Episode #1: Unlocking Your Great Toy Ideas
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learn how to OVERCOME CREATIVE BLOCK AND unlock your next big toy idea
Are you trying to come up with your next great toy idea for kids, but you're suffering from a creative block? If you find it difficult to come up with an amazing new toy idea time and time again, then this is the episode for you. In this episode, Azhelle Wade breaks down her 5 Step Process To Unlocking Great Toy Ideas, sharing with you a proven strategy to come up with good toy ideas. Learn how to get out of a creative block and break through to new toy ideas.
This process will eliminate creative block and help you uncover new toy ideas that will beat your competition. What makes a toy concept good anyway? Well, this episode will teach you that a good toy idea is made up of three parts.
Good toy ideas are unique to your personality and life experience
Good toy ideas effectively fill market gaps
Good toy ideas are a threat to your competition
So if you’re ready to break through a creative block, and come up with your new toy ideas then you are READY for this episode and Azhelle’s 5-step creative process.
break through creative block with this 5 Step Process
Go On A Research Shopping Trip : Creative block is the worst. Learning how to overcome a creative block is the most important skill you can learn as a toy person. But the best way to start the process of unlocking your creativity, and start coming up with new toy ideas, is to venture out to toy stores both big and small for insights and inspiration. Document, document, document. Make sure you take a lot of pictures and notes. If you aren’t sure what to take notes on, download our free Research Workbook so you don’t forget a thing!
Evaluating Your Competitor: With your newly acquired wealth of knowledge you are going to focus on evaluating your competitors toys. You are going to perform a SWOT analysis for your competitor, list their strengths, list their weaknesses, their opportunities and threats to their product. Overcoming creative block gets easier when you have a library of knowledge to pull from. This information will also prove helpful later in evaluating whether any of your new toy ideas will be able to perform well in the real world.
Evaluate The Trends: List 5 to 10 trends that you found and ask yourself the following questions about each trend. What company or companies are doing this right? What are the names of the products? Then find those products online. Take a look at what people are saying about the products. If you’re still feeling stuck creatively and cannot come up with any more new toy ideas, then you should pull even more trends. The process of overcoming creative block relies on you mindfully absorbing content, and that starts with toy trends!
Apply Your Personal Strengths: Remember, the most important part in coming up with good, new toy ideas is you. You may be new to the toy industry but focus on figuring out ways to apply your personal hobbies or interests to a toy concept. Focus on your personal strengths. You may be asking yourself, “What strength could I possibly have?” Well, your strength is your own life experience, and your one of kind personality.
Define What You Want To Create: Will you focus on dolls, vehicles, blind bag collectibles, or board games? You may even have written down or sketched some concepts of several new toy ideas. To overcome creative block and come up with good toy ideas or better yet GREAT toy ideas, you’ll want to create a mood board so you can DEFINE and focus on what you plan to create.
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✓ Research Trip Itinerary Template: Find toyspiration easily when you trend shop with focus.
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#1: Unlocking Your Great Toy Ideas
Azhelle:
You are listening to Making it in The Toy Industry episode number one.
Jingle + Intro:
Welcome to making it in the toy industry. A podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you, and now your host Azhelle Wade.
Azhelle:
Hey there, toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome to the very first episode of Making it in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. Since this is the first episode I'd like to kick off by telling you a little bit about myself and my experience in the toy world. I have 10 years of experience doing product development and design for toy companies including Madame Alexander Toys "R" Us, Horizon Group USA and many more. I am an award-winning designer and also an inventor named on three U.S. patents. I actually started off my career with a focus in design, but today I am an executive leading product development and brand management. So I know a lot about this industry and I love to share what I can with you all. Azhelle: Now some of you listening may already know me as an expert in product development and design specifically around the categories of dolls and craft activity toys. But this podcast is going to go way beyond that. In the coming weeks, we’ll cover all categories of toys and games, touching on topics ranging from boosting your creativity, to finding your perfect factory, to mastering the most effective way to pitch your ideas.
Azhelle:
So for today's episode I wanna talk to you about something that is sure to have affected you at one point or another. And that thing is creative block. Sometimes when you sit down to come up with a new toy idea, I know it can be a little intimidating, maybe even more so intimidating if you happen to have a history of coming up with great ideas. But there may be a point when you feel like everything has been done before, but I'm here and I'm gonna act as your conscience and remind you that it hasn't. You have got more greatness to tap into my friend. So today we're gonna look at specific ways that you can utilize information from the real world and the online world to help guide and inspire your creative process in a new way.
Azhelle:
Usually creative block strikes after a long stressful period of being overstrained or overworked and your- your brain just kinda, you just hit a creative wall. You can't think of any more ideas. You got no more marketing slogans, you got no more design ideas, you got nothing. You're just stressed out and the best way to overcome that situation is to walk away and come back once you've had time to clear your mind.
