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Guest: Dougal Grimes, Vice President of Innovation and Inventor Relations at Spin Master.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
How to Make an Invention Pitch Worth Hearing
Spin Master innovation leader Dougal Grimes explains what major brands expect from inventors, from a crisp pitch to proof of concept and feasibility. The conversation also examines pitch strategy, licensing readiness, product validation, intellectual property strategy, partner targeting, and deal preparation.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Developing the toy idea out
- A great idea can come from anywhere
- Big ideas come from the mass market, not in-house design teams
- The process of meeting inventors is quite freeform
- Pitching the idea well is important and applies to all types of industries
- Have a quick pitch for your invention, then a proof of concept physically, then prove feasibility of manufacturability, that it is safe, that it is viable, and possibly that it has intellectual property protection.
- Look for toy fairs and conferences, reach out via LinkedIn, and find the invention submission areas of the company.
- Remember, a product pitch is a promotion.
- Don’t lead with the technical aspects, lead with the features.
- Remember, you are bringing a solution to a company when you pitch.
- The inventor’s vision and passion can help push a product through to greater success even after a licensing deal is struck
- Timelines for toy inventors getting to market
Episode transcript
This transcript is provided for accessibility and reference. Download the SRT transcript.
Read the full episode transcript
Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from the vice president of innovation from one of the world's largest toy companies on how to pitch your invention idea to big business.
Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,
Narrator: product developers, manufacturers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial
Narrator: idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business.
Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses. Now, on to the show.
Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Dougal Grimes to the show. Dougal is the vice president of innovation and inventor relations for Spin Master toys.
Kevin Mako: He leads a team of people who review product pitches from inventors just like you every day. Before this, he worked for over 10 years as a leader in many different roles at Hasbro.
Kevin Mako: Today, Dougal is going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventor's startups and
Kevin Mako: small manufacturers can best pitch two large product brands like Spin Master and what you can do
Kevin Mako: to best prepare for, deliver, and expand your product success with this type of partnership. Now, on to the episode.
Kevin Mako: Hey, Dougal, welcome to the show.
Kevin Mako: Hi, Kevin. Thank you. It was good. It was really great to meet you a few weeks back. We were at the Make 48 Finals in Wichita, Kansas.
Kevin Mako: That was a great opportunity and lots of great innovative talent there and as well as some amazing experts like yourself helping these teams create great products over 48 hours.
Dougal Grimes: Yeah, it was a great event. It was great to meet you too and it was my first time in Kansas and Wichita, but
Dougal Grimes: I've been to a lot of events like hackathons and things like that over my years in the toy industry. But this one was really interesting.
Dougal Grimes: It was a it was a great event, let alone that it was a recorded television program. but it drew on different teams from all over the country.
Dougal Grimes: You know, there was families, there was people from Trek, there was college kids. It was a really cool mix. So it was a really fun event to be a part of.
Kevin Mako: And I think there was some really great products that came from it. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to see it. I think it launches in September.
Kevin Mako: Being on the judging panel was fun because I've never really had like 25 cameras in my face for hours on it.
Dougal Grimes: Get all that shot.
Kevin Mako: But that was a blast, really. You did a good job. You're a natural. Oh, thanks, Dougal. Appreciate it. You too. Hey, look, we're here to talk today about inventors and
Kevin Mako: especially toy inventors coming up with that hot new toy product and getting it to the market.
Kevin Mako: Well, what better person bring on the show than yourself, given that you've been in this industry for many years.
Kevin Mako: Over 10 years, it Hasbro and now it's been master toys for over three as the vice president of innovation and inventor relations. So give us the backstory.
Kevin Mako: How did you go on this crazy success story of being one of the leading names?
Dougal Grimes: in the toy innovation space.
Dougal Grimes: Wow, what an intro, but it's been an interesting journey. I'll start all the way at the beginning. I'm the youngest of six boys,
Dougal Grimes: and so my childhood was always filled with lots of playing games, lots of competition against my older brothers, always exposed to like, board games,
Dougal Grimes: and then it kind of evolved more to video games. So I was always interested in kind of play angle of things. I grew up in Scotland,
Dougal Grimes: and then I went to study product design engineering at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. And I was always fascinated with developing actual products.
Dougal Grimes: And when I was at university, I kind of started thinking more and more about toys and games. And I didn't really know. And I think this happens with a lot of people
Dougal Grimes: who aren't in the toy and game industry. When they learn that, wait, there's people that actually do this for a living. It's like you actually design toys and games.
Dougal Grimes: And that's really what I wanted to do. I was obsessed with, there was a certain couple of things I really love.
Dougal Grimes: There's a thing in Europe you get called Kinder Egg Surprise, and I think it's over here as well, but slightly different.
Dougal Grimes: In Europe, you get like this coconut egg and you open it and there's a plastic egg. When you open that, inside, there's a little toy.
Dougal Grimes: When I was a kid, I remember it being a little bit more involved. I think now, just because of rising costs, it's just like a single shot, like plastic frog or something.
