|
Sunday, 08 February 2009 23:23 |
Posted February 9, 2009
These are tough economic times. But good times follow bad, as surely as day follows night - in life and in business. We have known both on more than one occasion. In our early years we rode high on the back-to-back successes of Milton Bradley’s Fireball Island, (now considered a cult classic, I was informed recently), Baby Sip n Slurp, Vac Man, and our Luminator light-up sports balls. Each sold millions of units, and every year we doubled our revenues. Future was so bright we had to wear shades. I thought it would go up and up forever…….until it didn’t. We soon began a multi-year slide down the bell curve, which we barely survived.
The secret of success is never quitting. The secret of staying in business is staying in business. Persistence. To paraphrase Rocky in his last movie, "it’s not how hard you can hit, but how many times you can get hit, and get back up.” Persistence overcomes all things. Oh, and overnight success takes 20 years!
When we hit bottom the first time, we quit thinking about how good we were, how successful, how clever and how inventive we were, we quit thinking that toy companies were idiots for not licensing our products. Instead, we started focusing on creating better products that the companies we work with actually wanted, and doing less of what we just felt like creating.
We were not artists, trying to please ourselves, but in business providing a product that was the answer to someone’s need. It felt like turning around a big ship at sea, and turning our ship around took a few years. But we turned it around, we created better products, and we began to enjoy greater success once more.
Steve D’Aguanno at Hasbro gave me some of the best advice I ever received, that “if we didn’t start showing him the kinds of products Hasbro was looking for, they were going to quit meeting with us.” Hard words to hear, but unvarnished truth is a rare and precious thing. I took it to heart.
Tough times require persistence, perspiration, determination, introspection, hard thinking and hard work. We will come out of this doing better product once more, than ever before, or die trying.
Opportunity rides the dangerous wind.
 |
|
Bruce Lund, Founder
Lund and Company Invention, L.L.C.
Blog Archive
|
Subscribe to this comment's feed
