#208: When Motherhood Inspires Toy Invention with Ehi Oviasu-Kahn
Feb 21, 2024Season 5Episode 208
Azhelle Wade
Have you ever wondered what drives the passion behind toy inventors? In this compelling episode of Making It in the Toy Industry, we dive deep with Ehi Oviasu-Kahn, the dynamic chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Women in Toys Licensing and Entertainment, and the creative mind behind Little Art. Discover how the quest to entertain and educate her daughter during the pandemic led to the birth of a new toy company. Ehi shares her journey from attorney to toy inventor, driven by the desire to merge art, play, and developmental learning into unique toys for children.
Ehi shares the challenges and triumphs of entering the toy industry with no business background, leveraging her artistic talent, and motherly intuition to invent toys that are not only fun but also foster development. She also reveals how staying informed on market trends and backing pitches with solid data can make all the difference in getting your ideas noticed.
Episode Cliff Notes:
Ehi shares two unexpected fields she worked in prior to the toy industry [00:01:30]
Learn about the inception of Little Art and the mission behind the brand [00:03:35]
Ehi shares how she stays up to date with social trends that influence the types of products that the toy industry wants to see. [00:07:25]
Ehi shares her best experience pitching her ideas and what she learned from it. [00:10:37]
Get a peek into the creative process behind Ehi's art and toy designs [00:15:52]
Gain insight on how to leverage personal experiences to inspire toy concepts [00:18:22]
Find out where to connect with Ehi. [00:20:46]
Mentioned In This Episode: This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Popular Masterclass! How To Make & Sell Your Toy Ideas Your Low-Stress, Start-To-Finish Playful Product Launch In 5 Steps >> https://learn.thetoycoach.com/masterclass <<
Have you ever wondered what drives the passion behind toy inventors? In this compelling episode of Making It in the Toy Industry, we dive deep with Ehi Oviasu-Kahn, the dynamic chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Women in Toys Licensing and Entertainment, and the creative mind behind Little Art. Discover how the quest to entertain and educate her daughter during the pandemic led to the birth of a new toy company. Ehi shares her journey from attorney to toy inventor, driven by the desire to merge art, play, and developmental learning into unique toys for children.
Ehi shares the challenges and triumphs of entering the toy industry with no business background, leveraging her artistic talent, and motherly intuition to invent toys that are not only fun but also foster development. She also reveals how staying informed on market trends and backing pitches with solid data can make all the difference in getting your ideas noticed.
Episode Cliff Notes:
Ehi shares two unexpected fields she worked in prior to the toy industry [00:01:30]
Learn about the inception of Little Art and the mission behind the brand [00:03:35]
Ehi shares how she stays up to date with social trends that influence the types of products that the toy industry wants to see. [00:07:25]
Ehi shares her best experience pitching her ideas and what she learned from it. [00:10:37]
Get a peek into the creative process behind Ehi's art and toy designs [00:15:52]
Gain insight on how to leverage personal experiences to inspire toy concepts [00:18:22]
Find out where to connect with Ehi. [00:20:46]
Mentioned In This Episode: This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Popular Masterclass! How To Make & Sell Your Toy Ideas Your Low-Stress, Start-To-Finish Playful Product Launch In 5 Steps >> https://learn.thetoycoach.com/masterclass <<
You are listening to Making It in the Toy Industry, episode number 208. my most recent pitch was absolutely my favorite, the one I just, I most recently did, because I think I just hit the sweet spot of, you know, sizzling, entertaining, got all the features, and I had tons of data to back up what I was But I was saying, and it went really well. So I think that when you can put all those things together, you can speak confidently about what you're making. Hey there, toy people. Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the Toy Coach Podcast, making it in the Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach.com. My guest today is Ehi Oviasu-Kahn the chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Women in Toys Licensing and Entertainment. Ehi her journey as an attorney by training, and then she came into the world of toys, beginning in the pandemic for a project for her then four month old daughter. And her project Her company name is Little Art and she has a small design and invention studio. Ehi, welcome to the show. thank you so much for having me, Azhelle thrilled to be here. I'm really happy to have you on the podcast finally. I often reference you actually in my, webinars around the toy industry because I talk about how you found your zone of toy genius. In what you