Dougal Grimes: But back in the day, it was like, you build like a car and stuff. And I was so fascinated with the creativity that went into like this in such a confined space.
Dougal Grimes: So there was a couple of like inspirational things for me. And then when I left university, I wanted to design toys and
Dougal Grimes: games. And so I basically just moved back home after uni. All my college contemporaries were going to work in the oil industry and they were designing like
Dougal Grimes: pumps and valves and all that. It's like, that's not for me. I want to go to toys and games. And I just looked at the top three companies, which was Lego, Mattel, Hasbro.
Dougal Grimes: And I saw that Hasbro at the time in the London office were hiring college graduates. And it was actually in marketing, which I didn't really have any background in.
Dougal Grimes: But I went down, met them on a road show, met the marketing director. He loved my passion for toys and games. So I started in marketing in Hasbro's London office in 2008.
Dougal Grimes: And then through the course of just working at Hasbro, you know, I had a lot of different roles. I started in marketing. Then I went to sales.
Dougal Grimes: And then I was doing kind of more product development. At the time, a lot of the bigger brands like Monopoly and True Pursuit were based out of the UK.
Dougal Grimes: So I started working in that team. Then I moved to Germany. And I was working with the German office on their digital. digital marketing.
Dougal Grimes: And then because of my connections within Hasbro and the product development side, and I knew I wanted to get back into design, I was
Dougal Grimes: offered a role with the headquarters, which is based in Rhode Island, for inventor relations, which I'll talk a little bit more about.
Dougal Grimes: I then got the job at the Hasbro headquarters. I was living in Germany, relocated to the US in
Dougal Grimes: 2015 working in Invent Relations for Hasbro under games. The background of getting into toy industry, to be honest, was just personal interest.
Dougal Grimes: I love the idea of, like, play. I like the value that you get with particularly, like, board games or construction and
Dougal Grimes: activities, how they as a product can really benefit children and connection between families and friends. And so inventor relations was an interesting one.
Dougal Grimes: I didn't even know it existed as a function. And effectively, within an organization like Hasbro or Mattel or any of these kind of larger
Dougal Grimes: toy and game entertainment company, Spin Master as well, there exists a function where we go out, we work with external inventors, of which are people who are creators
Dougal Grimes: outside of a company, and we look at review ideas that they have with the aim of licensing them for the company
Dougal Grimes: to produce, either as a new brand or something that fulfills something within we already
Dougal Grimes: have. So, for example, Spimaster has Paw Patrol and Bakugan and Hachimals. We'll try and fill
Dougal Grimes: up what the brand teams want for their portfolio to grow the business and review those ideas and select them and then work with the inventors to create the item.
Dougal Grimes: So I kind of ended up like
Kevin Mako: into this area, which really fit a lot of my background and interests and passions quite well. That's amazing.
Kevin Mako: What a story. And it's such a cool role that you're in. I don't think a lot of people knew that it exists either. But it's amazing. These big firms, especially we look at
Kevin Mako: Spin Master toys, quite familiar with not only as a firm, but as a client of ours as well in the past for toy products or a toy inventor.
Kevin Mako: And I don't think that's one of those things that people realized is that there's an entire division that is there to work with innovators in the space.
Kevin Mako: It can be an individual or it could be a professional corporate development team of a company that develops these toys.
Kevin Mako: But the point is it's connecting that dot between the ideators and the people who can move massive amounts of product. And that's the likes of Spin Master
Kevin Mako: toys you're at today. So it's pretty incredible that you get to be right dead center in that, seeing all this innovation coming through.
Kevin Mako: And I think the big question on everybody's mind today, with this interview is, what does it take to be one of the winners that you actually take on, that you license?
Kevin Mako: What does it take to be that next hot product, at least from the initial phases of interest from the big players like Spin Master?
Dougal Grimes: And then, of course, we'll talk about it further. What does it actually take once you actually get in the door to really succeed as a new toy brand there? Yeah.
Dougal Grimes: It's a great question because when I joined Spin Master about three years ago, the thing I love about the company, as it is.
Dougal Grimes: It was founded by three entrepreneurial friends just over 25 years ago. And the whole ethos of the company of Spimmaster really plays into this idea
Dougal Grimes: of open innovation and a great idea can come from anywhere. Now, the reason this role exists is because the toy and game
Dougal Grimes: industry is very much a fashion industry. Every year, there's new ideas. The target market is,
Dougal Grimes: even though, you know, we will have, you know, more family-based items and maybe more adult-based items within games, the majority of what we're producing are, you know, kid
Dougal Grimes: target, you know, and within there, there are slices. But let's say, you know, Spinn Master is a children's entertainment company.
Dougal Grimes: And so every year, there has to be new ideas and very fresh, and it's very high turnover. And you'd find that a great idea can come from anywhere, and
Dougal Grimes: we always have to be open for that because what tends to happen in larger companies, especially as they grow large and they're
Dougal Grimes: focused on like global distribution and building brands, a lot of the time they're, they become very focused on a certain area, which is good.
