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Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

childsown.com

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Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#71

Post by liedra »

DanielStraight wrote: post #30
plainOldText wrote: post #12

This is a cute idea. I'm wondering if they make any money since on their website it says: "Child's Own Studio has custom made over 200 personal softies". I'm thinking whether a redesign of their website and a more aggressive Facebook campaign (they only have 1000+ fans) would help them sell more. It probably would. No. It definitely would. They could also have a checkbox on the order form to allow other people to ord…

You might be able to make something based on this idea a phenomenon, but if all your suggestions were followed, the result would not be this at all. First of all, who is they? It seems like this is an individual woman. That's part of the appeal, that this isn't a mass market product, but a work of love made by a real person for a real person. The uniqueness of the toy is part of the appeal as well. If other people or…

You're absolutely right. I used to hand-knit hats to a particular nerdy gamer theme, and was very quickly overwhelmed with orders (even at US$65/hat, which is a lot for a knit beanie!).

I had to institute a "slot" system where I'd open up orders for a short time, get a bunch, then knit my way through them. Once they'd all been shipped out, I'd open up for more orders (if I wasn't sick of knitting the damned things by that stage ;). It worked pretty well and kept me in pocket money through the last stages of my PhD.

One thing I decided was that I'd never compromise in quality - I used very fine wools (malabrigo for those who know) and each hat was made to order from a "menu" of options. Throughout the process I'd keep the customer up to date on what I was doing and where they were in the "queue".

It worked really well, but I wouldn't want to do it for a living since I was underselling my time as far as labour costs go. And I got sick of knitting so many hats. :)

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#72

Post by JoshTriplett »

liedra wrote: post #71
DanielStraight wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to make something based on this idea a phenomenon, but if all your suggestions were followed, the result would not be this at all. First of all, who is they? It seems like this is an individual woman. That's part of the appeal, that this isn't a mass market product, but a work of love made by a real person for a real person. The uniqueness of the toy is part of the appeal as well. If other people or…

You're absolutely right. I used to hand-knit hats to a particular nerdy gamer theme, and was very quickly overwhelmed with orders (even at US$65/hat, which is a lot for a knit beanie!). I had to institute a "slot" system where I'd open up orders for a short time, get a bunch, then knit my way through them. Once they'd all been shipped out, I'd open up for more orders (if I wasn't sick of knitting the damned things by…

Sounds like you needed to charge more. :)

You wouldn't necessarily want to set the standard price significantly higher, since at some point you'll trip a large number of people's thresholds for "too much for a hat". However, you could leave the price and queue system in place as it currently stands, and introduce a higher "queue-jumping" price. Effectively, that would make the slot a coupon, but the concept of a queue seems much more appealing (especially to a gamer audience).

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#73

Post by JoshTriplett »

ck2 wrote: post #3

It's a fantastic idea - but I would point out what a child sees in their head vs their drawing capabilities are probably very different. Still, I guess they could recognize it as something they created and it might encourage them to keep being creative?

Judging by the stories on the blog, the drawings often come with explanations about some of the details. Take a look at some of the drawings and corresponding toys.

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#74

Post by JoshTriplett »

snorkel wrote: post #39
latch wrote: post #7

My question would be: assuming you want to, how do you scale it? There's such an individual toy-by-toy creative aspect to it. Also, the potential for building brands seems pretty spectacular. Stuffed toy is just one step, you could add stories, games, episodes...this could be to disney what 99designs is to graphic designers :)

Partner with an established greeting card company to sell greeting cards that double as gifts: consumer pays $20 for the greeting card, the recipient child draws on the card then drops it in the mailbox, gets their stuffed toy sent back in the mail.

Nice idea, off by an order of magnitude on the price. :)

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#75

Post by eru »

noduerme wrote: post #60
eru wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 USD is actually pretty cheap for a custom made toy.

Agreed. It's dirt cheap. I know dozens of parents who would pay five times that.

And you should probably charge that, add a few free toys for poor kids, and come out ahead in terms of money and morals.

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#76

Post by hexagonc »

hopeless wrote: post #44

It's cute and it's cool but I'm not convinced. My daughter's drawings things are her interpretation of real things but I'm not convinced she'd want a real interpretation of her artistic interpretation of a real thing. After all, her drawings are often down to her limited skills rather than an intentional artistic choice.

Maybe it's not as hopeless as you think. (Sorry, couldn't resist, what with a name like that!) I could imagine many young children being astonished at seeing their 2d pictures come alive. Perhaps as a reward for good behavior, you could actively solicit drawings from your daughter to be made into a toy.

On an unrelated note, how about adding a rapid prototyping lab so that you can create plastic as well as plush toys from kids' drawings?

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#77

Post by pbhjpbhj »

cookiecaper wrote: post #53
latch wrote: post #7

My question would be: assuming you want to, how do you scale it? There's such an individual toy-by-toy creative aspect to it. Also, the potential for building brands seems pretty spectacular. Stuffed toy is just one step, you could add stories, games, episodes...this could be to disney what 99designs is to graphic designers :)

The only way to "scale" is to form a company of similarly-skilled artists. Even if this happens, it is unlikely that they'd ever be able to keep up with demand. It's obviously not something you can send off to China and press the button on an assembly line. Some things just can't be mass produced, and we should be grateful for that.

I don't think that's the only way to scale it. There would be compromises involved, of course, but I can immediately think of another way to scale this idea - I'm sure others can too.

Re: Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy

#78

Post by liedra »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #72
liedra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. I used to hand-knit hats to a particular nerdy gamer theme, and was very quickly overwhelmed with orders (even at US$65/hat, which is a lot for a knit beanie!). I had to institute a "slot" system where I'd open up orders for a short time, get a bunch, then knit my way through them. Once they'd all been shipped out, I'd open up for more orders (if I wasn't sick of knitting the damned things by…

Sounds like you needed to charge more. :) You wouldn't necessarily want to set the standard price significantly higher, since at some point you'll trip a large number of people's thresholds for "too much for a hat". However, you could leave the price and queue system in place as it currently stands, and introduce a higher "queue-jumping" price. Effectively, that would make the slot a coupon, but the concept of a queu…

Well, see it's weird, I already thought I was pushing the envelope at that price, given that you can pick up a knit hat from a shop for a couple of bucks. (I guess it's not the same sort of hat, but still - I've often had people ask me why I would knit something when I could buy it for so much less than it would cost to knit it.)

If I were to do it again I'd definitely charge more, because a) I'm not desperate for cash, b) I have better things to do, and c) the exchange rate to the US dollar is not very favourable ;)

I like the idea of a "queue jumping price" though. I think I might use that next time! I actually also got pretty good tips (which I'm not used to, not being American), which was flattering :)

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