Episode #171: Toy Path QUIZ: Are You a Toy Inventor, Entrepreneur, or Executive?
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There are many paths you can take in the toy industry, but the 3 most common paths that most new creators fall into are Inventor, Entrepreneur, and Executive! In today's episode, The Toy Coach is back to explain the differences between the two and point out why you might be both. Azhelle walks you through the meaning of each toy path, what you can expect, and how you could benefit from even switching your toy path.
In today’s toy podcast, you will learn what aspects of being a Toy Entrepreneur, Toy Inventor, and Toy Executive are the same, which are very different, and the strengths and weaknesses of each path. Once you’re done listening, Azhelle invites you to take a toy path quiz, to help you figure out what your toy path is and what your best next steps are to be successful on that path.
EPISODE CLIFF NOTES
Find out what pitch materials pro inventors use to pitch. [4:04]
The biggest risk toy entrepreneurs take [8:00]
Two methods of selling products that toy entrepreneurs, use in their businesses [10:35]
What fills the calendar of corporate toy executives [13:56]
Hear the stories of toy inventors, entrepreneurs, and corporate toy people that changed their toy path [19:05]
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
SIGN UP for the “Foolish Mistakes New Toy and Game Creators Make” Masterclass!
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[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, episode number 171. Hey there, toy people, Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the Toy Coach Podcast, making it in the Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach.com. Before we dive in today, I wanna make a quick announcement about a new free masterclass that I have going.
[00:00:26] All this month it's called The Foolish Mistakes that New Toy and Game Creators make. It's a masterclass where you can learn how to design, develop, launch, and pitch innovative toy or game ideas without making expensive and time consuming mistakes. We go over the major mistakes that I see most often and how you can avoid.
[00:00:47] To get yourself signed up for this masterclass, head over to learn dot the toy coach.com/foolish. And we only have three times left at the time of recording this episode, so I hope you get signed up and you don't miss it. Let's dive into our conversation today. So today we're gonna be focusing on three different toy paths that I work with the most.
[00:01:10] And these are different toy paths that you might take if you have a toy or game idea. So the paths we're gonna be covering today are toy inventor. Toy entrepreneur and corporate toy professional. You'll also hear me refer to this as toy executive. I tend to use those phrases interchangeably. Now we're gonna talk about what all of these different paths are, and I'm going to explain to you.
[00:01:35] What they focus on, what they aim to do, and the goal here is for you to figure out which toy path you fall into. But it's not just about listening to a podcast episode today. We have a fun quiz to go along with today's podcast episode. So if you head over to the toy coach.com/quiz, you can take a quiz that can help you figure out.
[00:01:55] Which toy creator path you are on, what toy creator path type you are. It's a fun few question quiz. You can finish it in about two minutes, and once you figure out what path you are based on your answers to those questions, you might wanna re-listen to this episode to remind yourself, okay, what does that mean?
[00:02:14] What action steps do I need to take to get started on that? Now in my latest masterclass that I mentioned earlier, the foolish mistakes that New Toy and Game creators make, I tell the attendees of that masterclass to not take one more step with their idea until they figure out their toy path, until they do what we're gonna do today.
[00:02:34] Why is that? Well, because one of the most important steps of developing your toy or game idea is understanding the market need for your toy. But in parallel, one of the most important parts of developing your place in the toy industry is understanding the current market need for you. So by the end of this episode, I want you to have a better understanding of what these three different toy paths are, how they work, and why viewing yourself as maybe more than one or switching your toy path could expand your network and increase your opportunities within the toy industry.
[00:03:11] Are you ready? Okay. Let's get. So let's dive into it. Toy path number one is toy inventor. Now a toy inventor is someone who focuses on developing many ideas to sell to a toy company, who in turn will manufacture that idea and pay the inventor royalties. That process is called licensing an idea. A toy inventor is essentially an idea.
[00:03:38] They're super creative problem solvers who enjoy the process of illustrating, prototyping, testing, and refining their creative ideas. Toy inventors prefer to spend their time ideating new concepts rather than overly developing just one idea. Aside from turning out idea after idea, inventors have to master the art of the perfect pitch when pitching their ideas to companies.
[00:04:04] Pro inventors typically always have a functioning prototype and a sizzle video to showcase what their idea is and how it works. The. In my program, toy Creators Academy, I always insist that my inventors also build a PowerPoint pitch deck to go along with their pitch. Why is that? Because usually the TCAs that join my program, they are experienced professionals in their own fields, but many of them have never pitched to any toy companies before.