Dougal Grimes: But then you lose those, let's just call them like lightning strikes or wild ideas of, you know, people who are just out there trialing things or,
Dougal Grimes: you know, they see inspiration in somewhere that you haven't seen it. And that's where the big ideas generally come from.
Dougal Grimes: Over the course of time, it's always been from a single innovator or a group of people who have come up with this idea. And that's why we always have to be open for that.
Dougal Grimes: Now, there's lots to go into your question about how it comes to make a success. I'll kind of break it down into a couple of areas about how we operate as a team
Dougal Grimes: and how we kind of start meeting inventors. And then what happens when we go through the process of getting an item to market?
Dougal Grimes: Now, the process of us going out and meeting inventors is actually quite freeform in a way. And it's changed, obviously, over the past two or three years because of the pandemic.
Dougal Grimes: But, you know, roughly in the world, there's somewhere in the region of 300 to 500, like,
Dougal Grimes: professional toy and game inventors. Now, these are individuals working in their shed or, you know, large organizations.
Dougal Grimes: And we were organized, much like a design studio, creating ideas. And they will make their whole living out of that. And now, you know, we have relationships.
Dougal Grimes: This is where the inventor relations side comes in, of course. We have relationships with those people, and we send out briefs that we call wish lists,
Dougal Grimes: and we work with them on specific projects, and they will know exactly. And they work with all companies.
Dougal Grimes: They work with the Hasbro's, Mattel, Spinmasters, and they will kind of know where we're going. You know, we'll have the conversation, and they know what to pitch us.
Dougal Grimes: So, for example, we have a brand kinetic sand. So if people want to come to us with an idea of a new play set that utilizes kind of sand or is in that theme,
Dougal Grimes: they will come to us and they'll know to kind of pitch those ideas to us. And so we'll have an ongoing basis of working with those.
Dougal Grimes: But a big part of what we do is keep our eyes and ears open for people that are on YouTube, people are on TikTok, you know, social media. And we'll do an outreach.
Dougal Grimes: If we see someone who's developed something and they're showcasing it online, we can reach out to them and say, hey, you know, we love what you're doing.
Dougal Grimes: We would like to review the item that you have or the potential of it, something that we'd license and produce. So we're also actively going out there.
Dougal Grimes: And then also, you know, we have inbound. And obviously there's a lot of people that come to us. So we have a system of an inventor portal where people submit these ideas.
Dougal Grimes: And we have to manage our time on taking on board new. But we do get people contacting me through LinkedIn.
Dougal Grimes: And, you know, we take our time and we have to, again, it's a great idea can come from anywhere. So we very much try and, like, review everything with fresh eyes and openness
Dougal Grimes: to ensure that we're giving everything fair shake. So there's a bunch of different ways in which we operate on that. And there's also certain agents.
Dougal Grimes: agencies or agents are out there who work with inventors and they'll bring the ideas to us on
Dougal Grimes: their behalf. So we're always working with new people and we're always open to working with
Dougal Grimes: new people. So that's the, that's kind of the first stage of it, you know, making that kind of contact. And that happens across all companies.
Dougal Grimes: You know, there's people at Hasbro, Mattel, Lego, who do this kind of review. So once we get past that first stage of contact, we will go into
Dougal Grimes: kind of the product pitch session, right? And there's a lot out there you can find online as a creator
Dougal Grimes: about the product pitch, the toy invention community, but I think it applies across every single
Dougal Grimes: industry. Like if you look at Shark Tank or anything like that, the elevator pitch, all these things, it's very true about how you do a great pitch.
Dougal Grimes: And a lot of the time it comes down to a couple of basic things, right? You will have like a one minute pitch video or a sizzle. This is
Dougal Grimes: like how you get across your item, it's almost like a commercial-esque way. This is me. This is the item. This is the benefits of it.
Dougal Grimes: And then you will ideally have some kind of prove of concept or looks-like model, hopefully a works-like model, whereby, you know, you can showcase.
Dougal Grimes: And of course, the great thing about toys and games is it's still a very physical business, of course. So a lot of the things you see have to be highly visual or tactile.
Dougal Grimes: So showcasing that in a model or works-like is very important also. It doesn't necessarily always have to be
Dougal Grimes: true. We do review things that are just more like a PDF or a pitch, but there has to be some feasible backing.
Dougal Grimes: The age-old thing I always think is like, someone could come to us with a sketch of the hoverboard from back to future, right? We're like, that's amazing, but you know,
Dougal Grimes: you have to prove that it works, you know? So then comes like the kind of the third part, there has to be kind of sort of feasibility and viability in it.
Dougal Grimes: So the feasibility can this be made. You know, have you done your research on this actually working and being a product? Is it safe? Does it use materials?