Azhelle:
The other time creative block might hit is when you're trying out something new. So let's say you stepped away from your major 9:00 to 5:00 gig and you said, I'm gonna try this entrepreneurial route. Or let's say you've been working in finance for the past 10 15 years and you decide, I have a really cool idea for a toy product and I'm gonna go for it. When you first start these new adventures, you're on an adrenaline high, you've got an endorphin rush, and your friends patting on the back and they're like, “Go girl, you got this.” But at some point you're alone with your thoughts and that's when another form of creative block might hit you, and it's called the impostor syndrome. Now this is the most dangerous form of creative block. You can not let this one slide by. You have got to push yourself through it.
Azhelle:
Ya know- years ago I remember when I was starting out in the toy industry, I experienced this type of creative block and I felt completely at a loss. I felt like I did not belong in the industry... I- remember sitting across from my friend at a diner, I was trying to come up with a bunch of new toy ideas and I just had to complete creative block. I look over at my friend and I said, “Why did you let me do this? Like, why did you let me go into the toy industry?” And it's just so crazy, because when I look back now, if I hadn't pushed through that moment of self doubt, I wouldn't have this awesome career that I have today. So now I'm gonna break down for you my five step process to unlocking your great toy ideas so that anytime you might hit that moment of self doubt or just have a moment of creative block because you've been a little overworked, you have a process that you can go back to, to be guaranteed to open up the floodgates of new ideas.
Azhelle:
Okay, let's get started. Step one to the five step process of unlocking your great toy ideas is to go on a research shopping trip. Now, research shopping trip is something performed by a lot of toy companies, usually quarterly, sometimes annually, and typically each department will go out on their own research shopping trip. They might be focusing on marketing or licensing or product design or maybe even packaging design. Now you as an inventor and an entrepreneur, you are actually going to be wearing many hats, but I know that, that's not a problem for you. You likely love wearing many hats. So when you go on this trip, you're gonna be looking at everything from product design to price point on the shelf. Now it's important to know there are two types of research trips you might hear about in the industry. One is a trend shopping trip and the other is called a competitive shopping trip.
Azhelle:
Now a trend shopping trip is exactly what it sounds like. It's a trip where you're focusing on identifying market trends. These are usually like visual trends, typography, color schemes, paper finishes, um, product themes like are there unicorns and mermaids everywhere. While a competitive shopping trip really focuses on understanding your competitor's place in the what are their price points? What type of products do they offer? What age ranges do they cover? Do they open molds or do they use open market tools? Things like that.
Azhelle:
To get started, you're gonna need to make a curated list of places to go. I like to use a combination of Yelp and Google to find stores near me and check the comments to make sure they're the right fit for the research trip that I'm gonna go on. There are a few types of stores you wanna make sure you have on your list, so I'm gonna go through them now. First, you want to make sure you have your independent toy stores? They're usually smaller. There might be only one or two of them in the U.S. and they're likely to be specific to your hometown or region. Next you wanna check out the big box stores such as Walmart or Target.
Azhelle:
Then you wanna add to your list gift and paper shops such as papyrus, paper source. These are great places to get inspired by materials and finishes that you might actually end up using on your packaging. Then you might even wanna throw in a few makeup stores or children's apparel stores. Those are fantastic if you're looking for patterns. And finally you wanna choose one or two specialty stores completely out of the realm of toys. Now I know this part is gonna come as a shock to you, but I love finding inspiration at high end grocery chains like whole foods. I know, I know what you're thinking, but I am designing a toy, Azhelle. Why in the world would I go to a grocery store to get inspiration? But I am telling you there are some amazing packaging and like really clever simple mechanisms to get inspired by here.
Azhelle:
They're actually a bunch of really successful toy products out there that clearly took their cues from the packaging of food and grocery items. So don't be afraid to get inspired by things outside of the world of toys. Now that you have your list of 10 stores, you are ready to start making your itinerary. Now I love to be super organized so I am all about an itinerary. In your itinerary you're gonna wanna have a start time and an end time for each location. You're also gonna do something that I've just started incorporating to my itinerary. You are going to list a mindset for each location. Now I am telling you this is a game changer. Your mindset is gonna really help you focus on what each store has to offer you and make sure that you laser in on what you need to see the moment you walk in the door.
Azhelle:
Now I actually have a really awesome freebie download for you guys. I've for you and itinerary template and worksheet to help plan your day and guide your mindset on your next research shopping trip. To get that freebie, you're gonna want to visit thetoycoach.com/1 and I'm also gonna link to it in the show notes.
