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http://www.loveinventions.com/chronicles-of-a-toy-inventor-part-1
Article by Tony Ellis. - Visit Tony’s website at
www.conceptioneering.co.uk
  
To introduce myself, I have been a professional toy inventor now for around 8
years, and have so far licensed 43 toy, game and gift products. Some have become
global brands like ‘Cube
World’ (manufactured by
Radica/Mattel)
and which is currently on sale all over the World.
You can find out more about us via an interview we did for the BBC -
Click here
Where and how did it all start?
Based in the UK, my background has always been in electronic engineering, having
worked previously in avionics, security, car and truck alarms, biometrics and
early GPS systems.
My hobby was robotics and, in the late 1990’s, I started developing a
sophisticated robot that could almost think for itself. The robot became to be
almost like a family pet – it had learning algorithms and was allowed free
roaming around the house.
In early 2000, when a visitor saw it one day, he was insistent that I had to
show it to a toy company he knew. I made the phone call and (unbelievably for
this particular industry) got an appointment the very next day with a major UK
toy company.
First Ever Pitch
This was my first ever ‘pitch’ in the toy industry, but fortunately the robot
sold itself with it’s advanced abilities, and the company was hugely
enthusiastic and there was talk of a £70,000 advance on going to deal.
I began mentally spending the advance money (thinking
‘what new
car am I going to buy’, etc.) and even spent around £6000 on a
licence agreement!
Unfortunately this turned out to be our first ‘baptism of fire’, when just two
days before the contract was due to be signed, the toy company saw what they
believed would be a serious competitor product at the New York Toy Fair and
pulled the plug on the deal.
However, the company’s CEO, in consolation, insisted that I didn’t give up, as
the toy industry needed this sort of technical flair, and now nearly 8 years
later, that company has gone on to take 12 of our products under license.
Early Days
In the very early days starting out (where I had no royalty stream) the only way
I could earn enough money to live by, was to take on toy contract development
work.
I visited Taiwan & China to quickly learn how to program low cost
soundcontrollers such as Winbond and Sonix (you can find these in any toy, game
or gift product that has talking/sound effects).
Armed with this expertise, it then gave me a good revenue stream and I code
released over 100 soundcontrollers in those early years before the royalties
clicked in.
The further advantage of this is that, as I have all the development equipment
and knowledge of how to use these chips, I could produce my own custom
soundcontrollers for my ‘own’ concepts/inventions. If I had had to outsource
this, then the cost would have been substantial. Also, with my background in
high tech. design, I was in a niche position as there seemed to be a lack of
high tech. designers in the toy sector at that time.
Our inventions take off
When royalties started to come through, I quickly realised that I couldn’t do
everything in the business myself, and my wife (Judie) agreed to join me to
undertake the day to day running of company (Conceptioneering),
which then freed me up to concentrate 100% on what I do best which is the
development of new ideas/concepts.
In the beginning we quickly realised that the seasonal
nature of the toys we were developing was causing a great unbalance in our
revenue stream through the year. Royalties are paid in four quarters, and we
were finding that Quarter 1 (Q1) (January-March) was very poor, Q2 got a little
better, with Q3 (pre Christmas) things picking up a bit more, and Q4 being
fantastic because of the Christmas sales.
In an attempt to balance the royalty stream, we decided to develop spring/summer
products, and we had great success in a number of items, such as TalkPro Tennis
&
TalkPro Football ,
Skipmate,
Skytech SFX,
Speed Shooter,
etc. This greatly helped and gave us a very balanced royalty return throughout
the year.
What We Do
Our days are long – we generally start very early in the morning as the Far East
are on line and we tend to work late into the evenings (usually till around
10pm) so that we can keep in touch with our clients in the US.
At Conceptioneering we strive to conceive/develop at least 50 concepts a year
and, in a good 12 months, we have been lucky enough to get 10 or more licensed.
We have also developed a number of fun gift items, including one of my
favourites ‘Bottle
Buddy‘, a little butler that sits on your wine bottle and talks to
you when you pour a drink. He actually gets drunker and drunker as the evening
progresses. This was Judie’s idea, which was conceived whilst she was enjoying a
couple of glasses of wine on a Friday evening and thought
‘if that
bottle could talk, what would it say?’ – this is a great example of
how a product is born from just an initial idea.