[00:04:38] So these pitch deck. Will help them stay on track when giving their presentations. And if you are pitching for your first time, trust me, it can help you too. It will keep you on time for your pitch. It will make sure you don't miss out on sharing important details, features or benefits of the product that you came up with.
[00:04:59] And if you're uncomfortable at all of the idea of pitching, this will kind of give you a security blanket cuz you'll have this cheat sheet and path to follow. That is your pitch deck. Now sometimes if an inventor has a long history of creating great product for a company, And they have a strong relationship with that company.
[00:05:22] What can happen is they actually might be pitching an idea without a fully developed prototype. Instead, they might be using concepts, sketches to pitch an idea, but that privilege comes with experience. It comes with defined relationships. It comes because a company knows that that inventor, if pitching an idea through a sketch or through a rendering, they know that that concept can be made a reality.
[00:05:47] It's just a matter of seeing if there's interest for them to make that happen. Now, inventors pitch their ideas at different events. They'll go to in-person events like the people of Play Innovation conference, or they'll go to virtual events like my own TCA virtual pitch event. And toy inventors don't typically worry about manufacturing their ideas.
[00:06:09] They don't worry about going into production. They don't worry about marketing their ideas, and they definitely don't worry about establish. A business to handle things like customer requests and product distribution and returns. Instead, inventors decide to pitch their many, many, many, many ideas to existing toy companies that have all of that structure already in place.
[00:06:33] Their goal is to work with a company in a way that the company develops, manufacturers, produces the idea, and the inventor gets a cut of the. Now, how do you start as a toy inventor? Well, most independent inventors start by inventing toys and games part-time. They do this outside of their normal, everyday, full-time non toy related careers.
[00:06:58] And those are the inventors that I typically work with in Toy Creators Academy. Now, when you are an inventor with a full-time gig outside of your inventing, you might think that that is. A downside or a drawback that you have to split your time and your mind in that way, but remind yourself this, you have an entirely new, fresh perspective and a whole world of knowledge outside of the toy industry that you can bring into your invention that likely no one in the toy industry has.
[00:07:28] So if you're a mechanical drafter, you have skills or experiences that you can apply to your toy inventions. If you're a math teacher, a baker, a fashion designer, you have seen things, techniques, and you have skills and experiences and ideas that you can apply to your toy inventions that no one in the toy industry would've thought of because that's not their day to.
[00:07:50] Now after some success licensing ideas, that's when part-time inventors might choose to become professional toy inventors and work full-time inventing toys or games, and pitching dozens and dozens of ideas to different toy companies regularly. So that's the path of a to inventor. Next up path number two, toy entrepreneur.
[00:08:14] Now a toy entrepreneur is someone who takes a single idea and decides to take on the financial risk of turning that idea. Into a full on toy business. Now that idea can be for one single product or for a series of products. So before you decide to be a toy entrepreneur, the most important thing for you to do is make sure that there is white space in the market for your idea.
[00:08:41] What does that mean? Well, what that means is you've gotta make sure there's a large enough group of people who need, want and will pay for the product that you are developing, my friend. That is why market research is the very first module of Toy Creators Academy because before you develop anything for the toy industry, you've got to know who your market is and where the opportunity lies within this industry for that.
[00:09:08] Okay. Now, a good toy entrepreneur has a long-term vision for themselves and for their toy brand or their product. They look at those big players in the industry and remind themselves that at one point those big players also started off as solo entrepreneurs with a dream. So usually these toy entrepreneurs start off as solopreneurs working on their own.
[00:09:32] They develop their toy ideas, they test them out with the help of family, friends, and consultants. They either find grants or fund their production runs with the money saved from their full-time jobs. They attend toy trade shows, they run ads, they generate market interest for their product. Toy entrepreneurs can either focus on making a majority of their sales direct to consumers.
[00:09:56] Or to retail buyers. Now, toy entrepreneurs can make a larger profit margin usually 50% and higher when they do sell direct to consumers. But those sales can take more time and money to build up. Whereas selling directly to a retail toy store owner, they've already got the customers that are gonna come into their stores.
[00:10:16] Now, when entrepreneurs are trying to sell their product to retail toy store buyers, they might act as their own salesperson or hire a sales team, and their goal is to get those bigger wholesale orders of multiple pieces of their same product into toy stores where that store will take on the work of selling the product to their individual consumer.
[00:10:35] Now the two methods of selling toy products that I just described are referred to as B2B and b2c. So B2B means business to business and refers to taking wholesale orders from retailers large and small. Now, B2C means taking orders from individual customers either. Online or at consumer facing trade shows.