wanted to create for your daughter. What was it that inspired you to make anything for your daughter at all? Well, thank you so much for that warm introduction. when you talk about inspiration and the arts, I think it always comes from a place of joy and authenticity. So finding myself at my most absolute basic, you know, a mom of a brand new baby, first time mother covered in, you know, burping cloths and baby stuff and knee deep in toys and, you know, just sort of trying to get my bearings after everything. And before becoming an attorney, I've been an artist my entire life. So that's, that's the deepest part of my authentic self. So I had those two parts living within me, the world shut down. I had ended my maternity leave, literally, I'm not even kidding, a week before the pandemic was declared a global event. I was like, Oh, I'm going back to work. And then look, I'm not going back to work. And so I'm in my house with this like sweet little chunky baby just looking at me all day. And I'm like, I got to keep you occupied. Like, it's just you and me, kid. Like, what are we, what are we going to do? Right. Just so, you know, I, I always, you know, I've been reading a lot about childhood development and they mute cognitively their ocular visual development. You make, they make flashcards for babies, like usually black and white, high contrast images. And I make abstract art. So I thought, okay, I'll just make little cards. And I made a, I made a card and then I put a silicone border around because I love to tinker. I love that my whole life and I put a silicone border around it for like safety. And then I added some texture. Then I added a ring and a bunch of different features. And my mother looks at it and she says, that's a product. And I said, what, what's, what is that? And I have, I have zero business sense innately. This was like very much a, like. Build the plane as you're flying the plane kind of venture. But I keep going back to this place of authenticity and passion because it's passion and authenticity that gives you the gumption and the focus to teach yourself what you don't know. So maybe creativity isn't your core capacity, right? But you want to get to where you're going and maybe, you know, business acumen is not your core capacity, but you want to get to where you're going. So that's the, that's really the engine that pushes little art forward. It's this urge to create. You know, beautiful, usable things in every facet of our lives. And that's where I am today. I did not realize that prior to you joining my program that you had created essentially a full prototype of a product. Basically, yes. And that's honestly, like, and that's, I'm not even joking, that's literally what happens every single time. I play, I'll play with my daughter, Shira. I'll play with her at home, or I'm in my kitchen. I do this with tools. I'm always, like, making my own tools, like, special purpose things. And I'm just like, oh, I need this, I need that. And I have this mountain full of scrap in my workshop. And halfway through, I realized, oh, I've created something, right? It was, and then I think to myself, is it useful or not? All my play, all my, excuse me, all the toys I make for Shira come out of play that we do together. So, Right now she's really into dolls. So I've got a doll idea I'm cooking up, which will be top secret. You know, when it, when it came to develop construction toys, that was the eight, that was a developmental age where she was to sort of play and build up spatial reasoning and do some simple mathematics and constructing things. And as she gets older, it would only expand to more and more categories. It really kind of, you know, I feel like, so I consider myself very, very fortunate because. That the inspiration, the motivation, you know, the joy, they're all part of the same stream. They all come from the same place, and it kind of carries, that's where my energy comes from, to carry all these things through So as you, as you find yourself inspired by different stages of Shira's life, how do you stay informed and up to date with The trends and the companies that are the big players in these different categories. So I came out of the world of politics politics and government. And, and I, so basically the job I had there was more or less read the news very closely every single day. Like every, every stitch of information. So I do that with, with trends and entertainment. And from there I work backwards to say like, you know. What's trending? What's number one? Because by the time you get to the kids consumer stuff, it's all trickling down from somewhere. Like, you know, it's all part of culture. This is, so this is kind of an obscure reaction, but this is just my process. Like in the fifties, rocket toys were really popular. Why? It was the height of the Cold War. So you can see where they're all, they're all part of the same system. So for, you know, what is it now? You know, stem and steam, like waxes and wanes, but it's really pushing forward, because we're coming out of a pandemic. where people felt like