Fathers of invention

Editor's note: With all the effort it takes to climb up the corporate ladder, it's a surprise anyone would voluntarily climb down. Yet, some do. Even more surprising, perhaps, is when a professional man in a high-power career climbs down to enter the unpredictable world of kid's toys. The draw? A good bet, it had a lot to do with being a dad.

Indeed, some of today's creative and innovative toy manufacturers are dads driven by the desire to give their kids a type of toy or play experience that they previously couldn't find in the marketplace.

Playthings found several such dads.

—Maria Weiskott

LeapFrog

One morning in 1991, Mike Wood—a successful San Francisco lawyer—tried to teach his 3-year-old son, Matt, phonics. He noticed that even though his son was able to identify the letters, he was still having trouble connecting the phonetic sounds that accompany each letter.

He also noticed there were no products available on the market to assist parents who might want to work with their kids on phonics. Wood figured that if his son was having trouble, there was a good chance that other children were as well. “I never would have realized the problem if I hadn't been playing with Matt that morning,” he tells Playthings.

Wood believed he had stumbled upon an untapped market potential and devised the idea of the Phonics Learning System that would eventually put LeapFrog, Emeryville, Calif., on the map. He joined with Stanford University's Dr. Robert Calfee, an expert in children's reading and reading development. Together with Stanford Ph.D. candidate Kristy Dunlap, the team came up with a curriculum for six lessons with the potential to bring a child to a second grade reading level.

Wood left his law firm in 1995 to focus his attention on LeapFrog. The transition from lawyer to toy mogul jarred Wood at first because “it's completely different from being a hired expert. When you run your own business you're responsible for all of the decisions and it becomes very personal.”

He was able to make the leap, however, because of his confidence in his own business savvy. He had represented numerous venture capitalists and entrepreneurs when he was a lawyer and “had seen the successes and failures of entrepreneurs.” As a result, he felt that he was “familiar with the issues of starting a business.” He was also not intimidated by the legal aspects.

Wood says it's important to help kids feel smart so that they will be encouraged to keep learning. “Our philosophy is that learning itself can be remarkably engaging and fun.”

As for his family life, Wood says that his career at LeapFrog is far more interesting to Matt, now 17, than his law career would have been. “He spends time in the office and we talk about the business. [When he was younger,] I used to show him all the new products to get his input.”

Test your products with the audience you aim to please (both parents and kids!)

“When you have your own business, in order to make it a success, you have to invest a lot of time and energy”

So Smart! Productions

Scott Tornek was a strategy consultant for Price Waterhouse Coopers in New York, while his wife, Alex, was doing doctoral research on infants. She noticed that many scientists used televisions to study infants because the sound and light stimulate reaction. She decided to take this idea further by creating a video to educate infants through age-appropriate material.

Tornek helped his wife develop the concepts for the first video, So Smart! Sights and Sounds, which won numerous awards and provided the foundation for So Smart! Productions, West Chester, Pa.

Tornek remained at Price Waterhouse for a few more years, helping out with So Smart! on the side. In 1999 his son Matt was born and while Tornek was on an “unofficial paternity leave,” he decided to leave the corporate life to work full-time as co-president and CEO of So Smart!

To this day, he doesn't regret the decision. “I have more time to spend with my son than most corporate dads,” he tells Playthings. His career now affords him the luxury to create his own hours so that he can spend more time with Matt. This is not to say that he doesn't work hard at what he does. “As an entrepreneur, you can never really put your work away,” he says.

The beauty of this situation is that he doesn't have to put his work away because Matt, as an expert kid, can help his dad out. “Matt had input from the beginning,” Tornek says. “When he was a baby he would spend his time crawling around grabbing at the legs of the animators while they worked at their computers.”

As Matt grows, so does the company. When Matt was three the Torneks started a new preschool line; Matt even acted in one of the videos.

• Make an effort to form relationships with customers
• Try to put variety into your products

“We do best with retailers who have used So Smart! and are passionate about finding unique products.”

BigBOING

A former vice president of business development at LeapFrog, Matt P.d. Brown, a lover of comic books, admits to being a “big kid” at heart. As for his toy company, Sausalito, Calif.-based BigBOING, Brown tells Playthings that the company exists entirely due to his 6-year-old daughter, Isabella. Two of the company's products—“artfoams” and “getups”—were actually inspired by her.

Through Isabella, Brown noticed that no matter how high-tech and fancy her toys might have been, “she always defaulted to a box of crayons as her favorite thing.”

