Blog May 2009
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Friday, 29 May 2009 07:12 |
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Posted May 29, 2009
How to use a barometer: As you may recall from our tantalizing tale from yesterday . . . The star student taking his final exam in physics went on to explain to his teacher the reason for his being stuck on one of the problems that had to do with determining the height of a tall building using a barometer. There are so many answers he explained, that I don’t know which to use. “I could take the barometer to the top of the building and drop it off, timing how long it takes to hit the ground, and thereby calculate the height of the building.” “Or I could tie a string to the barometer and let it down to the sidewalk from the top of the building, bring it back up, and measure the length of the string to detemine the building's height.” Now that is imaginative thinking. By looking at a problem upside down, from the bottom or sideways, we can come up with new solutions that would not occur to us otherwise. |
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 06:08 |
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Posted May 28, 2009 Hello again. I would like to share with you one of my favorite illustrations on one of my favorite topics: the nature of creativity, or more accurately, on imaginative thinking. (As an aside, I think the distinction between the two is worth noting. Creativity is the practice of creating, or bringing something into being, and often involves tangible skills. Imagination is the conceiving of what to create, prior to using one's creative skills to realize what the imagination has envisioned.) There was a final examination in Physics class, and the teacher observed that the his best student seemed to be stuck, scratching his head, playing with his pencil, and looking up, so he walked over to inquire what it was that had him perplexed. The problem he was stuck on had to do with determining the height of a tall building using a barometer. The teacher inquired what his best student was thinking of, if not the obvious answer of using it to measure the difference in barometric pressure at the top and bottom of the building and calculating from there. Well, the young scholar replied, there are so many answers, so many ways to use the barometer that I don’t know which to choose. |
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Wednesday, 27 May 2009 06:21 |
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Posted May 27, 2009
On survival and renewal.
I vividly recall another near-death experience in business. Years ago I called the Lund and Company team together to announce we were closing down the company. We were hemorrhaging cash and I didn’t want to die broke. But after a weekend of contemplating my future, dreaming of renting boats on Florida’s Intercoastal waterway or some other low-stress semi retirement occupation, and some intense consultation with a business colleague, I came back to work on Monday. I recommitted to keeping the doors open and surviving. We had a draconian strategy to cut the staff by 50% and costs across the board by 25% or more. There was a lot of pain, but excitement as well. I felt refreshed and energized again. I was going back to work because I chose to and not because it was my habit to do it day after day. That changed my approach to my work and changed the kind of results we achieved. Our best days came years later. Quitting, closing the company, if only in my imagination over one weekend had the effect of lifting a great weight from my shoulders, and I returned to my life’s work reenergized. I have been grateful for that ever since. |
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Friday, 22 May 2009 12:17 |
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Posted May 22, 2009
A close call.....
Cathleen and I drove a hundred miles across the deserts of west Texas to put her little aluminum canoe into the Rio Grande River above the canyons. At a little desert town, seemed more a ghost town, we began our 3 day adventure, not knowing that a cloudburst upriver had swollen the normally lazy, tranquil waters of the Rio. As we entered the canyons we were struck by how fast the river was flowing. And none of it looked familiar. We had seen many photos of the interior of the canyon at the ranger station just that morning.
Neither did we know that the waters in the canyon can rise 50’ in an hour, as the river is squeezed between the rock walls of these towering cliffs. Now, rocks the size of a garage that we would have otherwise paddled around, were submerged, and the river pouring over such a large rock forms an hydraulic on the other side. Think of it as a wet black hole, into which everything in its path gets sucked down into.
What looked like an improbable shadow in the river ahead, was actually this gaping maw, a steep walled hole wider than the length of our canoe, that I actually thought we might jump across we were moving so fast. I remember it vividly, almost in slow motion the canoe tipped sideways as it dove into the blackness, the belly of the beast.
Then it was like being in a washing machine full of brown water, around and around, not knowing up or down, and thus not knowing what to do, where to swim, banging on the bottom of the river. No idea of how to save yourself, you begin to accept this might be the end.