their kids were missing some enrichment. So there's a renewed focus in that area, expanding beyond the crunchy mom category. So I feel like I'm gonna say space and wouldn't, you know, I had a pitch a couple weeks ago where they told me more or less the same thing. We're really trying to move into this space because we see the parent demand. Also, I'm a mom myself. So, you know, I think I, I think I know what my kid would like. And I, you know, you talk, I talked about their mother. So it's a very, it's both the sort of grassroots. on the ground, you know, back and forth with my peers and just looking at macro trends generally. But yeah, I could probably throw a Google alert in there too if I wanted to be more systematic. but do tell me, like, what, like, literally, I want to know what is your first even paper to, or to read, or what's your first news outlet to go to just to get an understanding? And then how long after, in taking that information, do you give yourself before your Okay. So you're analyzing it to say, okay, this might mean that, you know, in three months or in six months, parents minds are going to be changing to this. Mm they usually, they have these really great lifestyle verticals. So I generally start there and say, okay, well, what's trending, you know, is kids health or kids activity or like, you know, activity bands got really popular a few years ago. So things related to action toys and then, you know, sensory toys are an expanding category as we get, we spent more time at home with our kids. And so are there, are there toys with a sensory developmental aspect? And that's also reflected in lifestyle journalism. Again, my process is not, I don't know that it's super systematic, but that's kind of what works for me. You know, thinking about it out loud, I'm like, I could probably refine this process somewhat more, be more targeted. it's very well informed. It's more like building a mind map. I've done a couple episodes where I build mind maps we did one on the shipping container crisis. We did one on COVID and there was a prediction of what kinds of products would be popular coming out of that. And it's a great practice and it sounds like you're kind of doing that in a free, in a free way. If you're listening to this episode, go to the toy coach. com forward slash two Oh eight. And I'll put the links to those mind map episodes because they teach you how to create your own mind map. Ehi do you ever use those like screenshots of those news articles in your pitch to kind of present why you're presenting this concept to this company and why they should be paying attention to this topic? I won't use a screenshot, but I definitely included you know, even when I'm preparing like a provisional patent, when I talk about like the current state of the art or like where we are, I'll definitely include like, you know, if I have a line of data saying like, you know, this, this, this percentage of sales rose by this number, this, this consumer survey said X, I try to back up most of my findings. with data because I'm sort of, I'm a STEM focused, STEM leaning outfit. That's, that's, that I definitely get my inspiration from that. I find that, you know, building these competencies into my products makes them resonate more with, with both inventor relations and then potential customers, because it's coming from the perspective of a mother that wants the best for her kid. That's why I made it for my daughter in the first place. And I'm hoping to share that with somebody else. During your pitch meetings, do you see companies are influenced when you do share that data? Yeah. Okay. Yes, they are. They are. I mean, because for those of you that don't know the first stage of your pitch is the neck is the last stage of your pitch. By the time you pitch the company is the first stage of the pitch when it gets pitched internally. So the more you can do when you prepare with not just the benefits of your product, but it's, you know, place in the market. It's market context. It's at market attributes. It's trend, whatever context apply to it. whatever, whatever the features apply to trends within the market at that time, you are making an easier job for the eventual and venture relations people within the company to turn around to their bosses and say, well, here's why we should invest in product X over product Y because you may, you, you know, I get so deep in the weeds. I get, I love talking about the features of my product, especially when I'm like drafting a original patent, cause I have to be very granular at that level. And I'm really fascinated by it. But at the end of the day, you have to convince somebody. Why this works. So the more data that you present out of your head, whether or not it seems super obvious to you, the better off you are in making a clear, simple, cogent, coherent case. I think my, my most recent pitch was absolutely my favorite, the one I just, I most recently did, because I think I just hit the sweet spot of, you know, sizzling, entertaining, got all the features, and I had tons of data to back up what I was