Rovio believes that it can harness the power of piracy for marketing good. At the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing 2011 event, Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka entered the interview with knock-off Angry Birds merchandise in hand.
"There are a lot of Angry Birds products out there, but most of them aren't officially licensed," Vesterbacka told the interviewer. "Angry Birds is now the most copied brand in China, and we get a lot of inspiration from local producers."
Vesterbacka said that the knock-off products showed that there was a great deal of demand for the brand and physical products related to it. Rovio is using those knock-offs to determine what kinds of products it will sell as it builds stores in the Chinese region.
"Right now, we've proven that there's demand, and we're going for 100 million downloads this year for Angry Birds, and again the same demand for the physical products,” he added.
"The way we look at it is, of course we want to sell the officially licensed, good quality products, but at the same time we have to be happy about the fact that the brand is so loved that it is the most copied brand in China. It's great for us to see the demand, and that's why we're building our own stores here. And actually we're building our first stores here, and not in Helsinki... We hope to have quite a few over the next 12 months."
China stands as Rovio’s second largest market behind the United States and the company plans to factor the region in its future plans.
“We actually expect to do a lot of services, a lot of products, here first. It's a different approach to some of our competitors. We want to be more Chinese than the Chinese companies."