But an hydraulic sooner or later pops back up and out everything that goes down into it, and it popped us back out as well. We survived that adventure, but only barely. The Park Rangers on hearing of the downpour up river, had already set out to intercept us if possible before we got into the river. They followed us by raft, looking for our bodies, they said. But, like a pair of near drowned rats, we were rescued just as darkness fell, and lived to tell the tale. |
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Wednesday, 20 May 2009 06:26 |
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Posted May 20, 2009 Genius! Pure Genius. Now everyone loves a good deal, and ‘free’ is hard to pass up. So the City of San Antonio Texas hired Cathleen McGuire's aunt to do aerial photography for them. From the photographs she took, she deduced the direction of future development, and, as San Antonio was a growing city, she figured that if she bought property where the development was planned, it would go up in value. And she was right. Cathleen's aunt became a millionaire from her real estate investments. That is genius. This spurred on my friend Cathleen even more - she had to become rich. She figured the way to do that was to become a lawyer, and off to law school in San Diego she drove one June back in ’77. She just started taking classes, and when they discovered she was not a student, they enrolled her. She later founded a fishery in the Pacific Northwest, was a slumlord (by her description), and when she died she was in the process of founding an airline. She was relentless, she was without fear, she was full of ideas, and energy, laughter and sarcasm. She was one remarkable human being, and I will always miss her. As Cathleen was driving to San Diego that summer to attend law school, and I was going to California to visit with a good friend, we shared the trip part of the way, and along the way we planned to canoe the canyons of the Rio Grande River, in Big Bend National Park. These canyons are 15 or more miles long, and 1500’ deep or more in some places, with sheer walls that rise straight up from the water. The sky above is a narrow ribbon of blue when you are in the canyons, Bouquias, Santa Elena, and one other. We were going to take several days and do three of the canyons by canoe. We told the park rangers of our plan and struck out for the put-in place at the head of the three canyons, many miles across the desert . . . |
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 06:21 |
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Posted May 19, 2009 I have known some remarkably creative people in my life.
One who comes to mind is my dear, departed friend Cathleen McGuire, who lived in an apartment she affectionately called ‘The Hovel’ behind the garage wherein I had my leather shop in San Antonio. A feisty Irish lass with a raw, wicked, irreverent sense of humor that would make me wince, she was a person who knew no fear. You don’t meet many who are fearless, but she was one. Talk about thinking out of the box. For her there was no box. She couldn’t see any box or any limitations in the world at all. Boxes didn’t stand a chance against her. When she wanted to go to graduate school, Cathleen just went. She started attending classes, got good grades, and at mid-semester the university discovered she was not enrolled, and had never even applied to be a student. They enrolled her immediately. Her dream was to be rich and she was bound and determined to be just that. She and her aunt came up with scheme after scheme to make money. Some of them worked famously, as you will learn, and others bordered on the ridiculous. But Cathleen had nerve and non-stop ideas. One such money-making scheme was smuggling onyx chess sets and wrought iron furniture in from Mexico (**rambling aside** I have always admired smugglers and magicians for their never ending creative solutions to concealment and misdirection.) in a rented cement truck! Whatever did the customs officers think when two youngish women crossed the border from Mexico into the US in a cement truck, in which they had stuffed the cement barrel with contraband? I wish I had been there to see it. It was a fascinating plan, worthy of Ralph Kramden of the Honeymooners. But wait, there’s more! Cathleen’s aunt had a plan years later. (I sure would like to meet her one day.) She offered the city of San Antonio aerial photography services, for free! |
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Monday, 18 May 2009 06:24 |
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Posted May 18, 2009
Support the TIA now!
These are dangerous and uncertain times for toy companies, especially the smaller ones. As the pace of change accelerates, we must be able to adapt more quickly. We need all toy industry participants, all who benefit from the selling of toys, to contribute to the effort. Don’t leave it to the Toy Industry Association to do all the heavy lifting for us. If you are not a member, join now, to support them in protecting all of our interests who are in the toy industry. They may have once been only a trade show organizer, but the TIA has become a full-fledged industry advocate for me, and you, and you, and yes, you too!
The TIA is working on your behalf, and they need your financial support to do the work. The TIA is a relatively small trade organization with a modest budget and supported by only a fraction of the toy companies whose businesses they are now working to protect. They operated at a deficit last year in an attempt to do the most good, and stave off as much damage to the industry and all of our interests as they could. The TIA needs us all now! And we all need the TIA now.
We need to act as one to protect our wonderful industry and our opportunities to bring fantastic, fun, inspirational, and educational new products to market.
