online shop the next month.

Are the figurines for playing or just collecting?

Both! They’re made to be enjoyed, whatever that means to their collector.

Caitie & Joe about London

What’s a must-see sight in London?

Walking the Southbank is pretty key – you’ll get a great cross-section of different eras of London

3 words to describe London

Cultural, Colourful, Busy

Where do you go for a good breakfast?

Hash E8 is a current fave

The craziest food you ever had in London is?

We love experimental supper clubs if that counts (we can’t think of any crazy dishes at the moment, aside from crazy hot curries haha). The underground supper club is on a disused tube train, Gingerline has done some really fun dining experiences, and we did the medievel feast in St Katherine’s Docks once which was entertaining!

The best museum in London is…?

The Museum of London was great, looking forward to their new location… and probably the V&A. We’re spoiled for choice.

The coolest bar is…?

On the tourist track: the chinese cocktail bar in the shard has great drinks and epic views… even the loo!
Off the beaten track: Last Tuesday Society is… very unique
Our local distillery is neat – East London Liquor Co
People’s park tavern is a great garden pub in Victoria park for a nice day.

Fun stuff about Caitie & Joe

Which is your favourite ice-cream flavour?

Caitie – pistachio gelato / Joe – fruit sorbet

Gin and Tonic or Pimm’s?

G&T for sure.

Favourite Tube line?

Joe loves the district line haha

Collectable Cities on Social Media

• For the latest updates and the online shop visit the website of Collectable Cities (https://www.collectablecities.com/)
• Follow Caitie and Joe on Instagram (@collectablecities) and TikTok (@collectablecities)

Thank you both for taking your time for this interview and all the best and maximum success for your business!