Dougal Grimes: Is it like something that can actually be made by us? And then viability is, is this something that's cost effective? Is this something that could be made of business out of? And
Dougal Grimes: you know that, again, that's like the kind of the, ultimate pitch, you know, you have your sizzle, you have like what you're showing, and then you
Dougal Grimes: have the background on it should those tough questions come in. Have you thought about the costing on it? Have you thought about whether this is something it could be made?
Dougal Grimes: And then there's another part of it as well, which doesn't always necessarily have to happen in toys and games. Do you have protection around this?
Dougal Grimes: And I would say if you come to us with a pitch, within the toy and game industry, it doesn't necessarily need to have protection around it. The reason being is because
Dougal Grimes: were such a high and fast-paced industry. By the time you've applied for a patent or it's, you know, and you've got it,
Dougal Grimes: the product's gone out there and either failed or you're the first to market. It really a lot relies on us and getting something out there,
Dougal Grimes: having a good trademark name, but at least maybe sometimes acknowledge that this is something that's unique.
Dougal Grimes: You're doing something that's maybe slightly different from that's out there as well. So when we have this pitch session, after we've made the contact, I have the pitch session
Dougal Grimes: and, you know, we used to go to toy fairs and we will be going back to them again. as the world kind of opens up or conferences, you know, we'll book in these meetings and we'll
Dougal Grimes: review the items live or now over the past two years, just doing them over Zoom. And, you know, will be the initial like myself for certain categories. I have a colleague of mine,
Dougal Grimes: Rich Maisel, who reviews for other categories. And we'll review them as per what we know from the company and what the teams are asking for. And we'll filter that.
Dougal Grimes: And at that stage, it kind of
Kevin Mako: comes to where we're either pass on it. And we say, that's not of interest to us. Thank you. or it will come into our company via submitting assets to our secure
Kevin Mako: portal or sending us a prototype to us to review further. That's incredible. It's amazing framework to put all together.
Kevin Mako: And some of the ideas you mentioned around the pitch, I think, are so powerful no matter what industry you're in.
Kevin Mako: One of the biggest things that we've heard in terms of any pitches, no matter really across product
Kevin Mako: categories, across different companies, all the way from Staples to hearing it from Spinmaster, is a clear, concise pitch. Hook them within the first 30 to 60 seconds.
Kevin Mako: you're qualifying information and your market validity and then look at your market support or your product support afterwards.
Kevin Mako: Make sure you have those clarifying questions backed up. But I think one of the mistakes that we see in a lot of pitches is people use that last part, the support part as part of
Kevin Mako: their pitch. So it ends up running on for 20, 30, 40 minutes. Those support pieces to just be used to clarify questions that come back. Your initial pitch should be quite short.
Dougal Grimes: In fact, I'd like to ask you, you know, you've seen thousands of pitches. How long is the ideal pitch? Like, if you could actually
Dougal Grimes: break it down into like seconds per phase, what would you say like, this is the perfect pitch, at least, you know, an initial first look. Oh, wow. It's interesting.
Dougal Grimes: I learned a long time ago. This is actually in college and it's evolved slightly, but a pitch should be like a newspaper article or the front page.
Dougal Grimes: You have the headline. This amazing thing happens. And then there's the subheadline. This amazing thing happened in X town because of X.
Dougal Grimes: And then it's almost like if you've got a reader and someone who's interested, they see the headline. If that's enough to grab them,
Dougal Grimes: they look at the subheadline and that's enough to grab them, then you go into the body of the information. And that was kind of the newspaper model.
Dougal Grimes: And a more kind of contemporary way of looking at it is, say, almost like a YouTube advertising, right? And really, there's multiple
Dougal Grimes: probably things that people will think about this, but this is kind of pure promotion in a sense, which is important. And I'll come back to that.
Dougal Grimes: It's important when you're doing a product pitch because ultimately you want, you're trying to find the right consumer and the right product to match that consumer.
Dougal Grimes: And so you do have to pay mind how it's going to be promoted at the end, which is why you're almost distilling yourself into thinking, how am I going to promote this?
Dougal Grimes: Now, in a YouTube advert, like, I think it's been measured. It's like people's attention is only like three seconds now, which is like a little bit sad in some ways.
Dougal Grimes: But it's true. And if you look at great YouTube adverts before you skip it, it's like, you've got three seconds to get them.
Dougal Grimes: And then it's like, here's this is the thing happening or some kind of, humor or something that tag gets you involved, and then they start building it out.
Dougal Grimes: Also, some of the great, like, kind of ways in which you've seen stuff is Kickstarter. Like, if you look at great pitch videos for some of the highest, you know, grossing,
Dougal Grimes: crowdfunded, but not just kickstar, like Indiegogo and things, they do a great job on their sales video. And they're normally, like, 40 seconds to a minute long.