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Friday, 15 May 2009 07:32 |
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Posted May 15, 2009
“For want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, the king was lost. For want of the King, the battle was lost . . . and on it goes.” -- Another of my mother’s pithy sayings. At the Toycon in Phoenix we learned the early tally of the costs of the CPSCIA legislation for the toy industry alone. Two billion dollars have been lost in 2008 as a result, and this in an industry that by various reckonings is only $15-$20 billion in the US in total. And this does not include $100 million in juvenile motorcycles and ATVs that cannot be sold or given away, and the list goes on across book, apparel, and other children's product categories. The losses will continue. Congress had no intention of wreaking such havoc on our industries, but havoc they have wreaked. One industry leader that deserves our appreciation and support is Chicago-based Learning Resources. Their chairman Rick Woldenburg, along with Etienne Veber, are leading, advocating, and organizing to ameliorate the more onerous effects of this legislation. And to their credit, the TIA has stepped to the plate to argue for reason and ration in the application and enforcement of these new standards. With perhaps 250 state laws proposed and in process in state legislatures around the country, the possibility of a patchwork quilt of toy safety standards and requirements that vary with each state is an untenable business environment. |
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 06:16 |
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Posted May 14, 2009 Today is 8th grade career day, and boy am I nervous. Here are more of the questions for the day. Would you mind if I practiced my answers on you? A. What are the main responsibilities/duties of this job? “Make sh*t and sell it!” has been the mantra of my life since my early days in the leather business. Short, sweet, to the point. (Please pardon my French, but I do think that 4-letter words can add to the variety, the richness, and the impact of language when used with some moderation.) Today my job is more to: i. figure out what to make; ii. guide others in the making of things, and; iii. Go out and sell them. "Nothing happens until someone sells something." (from IBM ) B. What skills or academic preparation do you need to perform this job successfully? As an inventor an intuitive understanding of the natural world is useful so as to not waste time fighting natural laws of gravity, magnetics, friction etc. Mine is a science background, and analytic thought, experimentation and the scientific method are very useful at times. We have evolved from inventing toys and games to developing technologies that have cross-platform (like that high falutin’ term, do ya?) applications. Which is to say, we develop technologies that can be used in many types of toys, games, novelties, etc. C. What subjects in school helps in performing your job? Learning to draw and depict mechanisms is very useful. I wish I were better at it. Industrial/product design was my route to becoming an inventor, and that variety of drawing, building and thinking skills have been a good background for invention of the sort of low tech product that we create. D. Is there one basic Rule-of-Thumb you use to ensure your success? Don’t EVER give up! Believe that what others may think impossible, may be possible and worth doing. E. Explain how you arrived at this job. Just lucky. I wanted to be an inventor, hadn’t yet finished my Industrial Design degree, wasn’t a very good industrial designer anyway, and couldn’t get a job anywhere until someone suggested I go to the toy designers, Marvin Glass and Associates. They hired me. F. How does your job or profession help individuals, society, or the community? Toys are the most important form of product because toys inspire the work we do as adults, and as adults we change the world. G. What advice would you give someone coming into your field? Run, don’t walk away. Inventing and licensing is speculative and can be very frustrating. This is the last thing in the world most people would want to be doing, BUT, for a very select few, it is the only thing in the world they should be doing.
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Wednesday, 13 May 2009 07:49 |
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Posted May 13, 2009 Tomorrow is 8th grade Career Day. While the business of surviving in troubling times can be all-consuming, there are some things we need to make time for, such as sharing with the students at our local middle school just a few blocks away. The questions and issues they want to address are profound. I wish I had a chance to discuss these things when I was in school. Here are some of the thought provoking topics: 1. Hard work pays off. Absolutely. Just like buying lottery tickets. More work, more results, more chances to win. 2. There are many, many professions to choose from. 3. Within every profession, there are many other job opportunities. 'Toy designer' is a catchall term that covers inventors like ourselves, as well as illustrators, those who do the industrial design of toys, and others. There are many types of toy designers with many areas of specialty. Some do just games, or even just adult games, others primarily dolls. 4. Making a living is important but finding an enjoyable profession will “make a life.” Steve Jobs' now legendary commencement address focused on this subject of ‘find something you love’ and do it. I am of the belief that you can only be truly great at something you love, and to be truly great is both a worthwhile goal, and in fact our obligation. To do less is to waste the gifts we have been given. I consider it a great privilege to be asked and to be able to share my life and my work experience with these students. Each of us has much to share that others might benefit from, if only we are given the platform, and an audience that wishes to hear what we have to share.