But I was saying, and it went really well. So I think that when you can put all those things together, you speak authentically, you know, you, you, you represent your product authentically. And people can see that in the pitch. That really does matter when you can speak confidently about what you're making. You know, in Toy Creators Academy, I'm very much like, you're not supposed to be an expert in everything. You're supposed to be an expert in this idea. You're supposed to be an expert in this category of the toy business. You come up with an idea, you hire the right people to execute it. So you're hiring 3D modelers, you are producing 3D models for your prototypes but how do you decide which idea to go forward with and spend time on versus those you do not? So one of two things, it usually comes down to, I do, there's three, there's three steps and they don't always happen in the same order. You know, I love to jump into building a model if I'm really excited by something. But. If I have, because like sometimes it's just going to clear as a bell picture of what it looks like, right? And it can be useful. Let's put a pin in why it might be useful. More recently and more typically, I'll do a quick market survey. Does this exist already, first and foremost? That's yes. and again, a patent is decided on like, it's the narrowest base as possible, because it's decided on those features. You can read through the features and say, well, if my, you know, my invention is, you know, in a similar category, but it's perhaps not the same, it's for the patent office to decide whether it's protectable or not, which is different from it not infringing, because there's like a huge gap between those two ideas. And then if I think I've got a clear lane, both market wise and IP wise, I'll go ahead and make it. And then as, as you make it, you might think, look, I had these features and there's nothing, it doesn't resemble anything I saw out there. And then you'll try to build it. You're like, Oh, I know why they built it that way. Cause I think that's the only way There was a post out there that said, You know, a lot of inventors will say, Oh, I came up with like a better way to make a stroller. Let's say and then someone will say, okay, well, does it do something different? Is, is it cheaper? Like, no, no, no. It doesn't work differently, but it's just better. It's just a better solution. It's like, but is it cheaper? No. Is it faster? No. Is it smaller? No. Just because you think the way it was put together was better that's just not enough of a motivation for a company to say, You know what, we're going to license that from you because everyone's going to be so much happier that we have a better stroller. Although it doesn't deliver actually any to solve any problems that our consumers have. Precisely. Precisely. I mean, I'll tell my, there's, you know, patent law can be kind of frustrating from the inventor's perspective, because you say, what? Come on, this is so different. Why didn't you just award this to me? But there are, those are moments, you know, when you're drafting a patent, where it actually tracks what the business decision is, where you have to talk about the state of the art, you have to talk about why it's an improvement and how it's an improvement, and you can't just get so enamored of this detail, this quirk you managed to do. It's got to relate to something tangible. So I'll try not to butcher. This metaphor is a patent attorney once explained this to me. You invent a chair, right? Now, somebody else wants to also invent a chair. Well, if you remove a leg from the chair, okay, you've improved the state of the art. Now it's a three, three legged chair, three legged stool. And somebody else says, okay I'm going to improve upon that invention. I'm going to remove. Okay. to make it one pillar stool, like a bar, a bar column stool. Okay. Those things exist now, you know, now you have to improve it. What do you do? And the person just nails the chair now to the wall, like the chair back to the wall. So it's suspended from something else. And the idea is that you make it more refined. more usable, less wasteful. And those, those are iterative improvements. It's not enough to do. I added a leg to a chair. Now you added more material and the thing's already kind of a chair. Like I kind of get it, you know, with, Yes. well, you're doing something novel with the balancing there, two legged chair, same story, one legged chair. Okay. Big improvement off the four legged chair, but like using less material to the wall. Absolutely no waste now at this point. So I always have that in the back of my head as I'm creating, like, am I really just. Excited that I can do something cool or is this protectable, you know, notwithstanding that it doesn't necessarily have to be ironclad Super duper protectable to be a valuable idea Sometimes things are just pretty or interesting or fun or cool to use right a patent is always great But you know, what's more powerful when you're in especially you're in a market like toys or the business cycle is so