Melissa & Doug

“Probably I think all told the first one, we probably spent about 30 or 40,000 dollars to produce.”

“The company has grown from just the two of them to almost a thousand employees with revenue of more than three hundred and fifty million dollars a year”

“We wanted to be self-funded, and we lived incredibly frugally. For at least three years, we ate ramen noodles, which were eight for a dollar, and turkey hot dogs on a hot plate, because it was about 50 cents a meal, and we lived with our parents for a few year…”

“The very first time we went to a very large toy show where you would exhibit to retailers and show them your products, and the agent who we had hired to help us make our puzzles had a display set up just down the hall from us with our exact puzzles.”

“It reminded us that there's a higher burden on us because we take our products really personally. And we think that everyone in every day is going to take all the time to explain everything about it the way that we, the inventors would. And that's not always t…”

“So we went to the library, and we'd look at a lot of children's books, and we'd look for illustrators that we liked, and we would contact illustrators, and we'd see who might want to help illustrate this.”

“People actually still want things that are nostalgic and make them remember their past, but they don't want them dusty and like they found them in some old attic. They want them, you know, injected with pizzazz and brought to today.”

“I think we walked out of there knowing that we wanted to start by doing some interactive products for children, things that they could really interact with rather than be, ah, passive recipients of.”

“Our first company name that we called ourselves was Lights, Camera, Interaction.”

“We decided that we wanted to make a program for children that would be groundbreaking in that children wouldn't sit there and watch it. They would actually participate with the program. And so we literally wrote, scripted, produced, directed, cast, wrote music…”

“I mean, 50% of what we make is still wood. And then Other materials, we use a lot of metal, we use canvas but mostly not plastic.”

“We produced a video a year for three years, and we had three videos out there in relationships now with, I'd say probably, I'm gonna guess a couple thousand retailers.”

“Probably I think all told the first one, we probably spent about 30 or 40,000 dollars to produce.”

“It reminded us that there's a higher burden on us because we take our products really personally. And we think that everyone in every day is going to take all the time to explain everything about it the way that We, the inventors would. And that's not always t…”

“People actually still want Things that are nostalgic and make them remember their past, but they don't want them dusty and like they found them in some old attic. They want them, you know, injected with pizzazz and brought to today.”

“Well, by this time, we had expanded beyond New England, but definitely the small independent stores. We were firmly convinced that that was the only way we could really get our products out there.”

“We had, I believe we had a thousand assortments, and we literally, by the third day of Toy Fair, we sold out.”

“We wanted to be self-funded, and we lived incredibly frugally for at least three years. We ate ramen noodles, which we ate for a dollar, and turkey hot dogs on a hot plate, because it was about 50 cents a meal, and we lived with our parents for a few years unt…”

“Because our feeling has always been, if we copy every good model out there, at very best, what does that mean? We're going to be mediocre by definition, because we are simply following and copying what everyone else is doing.”

“I mean, and we don't have, you know, we're not a hit-driven company. We joke that we have a lot of singles and doubles. We don't really want home runs because we don't want it here today gone tomorrow. We're an evergreen company. We want our toys to be around …”

“The very first time we went to a very large toy show where you would exhibit to retailers and show them your products, and the agent who we had hired to help us make our puzzles had a display set up just down the hall from us with our exact puzzles.”

“I think we walked out of there knowing that we wanted to start by doing some interactive products for children, things that they could really interact with rather than be, ah, passive recipients of.”

“Our first company name that we called ourselves was Lights, Camera, Interaction.”

“50% of what we make is still wood and then Other materials. We use a lot of metal. We use canvas but mostly not plastic.”

“Behind my desk I have about, I can't even fit them anymore, maybe 500 toys that were all my very favorite toys that failed in a big way, some of them entire categories, because every day I want to remind myself when I come to work and come to my desk that the …”

“One of the things we did was we took a lot of the earnings that we made from Paw Patrol, and we bought Melissa and Doug, and the reason for that was to have, to even out the ups and downs of the toy industry, and Melissa and Doug is a very stable, you know, op…”