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Monday, 11 May 2009 09:35 |
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Posted May 11, 2009 On the reinvention of our business. The only thing constant is change itself. I am just back from Toycon in Phoenix, our industry confab where leaders of companies large and small learn about their own industry from the perspective of the likes of Walmart buyers, industry-wide data providers, and others. We also listen to speakers that question our assumptions, motivate and initiate profound questions about toys and what it means to be a toy company in today's ever-changing and challenging environment. It was very thought provoking. We were inspired by a presentation by Kevin Carrol, whose life was ‘saved’ by play and has written a number of books on the power of play in our lives, about the Red Rubber Ball as the metaphor for play. Collectively, we were challenged to make a ‘Paradigm shift’ in our thinking by Dr. Anat Lechner. Just as IBM shifted the paradigm of their business and sold off their computer business to Lenovo to become an information technology provider, perhaps we are play providers more than just makers of toys. But what would that look like for my or your company? As individual companies and as an industry we are under great pressure from falling average retail prices, falling numbers of units sold, shrinking shelf space, and increasing competition from other sources of kids play and entertainment like video games, iphone apps, and more. We were updated on the continuing threats posed by the product safety standards that are under consideration in many states, as well as at the federal level, with well over 200 bills now under consideration in state legislations around the country. It would be near impossible for the toy industry to adapt to the many and varied requirements that these laws would impose state by state. It would be hilarious, were they not to have such profound negative consequences if passed. To survive and thrive through these changes and challenges is by no means certain.
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 12:57 |
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Posted May 8, 2009 Hasbro is an entertainment company that makes toys and movies. Hasbro 2.0 is the new model of what a toy company can be, or perhaps the new model of what an entertainment company can be. They are no longer a toy company. They have gotten into the movie making business based on Transformers, GI Joe, and other properties they own, and are starting their own cable TV channel, as well. They are not looking to inventors like us for new lines of products. In general, they don’t need and don’t want new lines. Thankfully, they need new items to fill their existing lines, but those are smaller opportunities, and these fillers will be replaced yearly. Certainly this must mean opportunity for smaller toy companies who will find a new type of product to break into the marketplace, perhaps grow, and if successful, be acquired by one of the big toy companies, who became big largely by acquiring many smaller companies. This will not be the future of the toy industry, as this model cannot be adopted by many other toy companies, not having the established brand entities on which to build an entertainment empire. But it will have an impact on other toy companies and the industry as a whole. The toy business has always been one of fad and fashion, a leader in bringing new technology to consumer products, marked by a high level of innovation and product turnover. It has always been an exciting industry. But change is certainly afoot, and change brings opportunity. Opportunity riding the dangerous wind. Perhaps we are no longer the Toy Industry at all, but the “Children’s consumer entertainment product” industry. It is time to look at redefining who we are and what we are in the context of society. We do not want to be the turn-of-the-century buggy whip makers missing an opportunity by failing to define ourselves in broad enough terms. |
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 12:50 |
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Posted May 7, 2009 On Roller Coaster Toy Companies The roller coaster ups and downs of toy companies results in very profitable years and years of great losses - high stock prices followed by low stock prices. Naturally, some investors do not like that. I imagine that large and highly desireable institutional investors would not like that. Whether wise or no, I don’t invest in toy stocks because of that volatility and because I am already invested up to my ears in the toy industry in other ways. Toy company executives have traditionally made money through salaries and bonuses, but Hasbro management has found that they can make more money on the valuation of their company stock and options. Their goal is to maximize shareholder value for all stock holders and to maximize their own personal incomes - to create a stable stock price without the wild swings and fluctuations of the past, with a steady upward trend, and in do doing, attracting investors who might otherwise not be interested in a toy company stock. To accomplish this they are managing their product lines more like a consumer product company like Procter and Gamble, where product lines live forever. Lines like Transformers, Star Wars, My Little Pony and others that have come and gone in the past, are now being managed as brands with the goal to remain on the market growing steadily year on year, forever. Smart, very smart. But just a little boring. This has some profound implications for us and our business, no doubt. I wish I knew what they are. |
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 12:43 |
