Fanatico holds exclusive rights to the images (sculpted figurines) of the 2006 World Cup champs, the Azzurris as well as to Brazil’s star player, Maradona, Italy’s Pierluigi Collina, and Roger Milla.
I have known Derek all his life, through his mother, Fe Reyes-Wanner, with whom I share a warm, sustaining, embracing friendship.
At 13, instead of going home when classes got suspended owing to typhoons, Fe and I would head for Raon to check out the latest 78s or 45s by Neil Sedaka, Frankie Avalon, Teddy Randazzo or Fabian, chartering a calesa if floods proved too high for the car to navigate.
We remained close even when I transferred school and pursued a different degree. In 1967, we both applied and were both accepted to the Manila Hilton, the country’s first international hotel chain.
In 1969, Fe married Rene Wanner, a Hilton executive based in Hong Kong. There were many assignments after that, especially when Rene became area director for manpower development for Hyatt International in the Middle East, and my friend was appointed as PR manager for the Hyatt Regency Dubai.
During these stints in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Fe and I kept in touch – through letters, visits, phone calls and during the lapses – in mind and in spirit.
We watched each other’s children grow. The Wanners’ eldest, Vanora, is gifted, responsible and dependable.
But Derek, despite an evident native intelligence, innate sense of fairness, and an unwavering loyalty to friends, showed little intensity other than for his enduring, lifelong passion for soccer, laments his mom.
By the time Derek was 14, he had a track record in four continents of being a straight C student (OK, occasional Bs). "The mediocre grades," he maintains, "are a reflection of my efforts, not capabilities."
In 1998, Derek was offered a sports scholarship at Menlo College, a small but highly regarded business institution in Atherton, California. This institution counts among its alumni Prince Al Walid bin Talal al Saud, tagged by Time magazine as the "Arabian Warren Buffett" and ranked by Forbes magazine as the eighth richest man in the world.
Derek received the President’s Award (Menlo’s premier scholarship) and became captain of the varsity soccer team. In 2000, he graduated magna cum laude in international business management.
Derek hoped he would count as one of the lucky ones who could wed a career with a personal passion. It was a huge thrill when he landed his first job as one of the international editors for the biggest magazine on the Internet, soccerage.com, now goal.com, which is offered in eight languages.
It was also during his first working stint that he recognized a glaring opportunity in the new, burgeoning market of action figurines in sports, such as basketball, baseball, volleyball and hockey.
"Why not in soccer?" Derek thought.
Derek’s conclusion: the toy manufacturing industry was dominated by Americans, and North America was the only continent that did not fully grasp the spell that soccer casts upon the rest of the world.
He took the first step. He packed his bags and moved to the heartland of futbol – Europe.
This Swiss-Filipino boy based himself in Switzerland, where he had studied as a young boy, to beat his brains out, burning the candle at both ends for more than a cold, hungry year to rush his business plan.
In 2004, he founded his company, Fanatico Figurines AG, found online at www.fanatico.net.
With the continent even then in the grips of World Cup preparations, Derek had a tantalizing glimpse of his figurines one day being sanctioned as the official ones for World Cup 2010.
He decided that a good, cheap way to learn the ropes might be to apply for the then forthcoming World Cup 2006. The expected rejection would not bother him as he just wanted the experience, to get his name out there and garner contacts that he had had four years to develop and nurture.
A few months after applying, Derek got a call informing him that after studying his offer and the prototype of Brazil’s Maradona that he submitted to the FIFA and the World Cup, they had decided to award him the exclusive and official World Cup 2006 contract for figurines, the first time in history that they had granted such license in that category.
That was rousing good news, the fact that he got the contract.
But the so-called gravy train had arrived too early. There was no money. The initial, modest funding he had raised had been poured into what Derek considered the most complex, time-consuming part of this unchartered business: obtaining key contracts and image rights. But he knew that once armed with these signed deals, the money would not be far behind, and sensibly, he allotted himself six to eight months to hunt for investors.
However, in a startling turn of events, all of a sudden he had six to eight weeks to come up with at least $1.8 million if he hoped to bridge the gap between contract and profit. Returns would be mammoth, no arguing that, as these were going to be the inaugural World Cup 2006 figurines.
But, money begets money. Before it can come in, first it must go out.
Thus began a frenzied hunt for financing. Banks were too conservative to touch start-ups. Venture capitalists were too greedy with their demands. The only hope was private sources, but painfully, limited time and resources forced him to solicit around the world largely via e-mail and telephone calls. Derek didn’t have the luxury to fly around the world making personal presentations, nor time to build trust with investors. These were towering hurdles.
There were those who were clearly taken with the idea, but at the end of the day they were hesitant to hand over big bucks to someone hardly known, oceans away, and lacking any experience, never mind success history.
With his nose to the grindstone, ferocious days and nights followed. Chasing funds was arduous enough – twice, thrice as daunting when one must also race against the clock.
By late summer, he and his newly-recruited partner, Paul Jourdan, a former managing director of Adidas in Amsterdam, had managed to come up with $1.5 million, a remarkable accomplishment, amazing under any other circumstances, but for the fast approaching World Cup, not enough.
Questions flew. Should they proceed headlong and rush with prototyping, production, advance minimum guarantees, requisite licenses, etc., and hope and pray (mostly pray) the remaining funds could be raised before the funds were depleted? What if by the end of the year, there was no financial reinforcement? That would be over a million dollars down the drain, and worse, no time to implement Plan B. Or any plan, as the World Cup by then would have been less than six months away.
Derek and Paul decided it would be imprudent and irresponsible (maybe immoral) to take on a project of such magnitude and urgency using somebody else’s money without the funding in place to see them to the end.
Fanatico came to the heart-wrenching decision to forego its World Cup contract, downsize its goals, go for one exclusive team contract and focus on it. Not as ambitious, but manageable.
But which team? If resources and time limited them to just one, their choice was crucial. Brazil, the current WC holders? Fanatico might not be able to afford them. Argentina, a favorite to bring home the trophy? No, that would have been presumptuous. What if they were wrong? Life is never simple.
Derek and Paul knew they would need all the knowledge they could muster on the teams, but also knew luck would play a big role.
It will have to be a team that would make it to quarterfinals at least, a winning kind of team.
Finally, Fanatico made a choice: the Italian Azzurris. Not just a winner, but the winner.
My mind is still whirling from the frenzy of developments. Was this the same seemingly aimless Derek, the subject of my friend’s woeful tales, the one whose earlier objective in life was to give himself a good time, the one whose philosophy seemed based on the Zen allure of doing nothing, whose vision of the future did not go beyond next Saturday night?
Ahh, the anguish and the rapture of soccer football. It’s all in the game.