Dougal Grimes: It's just like something fun, capture people in the start. In that method, in the crowdsourcing method, is interesting because you're literally
Dougal Grimes: pre-selling something that doesn't really even exist. So people have to part with their money before even sometimes waiting a year before getting
Dougal Grimes: something. So you really have to distill it down. So there's good examples in that. And another thing that was interesting that I learned through my time at Hasbro was sometimes
Dougal Grimes: as well looking on, if you look on Instagram or Facebook and you're scrolling through it, you'll see like an advert and you'll pause on it and you'll look at it.
Dougal Grimes: There won't be any sound because a lot of the time the sound is disabled. But to get someone interested in something just by visually seeing it and capturing them
Dougal Grimes: from that, enough that they can then click the sound on and watch the rest of it is really important. So the ideal pitch is you've got to take those type of those type
Dougal Grimes: of cues and really, as you're saying, front load what the features and the exciting thing is. Now, in the toy and game
Dougal Grimes: industry, everything, everything has humor in it or it has like some visual mechanism. So for us, it's quite easy.
Dougal Grimes: But I think it applies to a lot of industries because even if you're selling like tools or something, you want to bring up front, why is this amazing? Why is this new
Dougal Grimes: drill or why is this new thing happening? What situations are it being used in? Bring that to the front. Showcase that. Then you're getting people's attention about it.
Dougal Grimes: Then you start building out like the more of the story behind it. And then you're right. Then at the end, have all that information ready.
Dougal Grimes: Maybe even in another video where you have a full like walkthrough or ready for like
Dougal Grimes: questions. You know, that's when people, but you've got to hook them at the start. So it's almost like flipping it a little bit. A lot of people think of it the other way around.
Dougal Grimes: And it can be challenged because a lot of the time when you have creators, particularly if they've come from like an engineering
Dougal Grimes: background or a non-sales or marketing background, a lot of the time they do want to lead with like the technical aspects because that's exciting to them.
Dougal Grimes: But especially when you're trying to people who are investors or, you know, a consumer, you're trying to get them excited about it first.
Kevin Mako: They don't want to know like the intrinsic benefits of like some cam that's in this new toy. That's like a benefit that allows these great features for this eyes
Kevin Mako: to pop out and all that stuff. You know, then you bury that, you don't bury it. You put it at the end. You're trying to get like, why is this existing to start with.
Kevin Mako: That's really powerful. I love how you mention the concept of thinking of your product pitch as a pitch video. Think of it as a pitch video at your end customer almost.
Kevin Mako: I imagine you find a lot of good similarities. Like if you look at the final video that's displayed to the end customer as the advertisement on YouTube or on TV,
Kevin Mako: it's probably got some similar threads to a great 60 second pitch video to their investors,
Kevin Mako: potential manufacturers, potential partners, stakeholders. And of course, what we're talking about here is, well, how do you sell to the Spin Master toys of the world?
Kevin Mako: That first 60 seconds is so powerful. And I think the beauty of it, and you know, this is across industries, you've got to think,
Kevin Mako: if you're making a hardware innovation, you always have the ability to have really beautiful,
Kevin Mako: creative visuals.
Kevin Mako: You can either use the renderings or you can use videos of the prototype. There's a lot of opportunity right there to just capture.
Kevin Mako: somebody within that first three seconds, like you say, with beautiful visual things. And that is unique to hardware.
Kevin Mako: So if you're in the hardware spaces, everyone is that's listening to this podcast, use that
Dougal Grimes: to your advantage and use that in your pitch video and front loaded up front so that you get
Dougal Grimes: that flashy, really interesting, really cool stuff up front that hooks you and then start to, as you say, stepping stone down the chain, but keep it short, keep it concise and then
Dougal Grimes: be ready with all the information down the road if clarifying questions are asked or have that support information ready.
Dougal Grimes: No, absolutely. And there's so across every industry now, there's so much noise. There's so many companies making things. There's so much product being
Dougal Grimes: released. It's challenging. It's very challenging to try and get above that. So, you know,
Dougal Grimes: you do have to think about what makes you, what makes you stand out. And there's so many tools now
Dougal Grimes: to be able to, you know, do stuff on free tools online or great, like, you know, photo editing, video editing tools. You know, you can hack stuff together.
Dougal Grimes: You know, you can fake out a lot of things or, you know, use other footage for things. So there's a lot on the fingertips for people to be
Dougal Grimes: able to create at home and make it look relatively professional. And another thing, which is interesting, that I always think is that you're bringing a little bit of a solution
Dougal Grimes: to a company or an investor. It's harder for people like, so say, for example, Spin Master, which deals in
Dougal Grimes: children's entertainment but we have a product development and design like backbone love creating products
Dougal Grimes: but we have so many things on the go if someone comes to us and they've got you know for example the hoverboard
Dougal Grimes: example it's one end of the extreme but it's like here's this floating skateboard it's like okay such a
Dougal Grimes: cool idea but you haven't got any backing for it we're going to have to spend all this money and time and all
Dougal Grimes: this stuff you're kind of like if you're coming to the party and say look these are the things that i've got and I'm showcasing you, this is a solution, and let
Dougal Grimes: alone bringing the solution in terms of how you're communicating it to others, it's easier adoption. Again, like making, almost like
Kevin Mako: thinking about it, what a commercial would be at the end, because us internally, once we take that item and we develop and it, it goes in our line, we then still
Kevin Mako: have to go to like a buyer and ultimately the consumer who's having to make an investment from us to purchase the item.
