Doodles Launching Real World Play Experience in Chicago With Camp

Following brand pop-ups at music festival SXSW and an interactive gallery at Art Basel Miami, Doodles is turning its attention to a new audience for real-world events: kids and families.

The NFT brand’s new immersive experience and play area is opening in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago in a tie-up with Camp, a "shop-and-play" company that provides experiences for families. It will be the debut experience for the Chicago location of Camp, which opens on August 19.

Camp’s collaboration with Doodles will yield a 3,500-square-foot pop-up retail experience, with activities based on the pastel-hued Ethereum NFTs, which have generated some $610 million to date worth of trading volume per data from CryptoSlam.

Camp is described as “part toy store, part party venue, [and] part immersive theater space,” and timed entry tickets for the Doodles experience will start at $28.

The experience lasts for an hour, letting attendees customize their own Doodles character, explore locations inspired by the project’s cartoonish aesthetic, play games, create crafts, and journey through areas with names like the “Lost Caves” and “Cosmic Clouds.”

The new Camp store also contains a “Canteen”—2,000 square feet of retail space filled with toys, clothing, and accessories. It includes a slime creation station labeled “The Schmutz Bar,” a “Splatter Room,” a performance space for live events, and party rooms for childrens’ birthdays. That part of the Camp Chicago experience is open now.

There is also, of course, merch: a Camp and Doodles co-branded collection of clothing and accessories is on offer in the store, as well as online and in other Camp stores. This includes hoodies, t-shirts, backpacks, and stationary.

"The incredible team at Camp helped us bring new meaning to the bridge between physical and digital,” said Doodles CEO Julian Holguin, in a release.

Many NFT brands market themselves on the idea that their tokens will offer access to exclusive experiences or benefits for holders. In this case, Doodles will host an exclusive ribbon-cutting experience for original Doodles NFT holders in advance of the grand opening, and provide a complementary visit to holders with up to five friends or family members once Camp opens to the public.

The venture, which is set to move to other Camp locations after Chicago, marks the latest foray for Doodles into the mainstream, as the company expands beyond its original roots as a digital collectables brand with a high price point for entry.

In January, the brand signaled an expansion of its business with the acquisition of animation studio Golden Wolf, which worked on content tied to the popular TV series, “Rick & Morty.” Doodles also appointed musician Pharrell Williams as its chief brand officer last year, and is rolling out a Doodles 2 collection that could span millions of NFTs in time.

Doodles’ first NFT collection launched in October 2021. The company raised $54 million in September last year in a round led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six. The current floor price for an original Doodles NFT is about 1.55 ETH ($2,950), down from an all-time high of nearly 20 ETH (about $57,000 then) in May 2022.