He decided that “what kids need is a set of playthings that allows them to express creativity and develop confidence in [their] ability and flexibility—and [to develop] dynamic ways of thinking.” Brown says he realized that he wanted to be the one who would create the type of toys that will inspire kids to create and use their imaginations. He credits his time at LeapFrog working with Mike Wood for some of the values he holds regarding toys. “Every year he [Mike Wood] was solving a new problem for his kid,” he tells Playthings.

Brown says that he looks at his daughter and thinks, “Time is running out.” He sees her as “emblematic of all the other kids,” and realizes that there is only a short window of time in which these children can be reached and inspired to enjoy learning.

It was this ideology that led him to create his own company and his line of Right Brain toys, which are intended to stimulate creativity by providing kids with fundamental tools that leave room for them to use their imagination.

Brown recommends that others who would like to start a toy company should follow his own example by pursuing whatever it is that they value. He also says that another key element is assembling a good team of people to work with. “Hire people who are better at doing your job than you are.” Brown insists that this is important in order for the company to grow beyond the originator's ideas.

While his company is fairly new and his toys are only just reaching the market, Brown appears to be signed on for the long haul. “I watch myself get more and more committed as each day goes by with my daughter.”

• Pursue what you value
• Hire a good team

“Hire people who are better at doing your job than you are.”

BEKA

Jamie Kreisman got all tangled up in the toy business after he began making wooden furniture for his kids in the 1980s. He donated some of his creations to his child's preschool and other parents and teachers began to show interest.

At the time, Kreisman was working with his brother Peter at BEKA, a company they started in 1973 in St. Paul, Minn. The company produced hand-weaving equipment for specialty yarn stores.

But once people began to notice the furniture creations, the Kreisman brothers started selling child-size tables and chairs that were intended to be enhanced with seat cushions or paint in stores that were already selling their weaving equipment.

The Kreisman brothers were officially launched into the toy business!

Jamie Kreisman tells Playthings that he found the specialty toy market to be similar to the yarn market because they are both made up of “well educated, independent people who are very passionate about the field they are in.”

He attributes the success of his venture into the toy business to a number of factors. One, is being “in the right place at the right time” because the yarn market was changing just when the specialty toy market was burgeoning. He also believes that the people in the specialty toy business were “looking for a unique product.”

Kreisman says that his venture into the toy business didn't really impact his relationship with his kids because they were always close. However, his experience with his children helped him “apply personal value into my work, and gave me access to the kind of good quality products that I wanted my kids to have and allowed me to understand what parents want their kids to have.”

• Listen to your customers to find great product ideas
• Make having samples a priority

“Seeing is believing… Create opportunities for customers to play with your product and touch them and feel the quality. Most of our customers are our customers because they've seen our products and liked them.”

Levels of Discovery

Jeff Hutsell started Levels of Discovery after spending 25 years in the corporate world working for companies like Hallmark, Franklin Mint, and Enesco, changing careers when his last child was in high school.

Throughout the years, his work had required that he be away from home a lot when his kids were growing up. When he launched his company, he made sure that there would be limited travel, building a showroom in his Chicago home where he could work.

Today, he sells a collection of rocking chairs and other furniture in a variety of themes for young children.

Hutsell uses the title of “full-time dad” and CEO of Levels of Discovery. “I always considered myself a full-time dad, I just never got the chance to play the role because I was also a full-time employee,” he tells Playthings.

Hutsell said that the career transition was fairly smooth because the skills he developed early on carried over pretty well. “I've always been a specialist in stuff people don't really need but always want and like,” he explains.

His gift for incorporating ideas into something new shined through when he decided to use a trick he learned at Hallmark. Each rocking chair comes with a greeting card to be used as a thank-you card with a poem in it and a space for a picture of the child in the chair. “It doesn't cost much to do something like that, but it's those little extra things that make it special and memorable.”

As for inspiration, Hutsell suggests observing the world on a “People Magazine level.” He said he just tries to notice what people like and to avoid any “faddish” aspects so that he can provide a lasting product, as he intends for his products to last more than one generation. “Maybe that's a part of being a dad too—I want everything to last 20 years!”

Hutsell has another unique theory when it comes to creating his products, he likes to practice what he calls “horizontal creativity” in which you simply observe multiple things that people like and put them together to create a unique product. For instance, his rocking chairs are never just rocking chairs, they always contain little extras like picture frames or musical instruments or something unusual built in to make the product unique.

• Find a niche that is yours
• Avoid “faddish” aspects to create lasting products
• Have a 'commitment to inventory'

“Make sure you have enough products to meet your customers' demands quickly—it shows confidence in your product and that you plan on being around for awhile. The biggest mistake I've seen when people start new companies is that they don't have enough product to support the demand.”