Dougal Grimes: So trying to position it with a vision at the beginning can hold true all the way through. And it makes it a little bit more of an easier process, if that makes sense.
Dougal Grimes: So let's talk about what happens next. Let's assume that you're interested in the toy. What can the inventor do to best help support the success of
Dougal Grimes: that engagement? There's a few different ways in which this can happen. Now, the Bimaster, as a company of how it's founded, is very much inventor
Dougal Grimes: -friendly and and very much likes to involve inventors along the process.
Dougal Grimes: And a lot of the time as well, we'll focus on specific invention groups. It's about their skill sets.
Dougal Grimes: So if you come to the party and you bring and you show a concept that is, let's say, an animated dog, let's use that, for example.
Dougal Grimes: And your actual background that you've done in this is like you're a programmer. Now, that is like a value ad for a creative and an inventor.
Dougal Grimes: And a lot of the time, if there is an inventor who is creative in that area, we will use them on the development process.
Dougal Grimes: So a lot of the time you also, as an external inventor, have to hang your hat on, or if you're a group, what can you do to add value to the process down the line as well?
Dougal Grimes: And then there's a little bit of trust that goes on. So we'll work with it. And of course, internally, SpinMass has a lot of experience.
Dougal Grimes: Any manufacturer has experience in their field. So an inventor also has to trust in the process that the company will be changing it, maybe change.
Dougal Grimes: changing the stylization of it, maybe changing the features of it, they have to kind of trust
Kevin Mako: that. But that's a, you know, once you get into this area, you're kind of entering into a bit of a partnership as you develop the item. You know, sometimes there are creatives who
Kevin Mako: just come to us with something and they're just happy, you take it, do whatever you like with it. But a lot of the time, I'd say, you know, 70, 80%
Kevin Mako: of the time an inventor will have some kind of background and experience that they will also want to share. And we will make sure we listen to that along the way.
Kevin Mako: That's pretty cool to hear coming from such a big organization like Spin Master that even when you license the idea from the inventor, you still want
Kevin Mako: to at least in part engage their skill sets that made that invention come to life, right? And that's
Kevin Mako: really interesting, I find, because it shows that you want to bring out some of the character of that person.
Kevin Mako: Because inevitably, there's, you know, the heart and souls behind this thing,
Kevin Mako: especially if they've been working on it for quite a while, especially if this is their one big product and
Dougal Grimes: they're not one of those professionals that are doing it over and over. So it's pretty cool to see that at least in part you're willing to work with them to see
Dougal Grimes: their idea come to light. But on the flip side, I think this is very important for the inventors out there to listen to as well.
Dougal Grimes: It's like note the fact that you've got to trust the experts. These people are the top in their craft for a reason.
Dougal Grimes: And they may do things slightly different than you envision it. However, there's almost always going to be a very logical, very smart,
Dougal Grimes: heavily experienced-backed reason for them doing that. Yeah. You've got to, I think as an inventor as well, the reason we do that a
Dougal Grimes: lot of the time is the idea of like a product champion. The passion that's gone into something is very hard to define in the development
Dougal Grimes: process. But it really that energy and passion for something that creates that excitement that's created this idea.
Dougal Grimes: And then finding a company and people within the organization who are also product champions. Because all along that process, as you know, Kevin, there's hurdles every which way.
Dougal Grimes: And there's always a million one reasons to not do something. something. So having people that are passionate and having the infectious energy of the inventor
Dougal Grimes: and the passion instilled in that, finding the right people internally who also can take that
Dougal Grimes: and say, I totally believe your vision and are passionate to get it to the end result of getting
Kevin Mako: on shelf or online, that's very important. So that's why a lot of the time as well as involving
Kevin Mako: those creatives along the process can actually help because it drives a little bit of
Dougal Grimes: that energy. And as large, bigger the companies get, there's more silos and more, not barriers, but more, yeah, silo divisions that go on.
Dougal Grimes: And you want to keep that energy and you want to keep that vision going between the two because it can quite easily get lost just through noise that happens through the
Dougal Grimes: development process. What kind of timelines are you generally working with from the inventor
Dougal Grimes: coming to you with the idea to that thing being a huge success internationally? What does that look like in terms of months or years?
Dougal Grimes: It depends by category and complexity. But for example, now, we're in the early 2020, we're now
Dougal Grimes: looking at starting our 2024, you know, gearing up. So rough and tough, we're talking about an 18 month kind of like from
Dougal Grimes: product concept to really shipping the item, you know? And so this type of timeline is really geared for higher complexity
Dougal Grimes: items. When we say high complexity with the toy and game business, items like hatchamels or
Dougal Grimes: or a zoomer, which are kind of like animatronic coding and chips in it and like a lot of mechanism, some form of level of robotics.
