Whatever! Makes You Happy: Meet The Married Couple Crafting Nostalgic Accessories for Gen Z

Derrick Baca and Liz DeSilva, founders of pop culture collectible brands Whatever! Makes You Happy and Otonagai, joined Den of Geek at San Diego Comic-Con to talk all things geek. A subbrand of Whatever! Company focusing on accessory collabs with licenses and artists, Whatever! Makes You Happy caters to Gen Z and millennial nostalgia through an offering of bags, charms, blind boxes, apparel, and other accessories. Their collections include IPs like Peanuts, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Care Bears, bringing the fun childhood colors and characters into adult fashion.

Before launching Whatever! Makes You Happy, the married duo worked at Loungefly as senior vice presidents of creative/innovation and were part of the team that grew the brand into a major player in the apparel and accessories scene. After departing Loungefly, the couple took a year off, searching for the right place to start their own imprint, and they ended up finding themselves in familiar territory.

“The company that we’re working with now [Whatever! Company], I actually knew the owner 20-plus years ago, and we almost went to this company before we went to Lounge[fly]. It just was a matter of timing and place, the stars aligning and all that. We always kind of joked that we wanted to work with each other,” says Baca.

The husband and wife’s creative chemistry is undeniable, as Baca handles creating the storylines for their Otonagai blind box characters and the descriptions of their products while DeSilva handles the aesthetics and design around the accessories and characters. 

Both aspects of their creative process, along with help from their artists and employees, ties their nostalgic collections together. The couple also emphasize how important it is for them to provide their employees with an environment that stimulates their creative processes, “We believe in remote [work],” Baca says. “We believe people do better when they’re in their environment, especially artists. Because I always thought that most artists, their worst thing is to go into this office and they put their headphones on. They want to turn the light off. They just want to be in their zone.”

Since their addition to the Whatever! label, which launched in August of 2025 with Miffy and Strawberry Shortcake collections, Baca and DeSilva have rapidly expanded their company in its first year of operation and have created their own nostalgia accessories branch. This includes a long list of impressive and exciting collaborators that the duo shared excitement for. 

“We’ve got almost every studio license there is, except for Disney — we literally work with almost everyone . . . we have probably over 150 licenses,” Baca says. 

Adds DeSilva, “We have Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, Viacom, Sanrio, Domo, Snoopy, Cupy, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, Mattel. . .There’s a lot.”

The duo even gave Den of Geek exclusive looks at upcoming projects, including a batch of accessories surrounding horror franchises Universal Monsters and Terrifier that just launched August 6.

While they prioritize feeding fandoms with desirable merchandise, they also work with their own IPs. Through their second company, Otonagai, they have launched 15 different IPs, including their works with independent creators from around the world. This includes the artist So Lazo, located in Berlin, with whom they recently collaborated. 

“We’re trying to make merchandise and get merchandise into specialty retail shops accessible for  artists who can’t afford to bring in inventory and pay to manufacture goods,” DeSilva says. “So what we do is we sign them on almost like a license, and then we give them a royalty. Derrick and I work with them to get like new assets every quarter to create these like collections, and we sell them to Hot Topic, Box Lunch, Besters, Urban Outfitters.” 

Despite helping numerous artists and working with over 100 licensing partners, the pair still seem to never run out of ideas. 

“I’ve been in the business almost 30 years,” Baca says. “I’m old. I’ve worked with Nightmare Before Christmas for almost all those years, and you think to yourself, ‘How can you do it differently again?’ We did at Loungefly. Every year was a challenge. “Like, ‘OK, same Halloween properties. How do we make them different?’ We probably did 200-300 [Lilo & Stitch] bags. And just when we thought we would have no more ideas, we’d have another one, and it would outsell the others.”

According to the spontaneous duo, one of the keys to finding inspiration is traveling.

“We travel. We trend shop. We’re constantly out because sometimes, we go to the mall, or we go to an antique store, and we’ll see something that will spark something totally random and unrelated to that, like a vintage item or home goods, or a ‘Oh yeah, we love that.’ That gives us a million ideas,” DeSilva says.

Despite their ample flow of creativity and upcoming collaborations with high-end collaborators, they are determined to stay affordable for their consumers. 

“All of our bags are under $75,” Baca says. “That’s a big thing. We’re trying to make really fun bags at a price point that people can still afford to buy groceries. We want people to be able to celebrate their fandoms without breaking the bank. It’s hard, but we’re trying to keep our stuff low,” DeSilva says. 

Bacca and DeSilva are making nerdiness affordable while also serving underrepresented areas of nostalgia evident in their Yo Gabba Gabba! and Care Bears collections. The Yo Gabba Gabba! collection that they mention retailers being not so certain about, since it isn’t a show with years of big merchandising sales behind it. Despite this, they are determined to listen to the nostalgic desires of millennials and Gen Zers that populate the internet. 

“We pay attention. We watch what’s cycling in terms of what people are recollecting. We were watching the fandom groups, and we were like, ‘OK, we believe in this,’” DeSilva says. 

While adults may be too old to play with toys, no one ever gets too old to wear them.