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.”
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.”
Razor sold one million scooters per month during its 2000 retail launch
“So I was selling a million scooters a month.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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 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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”