Azhelle:
So back to business. If you're having a hard time defining your mindset, maybe you need to go back and think about the reason why you decided to go on a research trip. There are three major reasons you might be performing this trip. You might be performing it because you need to come up with an entirely new idea, number one or number two, you might be looking to improve upon an existing idea. Now this could be your idea or an idea of your competitors that you're just looking at in the market and saying, “Hey, I can do that better. Or three, you might already have your idea ready to go, but you're just looking for some inspiration on the best way to either present it on- on shelf or how to present it to a potential customer. Now if you have those, one of those three whys or reasons in your mind, it gets a lot easier to specify what exactly your mindset's gonna be at every single store.
Azhelle:
So once you have your mindset's listed on your itinerary, your itinerary is filled out with as many stores as you can fit into it you are ready to go on your research shopping trip. Now, I know I've been calling this a shopping trip again and again, but I do have to say at this point that the word shop is used very lightly. It's more of window shopping than actually purchasing. You do not need to and should not need to purchase a ton of product from the stores you're visiting. Images are usually gonna be more than enough. You really just wanna take pictures of the front panels of boxes, the side panels, the back panels, gather enough information so you feel like you have the product when you go back home. Now at this point you might be wondering if the shop managers are gonna have any issue with you taking pictures of the product. And I must say, you know that- that was an issue back in like 2010 but I think with the growth of social media and everything just being available for purchase online, uh, stores have gotten a lot more comfortable with you taking pictures of the product. If anything, you might run into an uncomfortable moment with an independent shop owner, but usually you can just apologize and say, “Oh, sorry, I didn't know I was sending a picture to a friend for some reason.” If they seem to need an explanation, but don't worry too much about it, it shouldn't be a problem at all.
Azhelle:
Now I want you to promise me one thing. If you don't promise me anything else, write everything down or sketch it out. Whatever works best for you. Take pictures of things or take pictures of two things next to each other. If you're thinking about combining them, just record, record, record. The whole point of this trip is to inspire and if you don't capture that inspiration, you're kind of wasting this experience. You're also gonna want to use this research trip to identify your competitors. If you're just starting out for the first time or if you haven't been doing it that long, you're definitely gonna want to write down the company names. So just go to the bottom of the box or the back panel of the box, and you'll probably find a company logo and some website information. So later on you can visit the website, and you'll be able to research and reference the product and see the vibe of the company. You'll get the logo styles, color styles, see lifestyle shots and really just be able to ingrain yourself in the world of this product, to make sure that your mind is in the right place to create items that will sit alongside your competitors on shelf and perform just as well if not better.
Azhelle:
Okay. Wow. That was a really long step one but it's okay. We made it. We are here at step two and step two is where you are going to evaluate your competitor. Now I said before there are two types of research trips. There's a trend research shopping trip and there is a competitive research shopping trip. So we're gonna go under the assumption that you an entrepreneur and inventor are doing both of these at once by yourself. And thus our step two in our step three are gonna be evaluating the competitor side and then evaluating the trend side.
Azhelle:
So let's start with our step two. That is evaluating your competitor. With your newly acquired wealth of knowledge. You are going to need to assess your findings and here a good old fashioned SWOT analysis works wonders. I know it doesn't sound fun, it doesn't sound creative and you're like what? The designer is telling me to do a SWOT analysis, but I'm telling you this is how I've come up with my best ideas. So you are going to perform a SWOT analysis for your competitor as if they hired you with a task of seizing new opportunities for them in the upcoming season. You're gonna list their strengths, you're gonna list their weaknesses, their opportunities and threats to their product. And doing this is gonna give you a really objective view of the market. So when you finish your SWOT analysis, you're gonna highlight the opportunities you identified and use them in the next step.
Azhelle:
Step three is evaluate the trends. So you're gonna start by just listing out five trends in a Google doc or on your notepad that you noticed during your trip. An example of a trend will be blind bag collectible toys. List about between five to 10 trends so that you keep focused and once you have your list, ask yourself the following questions about each trend. What company or companies are doing this right? What are the names of the products? Then find those products online. Take a look at what people are saying about the products. I love using Amazon for this. Amazon is just great for customer reviews, so if you want some, I mean some is paid feedback, but if you wanna look for some really good um, honest feedback, Amazon is your place. Now I have a little insight for you. When looking at Amazon reviews, go and look for three star reviews. Those are gonna be the most honest reviews, least likely to be fake and have the most information. Azhelle: Add your findings from Amazon reviews or Google reviews or Target reviews, whatever you end up going to, to your list of trends so you can refer to them later. Your negative reviews are gonna turn into your opportunities. The reviews of these products are gonna help guide you in your creation process. The best inventions are the ones that solve problems. So all these negative reviews are opportunities for you to solve problems with your new great idea. So at this point you are ready to take your trends that you have defined in step three and the customer research that you found in the same step and marry all of that with the opportunities that you identified in step two, your SWOT analysis. Try to find any connections here. Keep your mind open and jot down any ideas you have as we move on to the next phase.
