Razor

other on 3 shows · 12 statements across 3 episodes · said 20 times in 2 episodes since 2025

How I Built This 18 TBPN 2 Lenny's Podcast

Mentions by year, every show

tap a year for its mentions
001012022025episodesmentions
0122025episodes it came up in
00511022025episodesmentions per episode

How I Built This 18TBPN 2

2025 20 mentions in 2 episodes 10 per episode

every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →

12 statements about Razor, every show

Calvin: Toy creators should license if they love inventing, not running businesses
“If you love being in business, be in business. If you love inventing toys, then I would say you know, I would license it for sure. I work with inventors and they've done extremely well from me.”
Carlton Calvin Aug 20, 2026 ▶ 11:54 Advice Line with Carlton Calvin of Razor
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toys "R" Us was Razor's biggest customer for a long time
“I think for a long time they were my biggest customer, even for the Raid scooters and stuff like that.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 26:29 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Partly supported
Razor sold one million scooters per month during its 2000 retail launch
“So I was selling a million scooters a month.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 43:13 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Partly supported
Razor captured only one-third of the scooter market during the 2000 boom
“And so I maybe only had a third of the market, believe it or not.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 49:28 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Razor held one million unsold scooters when warehouse demand plummeted to zero
“We still had like a million scooters in the warehouse for the next month's sales, which then were zero.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 50:02 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Supported
Razor established a baseline of two to four million annual scooter sales
“After a certain amount of time, the retailers were able to work through their inventory of their extra inventory. And then they needed somewhere between two or four million scooters a year to keep going.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 54:41 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
Electric ride-on toys resist knockoffs through engineering complexity, not patent protection
“These electric motorcycles and scooters, they just keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger, and they're not as easy as To knock off as the scooter. You know, they're not, it's not so much the patent, but the actual technology in making them is quite ch…”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:02:31 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toys "R" Us's bankruptcy caused significant, irreplaceable sales losses for Razor
“The most saddest dramatic shift for razor has been the loss of Toys R Us. You know, not only is it a loss from the kids perspective of a fantasy place to go, but they actually always carried our entire line. And when we came out with something innovative, they…”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:04:19 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
Carlton Calvin rejected licensing the original hoverboard because it seemed too difficult
“Every year, He would show me these wild and crazy inventions that he made, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm happy to keep showing me, you know, we could try a little bit, but I don't know, it just seems too odd, and amongst the things that I…”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:05:16 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Razor's top revenue drivers are electric motorcycles and scooters
“The electric motorcycle and the electric scooter. I mean, in terms of dollars, and then the scooter obviously sells quite a bit too.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:07:17 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
HOW I BUILT THIS Assertion Not checkable as stated
Razor has been profitable every single year since its inception
“I have, you know, made money every single year. I was actually thinking we were going to lose money this year.”
Carlton Calvin Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:08:01 Carlton Calvin: Razor. The wild rise, collapse, and reinvention of a mobile toy empire.
Sutherland: Over-optimizing device quietness convinces users it is not working
“If you make it too quiet, we genuinely won't believe it's working. Yeah, actually it's the crackly noise that when you rub it over your face and it's the buzz of the thing, And the vibration of the thing that actually convinces us it's doing a job. And you kno…”
Rory Sutherland Jul 21, 2024 ▶ 15:26 What most people miss about marketing | Rory Sutherland (Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, author)

← every entity, every show

Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, thousands of episodes across every show transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.