Ben Varadi is a master of child’s play.
The 39-year-old spends most of his days testing, promoting and gabbing about toys.
He teamed up with partners Ronnen Harary and Anton Rabie to create the Toronto-based toy company Spin Master. Now the third-largest toy company in North America, Spin Master is known for such popular brands as Bakugan Battle Brawlers and Air Hogs.
Spin Master recently released a new line of fashion dolls that is shaking things up in the doll aisle. Liv Fashion Dolls are proving popular this holiday season.
“We saw an opportunity in what we believed was a lagging segment, and went for it,” Varadi said. “And when we go for something, we go for it hard.”
Spin Master is known for entrepreneurial aggressiveness. Varadi took time to tell us more about it.
Q. How’s it going, Ben?
A. You know I’ve been to your part of the world before. I’ve been to Ogallala, Neb. In 1989 I was 19 years old, and a bunch of us rode in a van from Toronto down to San Diego. We stayed overnight in Ogallala.
Q. Were you in a band?
A. No, it was just a fun road trip. I do remember the people were really nice.
Q. Tell me about your background.
A. No one ever plans to be in the toy industry. It’s just something that totally and utterly happened by happenstance. I was going to business school and didn’t know what I was going to do after I graduated. I was turned down for all of the corporate jobs. I interviewed with consultant companies, and they all said no. They said I was too unorthodox. I mean isn’t that what you’re supposed to be in advertising?
Q. So what did you do?
A. A couple of my friends (Harary and Rabie) were starting a business, so I joined them. About a week later, the three of us started to make this novelty product called Earth Buddies.
Q. What’s an Earth Buddy?
A. It’s basically hosiery with sawdust and grass seed inside, and it’s shaped like a face. When you put water inside, it grows grass for hair. It was a total novelty. We worked really hard on the Mother’s Day of 1994. I was standing on a street corner selling them. By December of that year, we sold 2 million. The thing was pretty much done. It all happened fast like a really bad movie.
Q. What do you mean?
A. Earth Buddies did great for nine or 10 months, and then it was over. We had to decide, what are we going to do next? Some of the retailers we were selling our product to were toy retailers. They started asking, “What’s next?” We didn’t know what we were doing. At one point, we were making tomato starter kits for growing tomatoes in your garden faster.
Q. What changed?
A. We stumbled on this thing called “Devilsticks,” which was a juggling toy that people had used for years. We made a few changes to it and launched it. That was kind of successful. After that we kept coming up with more toys.
Q. Did you ever enlist help from anyone in the toy industry?
A. We heard there were toy inventors — people who did this for a living. I was reading a toy trade magazine and saw a listing of toy inventors, so I started calling them. We looked at their products, and that’s how we started. No one really knew who we were until (about 10 years ago) when we developed this plane called “Air Hogs.” That plane nearly sunk the company because we took every penny we had and sunk it into that one product.
Q. Why did you invest in Air Hogs?
A. I took the product home to play with it. I had this huge fear that this thing would fly out into a street and a kid would get hit and killed. I was flying this thing by a schoolyard, and this kid came up to me. He asked me where I got it.
“Toys R Us,” I said.
“No, you didn’t,” he said. “That’s a toy of the future.”
So we ended up doing it. That one product put us on the map.
Q. How difficult is it for a new toy company to break into the industry?
A. The hardest thing for Spin Master was we didn’t have a brand. Mattel has been out there doing this for 50 years. They have Polly Pocket and Barbie. Hasbro has Monopoly and Littlest Pet Shop. These toys and games have been around for 30, 40 or 50 years. We didn’t have anything. We always had to start from scratch. We learned very quickly the only way we were going to survive is to simply stay in the game and not do anything stupid to sink the company.
Q. What’s something stupid?
A. Stupid is taking a bigger risk than what we could afford, like buying too much inventory. Spending too much money on marketing when your product isn’t selling enough. A bad recall. There are so many things that can go wrong. In the 15 years I’ve been in the toy industry, there’s been a lot of consolidation. Today we’re the third-largest toy company, and we used to be a flea on a horse’s (bum). A lot of companies have either gone under or consolidated. Even the retailers like Noodle Cadoodle and Zany Brainy.
Q. What makes Spin Master different?
A. Finding great items. We’ve really prided ourselves in working with inventors. We love taking a product from absolute spit and gum to the shelves. It’s been hard, and we’ve had our share of failures, but we’ve really learned. Now that we have brands — Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Tech Deck (finger skateboards), Flix Trix BMX collectibles and Liv Fashion Dolls — it’s really helped us to take a product from an inventor and make it happen.
Contact the writer:
444-1075, j.loza@owh.com
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