Dougal Grimes: And there's a long process of development for that.
Kevin Mako: So those tend to be like the 18 month even higher to develop. But when you get all the way down to like say something that's a like just a card game,
Kevin Mako: you know, that can be faster, of course. You know, you're just printing. And potentially, you know, you can release those things for within, you know, the fastest I've
Kevin Mako: seen is within like three months getting those things. if it's very low complexity and you can source it easily.
Dougal Grimes: And those can be reserved for things that are high trending and you need to respond to something in the market or there's a hot license, you know, a new Disney movie.
Dougal Grimes: And there's certain things that can help with that. What about the sales side of things? Like let's say you're ready to go, whether it's a card game or Hatchamels and you're
Dougal Grimes: now starting to sell to the Toys R Us, Walmarts, whatever else of the world. What are their sales cycles looking like?
Dougal Grimes: When are they kind of planning ahead and when you're trying to get items to them?
Dougal Grimes: because even if you're ready to go, I mean, they're buying sometimes months or even a year in advance anyways, right? Yeah.
Dougal Grimes: So we do have, I mean, of course, we've got such a large product line and such a diverse product line.
Dougal Grimes: Really, you know, the retailers are now finalizing, well, not really finalizing. They're now entering into like spring 23. It's normally like 12 months out for them.
Dougal Grimes: So, you know, we'll be showing them, not concepts, but, you know, more fully fleshed out our product line within, you know, round about a year out.
Dougal Grimes: And that's the thing, like when we're dealing with millions of units of things and sourcing from
Dougal Grimes: different places around the world, you know, it's a very complex beast. And so you have to be very planned and far out and doing these things and ensuring it happens.
Dougal Grimes: So really, that's the reason by this. You're absolutely right. Like getting an item to shelf involves so many different
Dougal Grimes: factors. But, you know, we very strategically plan out how we're going to do these things and give it enough time so that we can do things well, let alone at the beginning,
Kevin Mako: just like make a great item, just spend our right time and like testing and like pressure testing it and the user interface of it and all these things.
Kevin Mako: The only one exception of that, if there is something that is like hot, and again, it's a toying games is a fashion industry or something happens that it needs to be out now.
Kevin Mako: You can shift, you know, you can get it out there.
Kevin Mako: Retailers, anything, Amazon's different because, you know, you can put something online at any point, but retailers, because
Kevin Mako: they have set times a year when they take things in, they will change. If there's something hot, they will bump something else to put something hot in.
Kevin Mako: That's cool. That's an interesting to see the timeline because I even think going back earlier, like if you're a toy invention,
Kevin Mako: you're just at like a sketch idea and you want to design, engineer it,
Dougal Grimes: get some prototyping done so that you've got that physical unit to be able to pitch to a place like Spin Master
Dougal Grimes: toys. I mean, you've got months of work there as well, whether it be, you know,
Dougal Grimes: three months for something simple or it could be up to 18 months just in kind of pre-design engineering
Dougal Grimes: prototyping work to then get it to you guys, which it'll then take months more to professionally engineer it for production and do all the production sourcing and all of that.
Dougal Grimes: And then in addition to that, you've got, you know, a window could be 12 months out to do the retail shopping as well.
Dougal Grimes: So conceivably, you could be looking anywhere from that first idea that pops into your head to actually seeing it sitting on the shelves.
Dougal Grimes: It could be three, four years out, realistically speaking. Yeah, absolutely. And that, you know, that's why when we start getting into a little bit of
Dougal Grimes: Some of the dynamics of external creatives, we work on a licensing model, so we'll be paying royalties. And so from the time you create an idea, till when you're being
Dougal Grimes: paid on us selling it to retailers, you're right. It could be two, three years out. So your revenue stream could be coming in far down the line.
Dougal Grimes: And of course, like, you've got business to run as a creative. And it's hard to be a freelancer. So we advance some of those payment of the royalties to allow for
Dougal Grimes: that, for them to keep creating. And then, you know, we work on kind of an option system.
Dougal Grimes: It's very similar to actually the way that Hollywood does or book, you know, publishing, whereby, you
Dougal Grimes: know, we'll pay an upfront advance, like a small advance on holding and reviewing an item that we call an option, which allows, there's a couple of reasons for that.
Dougal Grimes: It's for us to kind of take it off the market, so to speak, while we review it, but also give the inventor like this cash flow that allows them to keep creating.
Dougal Grimes: And, you know, to be honest, in our side of the business in kind of this R&D front end side, it's not as competitive as when you get to the same.
Dougal Grimes: and marketing it. For us, we just want inventors to keep creating. And then again, this is where the inventor relations side comes in.