[00:10:57] Now most entrepreneurs businesses function as a combination of both of B2B and b2c because there are marketing benefits to both, and obviously sales benefits to doing both. But when you're focused on the B2C model, building a positive relationship with your consumers and creating a positive experience online, if that's where they're primarily shopping, is extremely important.
[00:11:23] Now, if managed well, the positive feedback and growing online popularity can generate more interest from retail buyers, so that can grow the. B side of your business as an entrepreneur. So in module nine of Toy Creators Academy, we do dive in depth to both of those different business models. So when you're ready, you can join us in that program to learn more.
[00:11:44] Now let's talk a little bit about risk here. Toy entrepreneurs do tend to take on more risk than toy inventors since they're holding inventory before it's sold. So to reduce order shipping times, and also depending on the size of their item, they might have to hire a team to help manage their product development, their customer service, or their shipping.
[00:12:07] Now look, maybe you just have a small shop on Etsy. You are still a toy entrepreneur. No matter how big or how small, if you're manufacturing and selling your product to customers, whether it is a buyer at Target or to a mom from New Jersey, you are still manufacturing a product for sale and thus are that entrepreneur path.
[00:12:30] Okay, let's dive into our third and final toy path that we're gonna discuss today. And that is the corporate toy path, also called the executive toy path. So this path is for those of you who are looking to create toys and games, but you want to do so with the comfort and stability of a nine to five job.
[00:12:53] Totally understandable. Right? So in the toy industry, there are a variety of different jobs you can. In the corporate toy world, there's everything from the designer who's gonna illustrate the product. There's product development roles if you are going to manage the actual creation of the products and the price point.
[00:13:13] There's buyer roles where you're choosing what products goes and go into stores. There are roles for sales people and marketing. There are roles that focus on shipping and fulfillment. There are roles that focus on new customer acquisition, so there are a variety of places that you can go with a corporate toy career.
[00:13:32] When you work in the corporate side of the toy industry, you're hyper focused on the overall deadlines and schedules that are standard within the toy industry. So as a corporate toy person, your calendar matches up pretty well with the upcoming toy trade shows, as well as the set dates that retailers have for when they want to bring product into their stores.
[00:13:56] So your calendar will definitely be full, be filled out with all of the upcoming toy trade shows, and depending on your position, you'll have various tasks to accomplish by those trade show. So, for example, New York Toy Fair, now being in September, there will be dates on your calendar to say, okay, we need the design approved by, I don't, early in, um, 2023.
[00:14:20] The design of the trade show booth needs to be approved by the internal team. Um, then you'll back out to, okay, when do we need to commit to who is going to develop the trade show booth for us and when are we going to pay them to do that work? Um, and. When do we have to have the product that will be on display at that trade show ready and approved?
[00:14:40] When will that packaging need to come in? When will those samples need to come in? You're kind of backing out your entire work calendar according to the various trade shows that are going on in the industry. But in parallel, you're also working your development cycle around when buyers, retail buyers want to set products into their.
[00:15:01] So if a retail buyer typically sets in August for their Q4 products, products that will be available in the winter months, then you need to have your development calendar set so that two months prior to when they want to receive products, you are showing them final designs. You're showing them final pricing and they're either approving or rejecting the new or updated product, which means a year prior to that date, you will have had to start developing those ideas.
[00:15:29] Now the timelines vary company to company the tasks that you'll execute. Very position to position the tasks that I was talking. Mostly focused on product development and design, because that was my focus. Your tasks will vary if you're working more in sales. So if you're working more in sales, you're gonna need to get your pitch decks together.
[00:15:50] You're gonna need to get your catalogs together. You're gonna need to contact your customers and see if they still have inventory or need to do reorders. So your tasks will vary on your position. And further to that, the timing of when things get done will vary company to company. So larger companies, the biggest toy companies in the world work one.
[00:16:14] And even now, two years in advance. So they've already in 2023, have product for 2024 planned and done, and they're thinking about 2025, right? If you work at a smaller toy company, they tend to be a bit more agile, where they might have some product planned for 2024 a year ahead. But their timeline will be more like six months ahead rather than a full year.
[00:16:39] So it depends on the company you're working for. It depends on your role, but that is, you can definitely be rest assured that your calendar will be determined by some of the major toy industry events and the buyer set dates. That's the most important thing to think about. Let's get into why people choose to work as corporate toy people.
[00:16:59] Well, most people have nine to five jobs and wouldn't it be fun if your job involved toys? I mean, of course it would. You can definitely expect that if you're working in a corporate toy office, there are toys and games everywhere. You might have your company's toys and game products out in front cuz you're looking at them and working on them day in and day out.
