Today we’d like to introduce you to Filip Perkon.
Hi Filip, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
It started, like a lot of good ideas, slightly by accident. My background is in entertainment and I’ve always been a builder of things — a serial entrepreneur at heart. When the world hit pause during the pandemic and our entertainment work went quiet, my co-founder Irina Fedotova and I had time to look at the world a little differently. Irina had a genuine passion for rubber ducks — not as bath toys, but as little characters, design objects, tiny pieces of pop culture. What began as her quirky obsession turned into a question: why isn’t there a proper home for the best-designed rubber ducks in the world?
So in early 2023 we built one. The idea was never “a toy shop” — it was closer to an art gallery that happens to be full of ducks. We curate them like a collection: limited editions, glow-in-the-dark ones, color-changers, film and game characters, historical figures, ducks for just about every profession and personality. Today we carry around 850 different designs, and the joy is watching someone walk in and find the one duck that’s somehow them.
From there it grew faster than we expected. We now run three stores — our London locations, with our flagship “duck nest” on Charing Cross Road, and then the big leap across the pond: Miami Beach. We opened on Washington Avenue, just off Lincoln Road, during Art Basel week in December 2024, and it’s now the largest rubber duck store in the USA. Miami felt like the natural choice — it’s a city built on creativity, color and a sense of fun, which is exactly what we’re about.
Honestly, the through-line of the whole journey has been simple: we’re in the business of making people smile. People come in not quite sure why they’re there, and they leave grinning, holding a duck they didn’t know they needed. That never gets old.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Smooth? Not even close — but I’d be suspicious of anyone who says it was. The biggest challenge at the start was simply that we were building a category that didn’t really exist. When you tell people you’ve opened a shop dedicated entirely to rubber ducks, you get a lot of raised eyebrows. People assume “bath toy,” and our whole job was to show them these are design objects, collectibles, little characters with personality. Changing that perception — one smiling customer at a time — took persistence.
And we’ve built this business into genuine headwinds. The last three and a half years have not been an easy stretch for any retailer. A cost-of-living crisis squeezed household budgets, consumer confidence has been shaky, and tariffs and shifting trade costs have made sourcing and shipping more expensive and harder to plan around. When money’s tight, a rubber duck is the definition of a discretionary purchase — so we’ve had to keep earning our place in people’s day by being genuinely joyful and well-priced, not just present.
On top of that, physical retail is unforgiving at the best of times — footfall, seasonality, the right locations, building a team. A fun product doesn’t exempt you from the fundamentals, and we’ve had to learn the operational side fast.
The leap from the UK to the US was its own mountain. Opening in Miami Beach meant standing up a whole American operation from scratch — a new entity, new logistics, cross-border sourcing and shipping, two different ways of doing almost everything, all from across an ocean.
But I think the struggles are the point. Every one of them forced us to get sharper about why we exist. And when you’re clear that your actual product is happiness — not just ducks — it gives you something to hold onto on the hard days.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Duck World?
The business is Duck World — the home of iconic and collectible rubber ducks.
At the simplest level, we’re a retailer. But we don’t really think of ourselves that way. We curate the best-designed rubber ducks in the world and present them like an art collection — around 850 different designs across our stores, from limited editions and glow-in-the-dark “magic” ducks to color-changers, film and game characters, historical figures, and a duck for nearly every profession, hobby and personality you can think of. We run three stores: our London locations, with the flagship “duck nest” on Charing Cross Road, and our Miami Beach store on Washington Avenue, just off Lincoln Road — the largest rubber duck store in the USA. We also ship worldwide from duck-world.com, reaching customers across the US, UK, Australia and the UAE.
What sets us apart is that we’re not a toy shop — we’re an experience. Our stores are designed like playful galleries: gallery-style displays, interactive games, and the kind of Instagrammable moments that make people pull their friends inside. We collaborate with artists, carry officially licensed film and game collectibles, and we lean into the real culture that’s grown up around these little characters — global phenomena like Jeep Ducking, where Jeep owners leave ducks on each other’s cars, and Cruising Ducks, where travelers hide them around cruise ships for strangers to find. There’s a genuine community here, and we get to be its clubhouse.
What I’m proudest of, brand-wise, is the reaction. People walk in not entirely sure why they’re there, and they walk out grinning, holding a duck they didn’t know they needed. Our mission is honestly that uncomplicated: we’re in the business of spreading happiness and making people smile. In a world that’s felt heavy for a few years now, there’s something quietly powerful about a brand whose entire job is to give people a small, genuine moment of joy.
If there’s one thing I’d want your readers to know, it’s this: come in and play. Whether you’re a serious collector, looking for a gift that’s actually memorable, or just walking down Washington Avenue and curious — there’s a duck in there with your name on it.
What are your plans for the future?
The short version: more stores, and more moments.
On the retail side, we’re actively looking to grow our footprint on both sides of the Atlantic — more locations across the United States and the UK. Miami Beach proved that the concept travels, and that there’s real appetite for what we do in the right kind of creative, high-energy neighborhoods. So we want to plant more nests, carefully, in cities that share that spirit.
But the part I’m genuinely most excited about is going deeper, not just wider. We want to turn Duck World from somewhere you visit into somewhere you come to do something. We’re developing experiences around the brand — things like workshops and creative classes, duck-themed escape rooms, and events that give people a reason to spend real time with us rather than just browse for ten minutes. The dream is a space where you can come with friends or family, make something, play, and leave with a story as well as a duck.
It all comes back to the same idea that started the business: we’re not really selling a product, we’re selling a feeling. Every new store and every new experience is just another way to hand people a bit of joy. That’s the thread we’ll keep pulling on for as long as it keeps making people smile.
Pricing:
- Regular rubber ducks, $15.99
- Collectible Rubber Ducks, from $19.99
- Art pieces, from $200
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.duck-world.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/duck.world.us/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/duck.world.uk/
- LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/duckworld
