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Making money making toys: how black inventors are bringing innovative ideas to the toy market - includes related articles on product invention rights, licensing brokers and information services - B.E. Report on Small Business

Black Enterprise, Nov, 1993 by Caryne Brown

How black inventors are bringing innovative ideas to the toy market.

Successful Inventors Stubbornly Refuse to Accept Defeat. Nobody knows that better than Bill Becoat, who was laughed out of every major bike maker's headquarters in the country when he showed up with his two-wheel-drive bicycle. Conventional wisdom in the trade had always been that two-wheel-drive bikes were a ridiculous and impractical idea. "I went to Roadmaster and Schwinn," Becoat recalls. "I was told to go to Huffy. I sent fliers to different bike companies - GT, Diamondback - and it was always the same. it won't work, they said. And if it looked feasible, they said it would cost $250,000 or $600,000 to develop. Well, they weren't wrong; it did cost an arm and a leg. But they were close-minded."

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Becoat had the last laugh. These days, the media are touting Becoat's two-wheel-drive design as the most important bicycle innovation in decades.

Ideas abound. Every year, some 90,000 new industrial and consumer products are in various stages of production and marketing, according to the U.S. Patent Office. Toys and games alone account for between $4.5 billion and $6 billion in American manufacturing output a year, according to Census Bureau figures. In 1992, individuals accounted for 25,237 issued patents, while corporations accounted for 82,296.

But the market can't absorb that many new ideas, and an estimated 95% of all new products fail. In part, this reflects the way many new products come about. individual inventors often work outside corporate structures, have limited product-development funds and are unfamiliar with industry standards and practices.

Unfortunately, within the business world, the inventor isn't usually recognized as a genius but often stereotyped as an idiot or nut, explains Bobby Toole, president of United Inventors Association of the USA in St Louis, Mo., an umbrella group for individual inventor networking groups around the country. "The inventor doesn't have a good reputation because corporations want to take credit for good ideas. Overcoming that is one of the biggest problems we have."

Pistol Packing

No one could mistake Lonnie Johnson for a crackpot tinkerer. The Atlanta toy inventor knew he had something special when he let his children play with the pump-and-nozzle apparatus he had fashioned. "The other kids in the neighborhood," he says, "just had regular water pistols."

Johnson first got the idea for the Super Soaker in 1982, while he was still in the Air Force. "I was experimenting with inventions that used water instead of Freon as a refrigeration fluid," he recalls. "As I was shooting water through a high-pressure nozzle into the bathtub, I thought that it would make a neat water pistol. From that point, it was an engineering problem."

In March 1989, Johnson visited the Larami Corp. booth at the American International Toy Fair held at New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. But, he was in a wary mood for deal-making, bringing with him a history of disappointing ventures with manufacturers who had licensed his previous ideas. "I didn't have a nondisclosure agreement with me," he recalls, "so I talked very superficially. I just said I had an idea for a new type of water gun and asked if they would be interested."

Philadelphia-based Larami was interested and agreed to a meeting. A guarded Johnson showed up carrying a battered pink Samsonite suitcase. He walked into the room, opened the suitcase, and pulled out the prototype - a handheld pump apparatus of PVC tubing, Plexiglas and plastic soda bottles. A split second later, he fired a giant stream of water across the room.

The reaction was dramatic. Larami's president, Myung Song, had just one word: "Wow!"

A year later, Super Soaker was the most popular water gun in American retail history, with presales of $100,000. By 1993, 27 million units - some models retailing for more than $50 - would be sold.

The success of Super Soaker and similar products prove that individual inventors can make very good money indeed on an idea - if they are persistent and wise in their business decisions. But it's not easy. Those who go it alone often must rely on life savings or a second mortgage to protect and finance the birth of their brainchild. On the other hand, inventors who are willing to trade their independence for the funding and support of a corporation may find themselves shut out. Major toy companies, highly suspicious of industrial espionage, are virtually closed to outsiders. Many good ideas never get beyond the planning stage because their creators can't come in from the cold.

Not always, though. Johnson credits the enthusiasm of Larami's CEO with the licensing deal he made for Super Soaker. "I made a presentation and captured his imagination," Johnson says, "and the rest is history. The top people in an industry know their market, and if they see value in something, they will make it happen."

Challenges Inventors Face

Black inventors have historically been overlooked and shortchanged. Traffic lights, asphalt paving, automated shoemaking, blood banks: 20th-century life would be inconceivable without them, and they were all invented by African-Americans. But black inventors often had to sell or license their patents to white-owned companies at a financial loss. And such institutional racism persists. "People don't want to deal with women, don't want to deal with blacks," says Toole. "The doors don't open as widely for black inventors as for other members of society."

Making money making toys: how black inventors are bringing innovative ideas to the toy market - includes related articles on product invention rights, licensing brokers and information services - B.E. Report on Small Business

Black Enterprise, Nov, 1993 by Caryne Brown

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