[00:17:22] But if you're working in a corporate toy job, your company is also likely to have some competitor. At their offices as well. Now in module one of Toy Creators Academy, I also teach. We've gotta get out to the toy stores and see the products that other people are creating. Well, toy companies do this as well.
[00:17:41] They go out, they look at competitor products, and they have a budget to purchase samples so that they can reference it when they're back at their offices. They're looking for graphic inspiration. They're looking at packaging size. They're looking at the features of their competitor products to make sure that their products are as cool as their competi.
[00:17:59] Now, how do you get started in a corporate toy career? You might be wondering, well, I study toy design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, so I highly recommend that program. You should definitely look into toy design programs across the us. And even if you can't find a toy design program at the school or in the area you're looking to go to school, you might be able to find a toy or a game designing class.
[00:18:28] So you might wanna look for that as well. Now if you wanna break into a toy career, you can check out, uh, my toy career program called Toy Career Take. Go to toy career takeoff.com. It is a five module program that is self-led. You can dive into it at your own pace, and that program will show you how to go about getting yourself a toy job and using your existing skills to make that happen.
[00:18:57] Now that we've gone through all the different three toy paths, have you found the one that is right for you? Head over to the Toy coach.com/. Take your quiz and find out which toy path you are on right now. At this point, most people start wondering, well, hold on. Can I change my toy path? And yes you can.
[00:19:19] I'm gonna dive in right now to a few examples of people who have changed their toy path. I have a student, Chrissy, and another student, Kate, who both changed their toy paths. And even me, myself, I changed my own toy path. So let's dive into how you can change your toy path, why you might change your toy path, and why all of this change can actually benefit you and create more opportunity.
[00:19:44] So Chrissy, Chrissy started out as a toy inventor. She joined. She joined toy creators. Long ago when it first started, and at the end of it, she attended the TCA virtual pitch event as a toy inventor. She's on that toy path now at the TCA virtual pitch event. Chrissy pitched her ideas to the biggest companies in the toy industry, and while she did have some interest in her ideas, she got some maybes.
[00:20:12] She was getting a little antsy, and she was waiting on that. Yes. And she was tired of waiting, and eventually she said, you know what? I'm gonna give myself the yes. I'm gonna make things happen. So about a year and a half into her path as a toy inventor, Chrissy decided to switch things up and go down the path of an entre.
[00:20:31] So the next time that I launched the TCA virtual Pitch event, Chrissy attended as an entrepreneur. She met with a distributor and landed an opportunity to test her product in Barnes and Noble Stores. Today, Chrissy has placement in various specialty stores and camp stores with her product that she manufactured and developed herself.
[00:20:53] So there you see that someone who started as a toy inventor pivoted and went down the toy entrepreneur. So let's get into a story of someone who did the opposite. So Kate started her journey as a toy entrepreneur. Now prior to joining Toy Creators Academy, she had already developed her own game. Now while at a toy industry trade show looking to sell her game to retailers.
[00:21:19] Remember we talked about that B2B model, Kate just happened to fall into the world of being a toy entre. At that show, Kate licensed her game to a popular toy company, and for now at least, she intends to stay on the path of a toy inventor. And your final example today is me. I started my toy journey as a full-on corporate toy person.
[00:21:43] I was a toy executive working at nine to five at some small and then large toy and game companies. My first job ever was at Mme. Alexander as an intern, a doll designer, and eventually I'd go on to work at Party City Toys Rust, and eventually become VP of Brandon product at a toy company. And then I was inspired to make my own way, try to build my own brand within this industry and see what I'm made of as a businesswoman.
[00:22:12] And it gave me the urge to want to try and become a toy entrepreneur. So in conclusion, I wanna highlight the main differences between toy inventor, entrepreneur and corporate toy person. And then I'm gonna show you again where you can find out which one you are. So the toy inventors, they are truly developing ideas to sell entrepreneurs.
[00:22:31] They are developing products to sell and sometimes services to sell. And a corporate toy person, that corporate toy person is developing ideas and products for a larger company to sell. Now, which toy path are you on? Which type of toy creator are. That is the quiz I want you to take right now. Head over to the Toy coach.com/quiz.
[00:22:57] Take that quiz and let me know what you get. Message me on Instagram. It's the best way to contact me at the Toy Coach and tell me which toy path result you get as old. Always. Thank you so much for joining me here today. I know there are many podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one.
[00:23:17] Until next week, I'll see you later. Toy people.
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