Burn, babay, BURN

Entrepreneur,  June, 2000  

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Prior to the product's U.S. release, the founders asked their families to evaluate the toys--and were encouraged by what they found. "My 91-year-old grandmother was visiting, and there really isn't too much she can do with my kids except read to them and hang out," says Harris, father of 6- and 8-year-old daughters. "We were sitting there with the Crazy Bones, and she got some and started showing them games that she remembered playing when she was a little girl 80 years ago. When I saw my grandmother playing with a toy with my kids, I knew we had a winner."

Harris isn't the only one who thinks so. After more than a year of aggressively marketing its product to McDonald's, Toy Craze got the news every toy company wants to hear--in the fourth quarter of 2000, its product will be packaged inside Happy Meals, and about 840 different Crazy Bones toys will be offered through McDonald's.

"In the toy business, this is one of the biggest things that can happen to you," says Harris, who points out that McDonald's usually teams up with large corporations and movie studios for Happy Meal promotions. "For them to do something with a small entrepreneurial company is a very significant event."

This year, the company expects to nearly double sales to $30 million. With the McDonald's deal and fans joining Crazy Bones clubs and visiting the company's Web site (www.crazybones.com) to share new game and character ideas with each other and the company, it seems this craze is just getting started.

"There's nothing complicated about [Crazy Bones]," Harris explains, "and you don't need to spend a lot of money--you can buy a pack of Crazy Bones for $2 and you're in the game."

Devlin Smith

flight CLUB

Seth Hall is grinning from ear to ear--or, in his case, nose to tail. In three short years, the 28-year-old president has made his Houston company, Source One Spares Inc. (No. 7 in our list), a global phenomenon. Source One Spares, distributing overhauled aircraft components, grossed $37.7 million in 1999 alone. With a 100,000-square-foot facility located at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport and offices in Dallas; Hong Kong; London; Los Angeles; and Tulsa, Oklahoma; the company shows no sign of slowing.

While in college, Hall worked for a small company that repaired airplane parts. Right away he noticed it took anywhere from 30 to 90 days to repair a part. "If you're an airplane operator, you can't wait that long for your part--you have to have a spare," he says. So, while in graduate school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Hall devised a plan that proposed putting overhauled parts on a shelf and then exchanging them when another part comes in.

In other words, "If American Airlines needs a part right away, we send our overhauled component to them and they send us their damaged component, which we [fix]. We end up with an overhauled part back in our inventory, and they pay us an exchange fee, plus the price for fixing the part," Hall says. This way, Hall constantly turns over inventory and turns profits.