Case Doodle2

While I waited to hear from them I found out all I could about injection molding and had a prototype made out of plastic. The design was pretty finalized and I found out where I could buy the nibs (tips) and reservoirs (cigarette filter material that holds the ink). I had an injection molder lined up and with my plastic prototype I headed off to the New York Toy Fair.

I made a vow to myself that I would not show the top to anyone at the show. I walked all of the show and was afraid that around every corner I would see a booth with the same idea. I saw hundreds of tops but none that drew. The next day I walked the show and saw one company, the DaMert Company, that always seemed to be having fun and had some very cool products. They weren’t big but they were enthusiastic and located in the San Francisco Bay Area. I met with them and arranged a meeting at their offices after the show. Fred DaMert and Bill Hanlon were toy inventors and great guys. When I showed them what I had they immediately agreed to distribute the toy for me and to help with the packaging but more important they agreed to give me a purchase order for 20,000 units. I used the purchase order to raise enough investment money to produce 20,000 tops and traded a computer for the injection molding tooling to make them. We were off and running.

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