Dougal Grimes: We would rather, if an inventor comes to us, give them the honest feedback that this isn't right for us, not at this time, or invest
Kevin Mako: in it. And if it doesn't work out, keep them working because it might not be right for us at this time, but the 10th idea might not be right for us. But the 100th idea might be.
Kevin Mako: And you want to support the overall creative the community because it's very difficult to be freelance in this creative, as we talked about.
Kevin Mako: You know, sometimes your cash flow will be coming until down the line. So a lot of what we do
Kevin Mako: is working with this community, a lot of communication, a lot of trying to work with them and work on this kind of option system and really help support that creative
Kevin Mako: process because we need in the whole industry as a whole for these inventors to really funnel these ideas to create the next play experiences that are coming down the line.
Kevin Mako: That's really just great that you have that sort of inventor community outlook as such a big company that you see so much of that innovation coming from the bottom.
Kevin Mako: I mean, I can say, especially as a design from owner, it's spectacular, watching that process take place. One of our clients, Natalie, with the Moonlight Project that Spinmasters
Kevin Mako: Hook and within a year's in 70 countries. I couldn't believe that growth from somebody who had just conceptualized the idea.
Kevin Mako: I think it was less than nine months in development on our end. And then Spin Master, you know, they did a big crowdfunding campaign. Then they leveraged that success
Kevin Mako: in their pitch to Spin Masters to say, hey, look, I've got this interest. Yeah, it's a small chunk up front, but these are real people who whipped out their credit
Kevin Mako: card to pay for this thing. Now, how can we leverage the massive Spin Master, not only sales network, but manufacturing network?
Dougal Grimes: And that was such an incredible story of just a wildly successful product, all that was just an idea a few months earlier.
Dougal Grimes: And probably because it was a relatively simple product on the shorter end of that timeline, but the beauty is you were there to support an independent inventor that had
Dougal Grimes: never brought a toy product to market before. And yes, they had the weight of a design firm to actually design a great product
Dougal Grimes: around it. But that joint combination just made it work and made it work for Spin Master. It made that pitch that much better.
Dougal Grimes: And then it turned out to be a great success for everybody. And I guess that's the long-term play that you're looking at by supporting this broad
Dougal Grimes: network of innovators and toy ideators. In the long run, you have access to many more products
Dougal Grimes: than you would have been able to develop exponentially more than you could develop internally in house in your own arm. Yeah. And a lot of it is timing as well.
Dougal Grimes: So recently we actually, I'll give an example of what we just launched called under the Aerobee brand, which is obviously the far-throwing flying disc. High-performance brand,
Dougal Grimes: and they launched last year an item called the Sonic Finn, which was like American football design, like a cord out center and you can change the fins,
Dougal Grimes: and it gives it a really far flight path. The inventors of that created that, and I think in the early 90s. And so this is like 15 years later, you know, we licensed it.
Dougal Grimes: It comes down to timing a lot of the time in the toy and game industry, but if you look at the toy and game industry, there are like classic play patterns.
Dougal Grimes: And I'm sure amongst all industries, there are classic things that consumers need and gravitate towards.
Kevin Mako: And it always is about noticing what those are, which is the familiar, and then adding on, it's like the A plus B equals C.
Kevin Mako: What's a familiar plus a slight something different equals this new thing.
Dougal Grimes: When you start creating a lot of the most successful inventors I know, you know, they will
Dougal Grimes: just create and create and they'll have this library and they will know when the time's right because companies change direction. grow, they add on different categories.
Dougal Grimes: And so there's always opportunity down the line. It's like, oh, well, actually this thing that I made 20 years ago, it's totally right for a Spin Master now
Dougal Grimes: because now they're looking for this in pool toys. It's interesting. So again, it's like a timing element for a lot of the external creative.
Dougal Grimes: That's impressive to hear all the different elements of it from start to finish, especially from you, Google, that has so much experience in it.
Dougal Grimes: So I must say, really appreciate your time today. If somebody has a toy invention,
Kevin Mako: How do they reach out to Spinmaster to pitch it? Yeah, they can connect with me, Dougal Grimes, on LinkedIn.
Kevin Mako: You can reach out to me there. Or we have a section on our site, which you can go to on the corporate site,
Kevin Mako: and it's inventor relations as an email and an NDA that you can fill out on our website where you can submit into a system which we review monthly as well.
Kevin Mako: But, you know, there's a bunch of different ways, but you can reach out and we start going to more conferences and shows now, but please reach out and we
Kevin Mako: review it. And most companies have
Kevin Mako: this version of myself and Invent Relations or an open innovation kind of ambassador. And you can reach out to a bunch of different companies for it.
Kevin Mako: Thanks again, Google. Really appreciate all
Narrator: your time today. Thanks, Kevin. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your
Narrator: product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent,
Narrator: the original and leading firm in North America to provide global caliber in -to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product
Narrator: business clients. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O Design dot com.
Narrator: For a free consultation from one of Mako-designs for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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