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Posted May 6, 2009 Hasbro is not a toy company. At least not in the traditional sense of a toy company. In modern history, during my thirty or so years of experience, toy companies were often described as having a ‘roller coaster’ business pattern, with great successes followed by equally severe downturns. Indeed, it seemed to me over the years that a great success always led to a company’s downfall shortly thereafter. Time and again a company with a mega hit would be on their knees only a couple of years later. Tonka had Pound Puppies and within years was gone. Kenner had Star Wars and then they were gone. Galoob had Micro Machines and then they were gone. Mattel had Masters of the Universe and within a couple years even they were on the ropes. Coleco had Cabbage Patch Kids and vanished soon thereafter. Schaper had Stompers, Ideal had the Rubick's Cube, and poof!, they were gone. The examples go on and on. Why does this happen, how does this happen again and again? I am sure this is the subject of business school lectures and texts. Toy companies introduce items and lines that last a season or two, or three, and are replaced by new products on a regular basis. With the exception of evergreen, classic brands, like Hot Wheels, Barbie, and a few others, this has been the toy industry way. |
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 06:02 |
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Posted May 5, 2009 On defining ourselves If we were a buggy whip manufacturer in the early 1900’s, at the dawn of the age of the automobile, and if we defined ourselves as a buggy whip company, we would likely be out of business today. However, if we were a buggy whip maker and defined ourselves as a supplier to the transportation industry, we might have been able to adapt to the changes in transportation, and survive. Fisher Body once made buggy and carriage bodies, and then transformed themselves to make automobile bodies. We once defined ourselves as toy designers, and then changed our name to Lund and Company Invention, and our self-image along with it, to reflect that we invent, rather than just design. Invention is more technological, resulting in patentable features, while design is more aesthetic and marketing focused. Changing our name and our self-definition has made us better at what we do. As the industry changes now, and as we ourselves have changed, we still ponder what is it that we do. How do we define and redefine ourselves, so that we can adapt, survive and thrive in the changing toy industry? During the first week of May I will be at the Toycon in Phoenix; a confab of industry executives to discuss the industry today and its future. I hope to come back with some insights on this very question. |
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Monday, 04 May 2009 06:07 |
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Posted May 4,2009 “You got to serve somebody.” --Bob Dylan For me, life and the work that we do is about service. I seek to serve my family and those close to me, and through our work creating new toys, games, and technologies, to serve children and their families around the world. And through service to man, serve God. For me, to serve others is the greatest gift; to serve my friends, especially in their times of need, to serve my children and family, to serve my amazing colleagues at Lund and Company, and to serve the children of the world through the fruits of our thoughts and labor. To serve them all gives meaning to life. A former associate and talented designer, Bret, has served in the Army National Guard for almost 20 years. We cannot thank those in the armed forces enough for their service to our country and to us. My personal service goal is to enrich the lives of others through the products that we invent and license, and beyond that to inspire others through play. I believe that some children will be so fascinated by our products, that it will influence what they do as adults and encourage them to become engineers, inventors, artists, scientists, doctors or pursue some other line of work in which they will make a contribution to the world and benefit others. It will have all started with a toy, one of our creations. Toys delight, entertain, educate and inspire, and by those means, toys have and continue to change the world. Toys make a difference.
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Friday, 01 May 2009 05:56 |
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Posted May 1, 2009 Invisible need and hunger in America I heard an ad on the radio last week that very powerfully illustrated the heartbreaking statistic that one in eight people in America(!) suffer from hunger. Not just the few homeless we see, but people we interact with every day. Our Neighbors, people who work at businesses we patronize, children who go to school with our own children. One in eight Americans suffering hunger! Even just recently a friend was telling me that as a child her daddy would watch the family eat and then collect any leftovers from the table for his own meal. Yesterday I had the chance to ride with a volunteer delivering Meals on Wheels to those in need. As we drove through suburban neighborhoods, to suburban houses, they made deliveries to homes wherein I would never expect people suffered from hunger. These were decent homes, with grass nicely cut, in middle class neighborhoods. And here lurks hunger. I was shocked to see first-hand that there is hunger all around us. I was humbled by the service of individuals and organizations who dedicate their time, the use of their car, and their lives to the service of others' needs - to alleviate hunger within their communities. God Bless them for their selflessness. One in Eight people in America hungry; hunger in our neighborhoods, in our schools, local businesses, everywhere. Whatever are we going to do about that? |
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Bruce Lund, Founder
Lund and Company Invention, L.L.C.
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