We have also been lucky enough to invent a number of Simpsons gift items and,
being a huge fan of the show, this has been great fun.
Cube World
Cube World is our most successful item to date. It was launched in the UK in
late 2005 and is enjoying huge success in the US and Japan, as well as many
other markets – from Mexico to Australia.
Each Cube World contains a little man who has a role – such as a fireman, who
can put out fires in the other cubes, or a clean freak, who cleans up after his
messy neighbours.
Roll a cube around in your hand and the stick man will soon be knocking on the
glass in annoyance, roll him over a bit more and he’ll be sick! Stick the cubes
together and the little men can move across 16 cubes. Each cube also has a
unique high score game.
Cube World Series 4 has just launched (making 16 cubes in all) and there is also
Cube World ‘Places’ – a bigger cube in two versions, ‘Block Bash’ and ‘Global
Getaway’, in which our stickmen can do things like attend concerts or go on
holiday – these were introduced in late 2007.
Cube World has won the ‘Max-it Award’ for Best UK Toy Design and was also
nominated for a ‘Toy of the Year Award’ (in the Electronic Entertainment Sector)
in 2007.
Pitching our ideas to toy companies
When we develop new ideas/concepts, we then try to sell them into the toy
companies in what amounts to a ‘Dragons Den’ type situation – in fact the
similarities with the show is quite accurate.
The pitch is everything. Over the years I have done many (many) pitches, and
still today get nervous, even with people that I have pitched to before a dozen
times or more. Thankfully, my enthusiasm wins over my nerves – in my opinion
there is nothing better than an inventors passion for what they believe in.
In the early days we were working blind – wondering if manufacturers would like
our new concepts. We would pitch in hotel rooms in New York (during Toy Fairs)
in a room with up to 10 people at a time, who would sit there blankly as we’d
present them with our latest ideas.
These days we are working slightly less in the dark, as we have got to know toy
companies better and have an understanding on the type of toys they are looking
for and, in some cases, companies will give us a ‘wish list’ to work with.
Know When To Move On
So many times we have seen inventors put everything on the line for their one
invention, only for it never to go anywhere. We ourselves have had concepts that
we believed to be ‘no brainers’ and perfect fits for some companies, but still
couldn’t get them placed. I believe that the biggest lesson for any inventor
though is to know when to move on to the next project.
What we do is not give up on the earlier concepts, but place them on the
‘back-burner’ and revisit them every so often – we have actually gone on to
eventually place ‘older’ concepts with this strategy.
With The Smooth Comes The Rough
So what have been the negative experiences we have had to deal with over the
years? I can obviously only give you my personal experience and what I have
learnt.
Unfortunately I have (so far) had 4 major rip-offs, 2 of which sold millions of
pieces.
Let me relay one of these events. I came up with a new item that was very
different and took it to a large toy company (I trusted people in the early
days).
When I presented the item, the guy nearly fell off his chair, and could not hide
his excitement, so I thought
“they are
going to take this!”. Then on their inventor record sheet (most
companies have you sign their inventor record, never your NDA) he recorded that
they had a ‘similar item in development’.
Now this means I was stumped as far as my concept was concerned! As you can
probably guess, a couple of years later the very same thing came on to the
market and made millions, but I never got a penny!
All I can do is never go back to that company, it hurts though when you see your
concept/invention all over the
TV
and media.
In another case a company actually signed my NDA, then even discussed going to
deal, then all went quiet!
A year later they brought out exactly the same thing. I went to my Lawyer who
said
“do you want to risk hundreds of thousand of pounds (your home) to take on a
long legal battle, where these guy’s can afford the best legal people?”
I had to make the decision to cut my losses, and never deal with that particular
company again.
But I didn’t let these experiences defeat me, else that would have been the end
of my pro-inventing career, and it paid off. I finally found great companies
that did the right thing and legitimately took my concepts/inventions on to
manufacture.
Article by Tony Ellis. - Visit Tony’s website at
www.conceptioneering.co.uk
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