by Crazy Ivan
The signs are up marking each aisle in a sea of never ending booths. Most of them are still empty and those that aren't are generally filled with cardboard boxes and bright colored pieces of mysterious displays. Sounds of heavy construction fill the air as the biggest displays start to rise up, cresting the ocean of white cubicles and promising undreamt of ostentation by the following day.
The halls are already bustling with carpenters, electricians and other skilled labor. Execs in suits with rolled up sleeves are overseeing things, sweating and fretting ceaselessly as the day wears on and the hopeful newcomers wander with perplexed smiles that hide their nerves.
This is Toy Fair, the biggest annual trade show in the toy business. This is where the major players unveil the newest items in their most familiar lines. This is where the latest and greatest tech toys make their first appearance. It's also where the little guys go to try to meet the big guys.
I love this time of year. There's nothing in all the world like Toy Fair. The first time I went I was overwhelmed by the scale and wandered around for hours taking in toys I'd never seen before. I marveled at how expansive it was and that was without ever realizing that there were two more floors devoted to the show. I'd seen only a third of the trade show and that was plenty to amaze me.
As you can imagine, a person like me could spend the rest of their natural life in a showroom filled with every toy you can imagine and plenty you can't. You're encouraged to play because nothing sells toys like other people having fun with them right in front of your booth. And make no mistake, this is all about sales.
It's hard for me to keep that in mind as I wander through. I see toys everywhere and I just think fun, fun, fun. But the more astute (and probably more successful) person sees money, money, money. Less than half the people at Toy Fair are there to show off their toys. The rest are there to buy them.
The buyers are a lot like the toy makers in that they come in a wide variety. Just like you have companies as big as Lego sitting right next to two old ladies who came up with an idea for a new line of dolls, you also have buyers wandering around representing toy stores as big as Toys R Us and Wal-Mart mixed in with people buying for the toy shelf at their local pharmacy.
Myachi debuted at Toy Fair back in 1999. That was before my time and I can only imagine how overwhelmed Myachi Man was when he went in with nothing but display boxes of hand sewn Myachis and a banner he'd had printed in his neighborhood. To his credit he probably sprung for a pretty solid TV and he'd already put together an awesome video. This was a while ago so the only copy I can find of it is one where a friend is actually video taping his TV while he plays it, but it's still worth watching:
The first half of this would have been playing in a loop behind him and there would have been a cheap folding table with a cheap red table cloth on it beneath a heaping stack of Myachis. With nothing but this, he went in there with the dream and the golden gab he has and made a killing. He sold more Myachis in the first day of Toy Fair that day than he had in the two year history of the company up to that point. He did even better the following day.
That was a dozen years ago and we haven't missed a Toy Fair since. Things have changed in terms of display, of course. We essentially have half of a Myachigon that we take in and set up with multiple giant TVs mounted to it, spinner racks with little TVs, multiple packages, major sports licensing and a much more impressive loop of video that includes things like us on Martha Stewart, us on the Early Show, us on MSNBC and us on the Today Show.
So fast forward to the present day. Or actually, the day before the present day. Yesterday morning Kid Myach and I were waiting at the loading dock of the Javitz Center freezing in the merciless cold while we waited for them to open the bay doors. We rented a U-Haul to carry all the stuff for our display so we're unloading what we can and getting it close to the doors so we can be ready to roll the second they open up.
So this really nice dude pulls up in a little rented van, parks near us and hops out. He breaths into his hand a bit to warm them up and gives us a wave.
"How are you guys?" he asks.
"Fine," I try to say but my lips are frozen together. Instead, Kid says "Fine" and I just nod a little. We introduce ourselves and he asks what company we're with. This leads to the obligatory 5 minute explanation that goes with us saying the word "Myachi" to the uninitiated. Given the temperature and the thickness of our collective gloves we spared him the usual lesson.
So then we ask what company he's with.
"Well, that's why I hopped out. Me and a friend came up with an idea for a toy... a line of dolls. This is our first year and we're just trying to get a sense of how things work."
And now it occurs to me that the tables are flipped. We've been doing this forever now. Our product is in over a thousand stores in more than a dozen countries and we've got a huge booth with this very impressive and intimidating display. Well... intimidating if you're showing up for the first time with nothing but some sales sheet and your product.
We talked for a good half hour, answering all the questions we know Myachi Man must have been asking himself the first time he wandered into the wild world of Toy Fair. It was really fun to listen to the excitement in his voice about all the possibilities. He said that if you told him a year ago he would be at the Toy Fair hawking some new line of dolls he'd have called you crazy. But every word he said was dripping with this vindicating sound of a man actualizing a dream.
One of the reasons that we've been able to keep this whole crazy experiment afloat for as long as we have is that everyone we meet loves the idea of doing what we've done. At some point, everybody comes up with a crazy concept that might just be the next million dollar idea but very few of them go as far as prototyping it, testing it and then taking it to the trade show circuit.
It takes a lot of guts and the nerves are balanced with the excitement and promise of striking gold. It's kind of like the fear you feel when the roller coaster is ticking up that first big hill except it pretty much never leaves. You're excited and nervous and afraid of what's ahead of you but you know that despite all the ups and downs and unexpected turns to come, you're in for one thrilling ride.
So to Bob, the random dude at Toy Fair with the smile etched on his face and the dream so tantalizingly close to his fingertips, I say good luck. The world got where it is because people like you followed your dreams. Every great accomplishment in the history of human kind got its start when someone went from dreaming to doing.
And to all the rest who have that million dollar idea tucked in the closet, I hope to see you there next year...
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