Azhelle:
Step four, self-reflection. Now the most important part in coming up with a new idea is you. You are the thing that is different from everybody else in the world and you are the piece of the puzzle that is going to bring uniqueness to your new idea. And now you are armed with a much better understanding of what your particular toy category already has to offer. You now understand what customers love. You understand what they don't, and you understand what threats and opportunities your competitor has. So now you need to take a step back and think about yourself. What do you have to offer? Let's say you have an engineering background and maybe there's a mechanism that you're familiar with or maybe one that you've even created and no one has ever thought to apply to a toy. And I mean, think about this. Did you know that the driving force behind Tickle Me Elmo was just a vibrating sound box? And it just took one person to make the connection between childhood tickling and the combination of this vibrating sound box with a plush toy to lead to the creation of Tickle Me Elmo. So that's what you're gonna wanna do here. You're going to wanna think about mechanisms that you're aware of and the and the- the competitor research that you're now aware of and think about how they can all come together, um, into a play pattern. And what if you're a mom with three young children, your strength is that you have a built in focus group living with you. Toy companies spend thousands of dollars a year on research and focus groups just trying to get honest opinions from children in order to keep up with trends and kids' tastes. You can watch your kids daily and just get inspired by them to think of concepts or just even have them suggest ideas for toys directly to you. Look, I can go on and on with examples, but the overall message here is to just be positive and focus on applying your personality and your personal life experience into your creation process. Find the holes in the industry that only you can fill. Now in case you're still struggling at this point, I have a few more questions that you can ask yourself. I'm gonna ask you to go back in time and think about when you were a child, what was your favorite toy growing up? What was it that was so great about that toy? Why was it your favorite? And finally, why do you still remember it all these years later? Write down the answers to all of these questions. Use your own insights, your own experience, and all of the research you have done until this point to help inspire you and unlock the Gates of creativity. Once you're ready, we're gonna move on to step five.
Azhelle:
Step five, the final step of unlocking your great toy ideas is to define what you want to create. By now, you should have narrowed down to a category. You'll know if you're focusing on dolls, vehicles, blind bag collectibles, or maybe even board games. You may have written down or sketched out some concepts of several new ideas. So to focus the final stage of your creative thought process, you'll want to create a mood board. A mood board is a collage of images that directly or indirectly relates to the overall vibe or acetic for the toy concept that you have swirling around in your mind. You'll wanna use an app like Maldive or Canva to really easily create this board if you're not comfortable with a program like Adobe Photoshop.
Azhelle:
And you can utilize the pictures you took during your research trip as well as any pictures you might have discovered online when you were doing your product research and consumer review research. Your mood board should be horizontal in format. A great size that I like to work with is 11 by 17 or if I'm working on like a really big presentation, I'll blow it up big to 15 by 30 but those are two different, um, proportionately different sizes. So you're gonna have to choose which one you start with and go from there. When your mood board is all done, I want you to print it out large and put it up on a wall so it can inspire you and just guide you through the end of this creative process. As you're developing your toy concepts and game ideas even more, I want you to be really clear about the play features.
Azhelle:
You need to be sure that you list them all down and that you're comparing your play features to that of your competitors. You also need to be completely sure of your play pattern. Typically play patterns have a beginning, a middle and an end or you might have some sort of cause and effect surprise toy. It's imperative that before you go to a meeting with a big toy company or before you meet with an inventor relations rep that you're sure of what your play pattern is. Now, it'd be a great time to play with any of the samples you picked up from your research shopping trip to get a feeling for the journey that the competitor toy takes the child on. Now remember these toys that you picked up were selected by a buyer at a major retailer or an independent retailer for a reason So take notes. What steps in this journey that they're taking the child on are you maybe missing from your toy or your game ideas?
Azhelle:
And with that, my friends we have completed going through the five step process to unlocking your great toy ideas. I hope this process helps you overcome your moments of self doubt and push through to come up with your best toy ideas yet.
Azhelle:
Don't forget to head over to thetoycoach.com/1 for your freebie itinerary template and worksheet. I wanna take a moment and personally thank you for listening to the very first episode of making it in the toy industry. Before you go, I wanna ask you to please leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify, we would love to hear your feedback to help guide future episodes. That's all we have for today, so until next week I'll see you later toy people.
Jingle + Outro:
Thanks for listening to Making it in The Toy Industry podcasts with Azhelle Wade. Head over to thetoycoach.com for more information, tips, and advice.