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Sam Harwell, owner of Big Time Toys, knows how the toy industry game is played.
"Product is king," Harwell says. "I've known people who are smart and everybody likes them, but they can't grow the company because they don't have the right product."
Finding successful products has fueled Big Time Toys' revenue to about $10 million in less than 10 years. Big Time Toys launched in 1995 with its first product, Sock'em Boppers, oversized cushioned gloves for kids to box against each other. A has-been from the 1970s, the toy had lost its luster 25 years ago and could be bought at a cheap price.
"All we did was create a market plan around the same product to revive it," Harwell says.
Between 1996 and 1998, Harwell sold 3 million sets of Sock'em Boppers. But once the product's popularity peaked, Big Time Toys needed another big hit. Looking to replace the most popular toy is a constant necessity for toy companies, and they must always be looking for the next big toy to sustain growth.
Picking a toy with promise isn't easy. For every 300 toy concepts Big Time Toys considers, it spends resources on 30...