Toy Fair a learning experience

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 3, 2003 by Joyce M. Rosenberg AP business writer

NEW YORK -- Most of the manufacturers at this year's Toy Fair weren't big names like Mattel and Hasbro -- they were businesses like Kids Corral, Ooz and Oz and Playhard.

Most of the 1,500 participants at the toy industry's big trade show were small companies aiming to build their businesses, rather than big concerns out to take over the market with the next Cabbage Patch Kid or Talking Elmo.

Jeff Scott's company, Playhard Inc., went to Toy Fair with Flashflight, a flying disc that lights up. It was the Boulder, Colo., firm's first visit to the show, and Scott said, "We had a great success."

Scott said Playhard got several orders, but more important, he and his co-owners got some solid advice about areas such as packaging, pricing and marketing from retailers who stopped by their booth.

For him, the best part of Toy Fair was "having those professionals take us under their wing and provide us with information, saying, 'Jeff, this is where you need to go with it.' "

Kids Corral, which takes parents' ideas for toys and games and markets them, had a similar approach.

"It was not a situation where we wanted to come out and sell a lot of products," company President Morgan Reynolds said. "We got a chance to meet quite a few people and explain who we were and meet a lot of store owners. It was very educational for us, and that's what we wanted it to be."

Reynolds said his New York-based company didn't even take order forms to Toy Fair, but will follow up with the contacts it made.

Kids Corral's approach is one recommended for any small company attending a trade show -- it's more important to make contacts and get feedback on products and services than it is to write orders. And many companies that go to Toy Fair as prospective customers aren't looking to order merchandise on the exhibition floor; deals are often firmed up weeks or months later.

A more well-established firm, Universal Games, went to Toy Fair hoping to introduce an extension of a product line it has already sold to retailers including Toys R Us. The company, which sells miniature racing cars, put together a track that the cars can run on.

Val Brost, one of the firm's owners, said the Micro R/C Raceway was well-received. So were the educational board games, which tend to be bought by museum and gift stores.

Going to a trade show can be an expensive proposition, between travel and booth rental, and hiring publicists runs up the cost. Brost said going to Toy Fair cost his Auburn, Calif., company $10,000, but because this is the one show Universal attends, it's a worthwhile investment.

Myrna Hoffman, owner of Annandale, Va.-based Ooz & Oz Inc., was disappointed at Toy Fair as logistical problems, including bad weather and a less-than-optimum location for her booth, depressed the amount of visitor traffic she got. But she's not giving up: "I will probably be there next year."

In the meantime, she'll visit other trade shows, because she's gotten good feedback on her products, art kits and party games. "People over the year have said, 'It's such a good product, please don't let it go,' " she said.

Eric Poses considered not making his sixth trip to Toy Fair -- he's had great success by driving from one retailer to another to show the games made by his Santa Monica, Calif.-based company, All Things Equal Inc. But he did go, getting a booth in an exhibition area devoted to game manufacturers, and exceeded his low expectations.

The location helped -- his games, including Loaded Questions and Arbitration, were visible and retailers specifically looking for him found him easily. He ended up with oral commitments from big retailers. --

WizKids, a maker of boys' games based in Bellevue, Wash., found that preparation can help turn a trade show into a success for a small company. WizKids set up appointments with customers and the media in advance of Toy Fair, and ended up with 142 meetings in six days, executive vice president Martin Stever said.

The company was introducing Shadow Run and Creepy Freaks, two new games, and with all the appointments it made, found visitors to its showroom more enthusiastic than WizKids executives expected.

"We wouldn't have believed before the show started how big it got to be," Stever said.