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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

#11

Post by thom »

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 :)

I hope we're not far off being able to sit your child in front of a webcam, sample their voice, click a button and stream the latest Pixar film with them as a protagonist.

In the meantime, a 99designs for people with time, knitting needles and sewing machines seems like a lovely idea, and easy to achieve.

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

#12

Post by plainOldText »

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 order their drawn creatures. And then have a top 10 on the front page with the most popular toys. They could even have a competition: which kid designs the cutest animal. Oh, I could make this a phenomenon.

Boy, I can't believe I'm thinking about strategies of how I would improve a toys' business. Eh, just 2AM rant.

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

#13

Post by dspillett »

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 :)

> My question would be: assuming you want to, how do you scale it?

Franchising perhaps? Quality control would be an issue once you start farming the job out like that, but it would be a good way to better cover international markets. They could keep the designing local to the current HQ, hiring designer types there to supply demand and farm out the physical work.

Though I suspect a project like this might be a personal one, they they don't particularly want to scale massively.

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

#14

Post by latch »

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…

If you read her blog you'll see that she's at capacity. If they really want to turn this into an enterprise (and I absolutely think they should!), they need to figure out how to handle more volume before getting more volume.

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

#16

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#17

Post by theaeolist »

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…

Maybe what they like is making toys, not running a business.

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

#19

Post by davidw »

thom wrote: post #11
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 :)

I hope we're not far off being able to sit your child in front of a webcam, sample their voice, click a button and stream the latest Pixar film with them as a protagonist. In the meantime, a 99designs for people with time, knitting needles and sewing machines seems like a lovely idea, and easy to achieve.

> I hope we're not far off being able to sit your child in front of a webcam, sample their voice, click a button and stream the latest Pixar film with them as a protagonist.

The little brats (well, my own), are already the center of enough attention. If they want to make their own stories, they should go outside, play and invent them themselves.

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

#20

Post by martincmartin »

latch wrote: post #14
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…

If you read her blog you'll see that she's at capacity. If they really want to turn this into an enterprise (and I absolutely think they should!), they need to figure out how to handle more volume before getting more volume.

If they really want to turn this into an enterprise (and I absolutely think they should!)

Why's that? What if she's happy doing what she's doing now (sewing, turning fabric and stuffing into something amazing for a kid), and doesn't want to be a business woman?

In other words, if she wants a lifestyle company, why should she turn it into an enterprise?

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