quick trademark Trademark is fantastic. You know, copyright, even better, you know, copyright damages, trouble damages, statutorily, if somebody infringes that copyright. That's why those cease and desist letters go out so fast. And that stuff gets taken down so quickly. Those are tools too, that you can apply appropriately in the products you are developing. So don't be so concerned. You know, it's tough because this is your baby. You sit with this for six, nine months out of the year, working on it and fine tuning it. Don't worry. Even if you see something similar out there, you know how many super duper identical like products there are. Maybe there was a patent that expired in 1975. It's just public domain. You can still improve upon it. Yeah, that's still licensable. Some, some, some part of it is still licensable. Just figure out what that is and keep going. Don't get discouraged. And that's all I have to say. That's my IPC It's like, I'm done. I am going to embarrass you now because you mentioned that you were an artist in a previous before all of this, and I did not know that. So I did some digging. So, I had to dig into your Instagram and, girl, you are an artist! Artist! Thank you. First, come, can I get some art? Where do I buy? Well, I take commissions. So, This is a beautiful stuff. I think I make, I make sculpture, jewelry, painting, mixed media relief. I love making things. I could just really sincerely love teaching myself a new process. Learning about it and making it, and that's, that's a fun painting too. I don't know if you can see the birds, they're walking really cool. How was this made? What media is this? So this is this is alcohol ink on photo paper. So, the cool thing about photo paper is that it's non porous, so the ink just kind of glides on its surface and it blooms. It's sort of, it's sort of like watercolor, but it doesn't get absorbed as quickly. The color is super duper vibrant. And you have, you know, you can use solvents to blend it out. So I do the alcohol ink, and then I put a layer of like, you know, Mod Podge or varnish over it, and then go over it with like a, some pen pen or ink drawing to make sort of simple geometric faces. You can see the, that's where the magic happens, my workspace. Funnily enough Women Toys, WIT is doing for Women's History Month, we're doing a hashtag social media campaign, you know, hashtag where I work, where I do my best stuff. And so this is a picture I might re tag and re share, because this is my happy place with all my stuff and, you know, everything else. I wonder if WIT would ever do some sort of art show. Well, I would love to participate. Think that could be a great fundraising event. you know, that's a great idea, actually. Yeah, I would love that because we have illustrators, we have puppeteers, we have sculptors, we have designers, we have, you know, lots and lots of people who just have this sort of collateral artistic interest and skill. That's a wonderful idea. And I'm going to take that back to the board because I think again, we're really looking to your listeners. I have to tell you guys something about as you know, literally she should charge by the minute. Like, and I, as a lawyer, like I'm very sensitive to this. She is one of the few people who I think is justified in charging by the minute because Every time I listen to her, she's just got like 10 really good ideas, and sometimes she's sitting in my house and I'm like, oh, I should email her. I'm like, you leave her alone. She has things to do. Because you Cause you know I'll respond to, I'll send I just My brain does not stop. It does not shut off. It's very hard to It's a it's a, gift. And you found like your, your meter in, in, in doing this. I I was just gonna pull this up so I this was the first thing you ever created for Shira. ever created are art cards. I remember this. As I'm seeing it I remember our first call and yeah, I want to make new cards. And then I, you know, I moved on to other projects, but you know, they're, they're here in my house. My friends play with them. Earlier you were talking about the fact that you were inspired by you know, the developmental stages of kids by your toys. When I was studying toy design, that was so interesting to me. I wonder if you ever thought or want to do a product line that maybe isn't as. Inventive but something where it's just simpler products, where the color and the size and the play pattern are designed specifically for those ages. Has that ever been something you wanted to do? I've to tell you, nothing would make me happier than to do like a simple, like a, something like a simple surface, tactile, high contrast. Wooden plate, right? And you could make it look and, you know, and you maybe could chew on it, maybe could climb on it, maybe could like do fine motor control and do traits. Like, I'm just, I'm like getting it out now in my head. I would love that if I had, you know, I, I just don't know anybody who one has a brief or something like that.'cause I've been told, oh, baby is so small. But maybe that's something, you know, I've been thinking about projects I can launch on my own. That wouldn't be such a huge lift if it's something really, really simple, because that's really where I found my passion in terms of. you know, taking art and make it, making it playful. And that's because that's the simplest way to do it. If you just sort of take take an image and turn it into a touchable surface in some capacity, you can do it with plush, you can do it with wood, you can do it with plastic and just find different ways. If you're listening and you're like, what are they looking at? What are they talking about? Go to the YouTube channel. That's where the video of this podcast episode will be. Or you can go to the toy coach. com forward slash two Oh eight. And I'll put the video inside of that page as well. Embedded in there. So this, I just want to highlight before we move on to our next topic, the little art design store. Your art here is, oh, it's a puzzle. It's also really beautiful. Yeah. Oh, thank you. I mean, I made like yoga mat. There's a puzzle. These are, these are again, a really simple way. You can take something fun and colorful and use it. So it's a yoga, yoga session, tummy time mat. So you can, you and your little one can play Yeah, so it's you just you can like they can look and you know, it's got texture on it so they can touch and feel as you're doing, you know, mommy and baby yoga with them that's available on the website. Then I have some abstract pieces I've turned into puzzles that are, you know, for older children, obviously and then maybe some more products to come. If anyone's interested in collaborating or reaching out or just having a conversation about design and toys and art and making, art play fun, you know, and accessible. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn Ehi Ovyasu Khan at LinkedIn, or Ehimakesstuff, my handle at Instagram, or littleartdesign. com. You know, you wouldn't have to search far. I'm kind of, I think I'm one of the few Ehis out there. So you, you, you'll probably hit one of my links pretty soon. And I, you know, love to connect, looking forward to it. And we actually are going to cut this interview into two parts. So if you want to hear Ehi finish this sentence, the thing that surprised me most about the toy industry was, then you're going to have to tune into part two. Well there, you have it toy people. That is part one of our two-part interview with the chair, woman of the board of directors, of women in toys. If you'd like to hear Ehi's answered to that question, I hope you'll join me back here next week for that part too. Now the takeaway I want you to take from this episode is this. Whatever. Your zone of toy geniuses right now, it might very well be inspired by someone that's close to you in your life. In this interview with We mentioned how that person for her is her daughter. So her zone of genius, where all of her ideas come from has been evolving and growing with her daughter. That is a major strength because not only are you fully invested in developing product for a specific age range, but you have that testing group to be testing your products out with. So if you find yourself inspired by the people in your life, lean into that as a power and a positive. Further Ehi he shared where she stays up to date on the current trends so that she is making toy and game inventions that are relative to what people in society are going through today and interested in, and she stays up to date with different news apps. Now, another tip I have for you is to also check out Google alerts, set yourself a Google alert for the word toy for the word game. You can get those alert digest weekly or daily. And they will likely inspire you because you'll see what toy companies are doing, what game companies are doing, because you'll get those news release alerts. Now further, you should check out apps like tick tock. Tick tock is a great way to see up and coming trends. As they're coming out, the app moves very quickly trends. You can see them spiking immediately, and you can use Tik TOK, like a Google search. You don't necessarily have to search hashtags. You can just search top party games or you can search cool new toys and you can find things on tick talks and start identifying trends by the things you see repeating in videos after videos. If you love this podcast and you haven't already left us a review, what are you waiting for? Your reviews come right to me. Whenever you leave them. I get a notification in my inbox when they come through. So if you enjoy these episodes and you want them to keep on coming, I'm going to encourage you to please stop what you're doing right now. Scroll down to the bottom of your podcast app and leave us an amazing rating. And a review your reviews mean so much to me and it inspires. There's amazing guests like, Ehi to come back again and again, and share their insights with you. As always, thank you so much for being here with me today. I know there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tuned into this one. Until next week, I'll see you later. Toy people.