How One Idea Became a Toy Sensation: The Nobory Toys Story with Arturo Alvarez

EP015_05-01-24_Arturo Alvarez

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “Major retailers.” “Yeah, yeah.” “We think this is cool.” “The thing with Amazon is just, It become more and more complicated over the years.” “Yeah, maybe you can also consider to create more online resources.” will guide you through the enchanting world of toy design, marketing, and manufacturing. Now let the unboxing begin!

Jason Hsieh: Hello welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. In today’s episode, I’m thrilled to have Arturo, the founder and CEO of Nobory Toys joining us to unpack the magic behind his Innovative Toys product, and also sharing some of his own entrepreneurial journey with us. Thank you for joining the show with us today. How you doing? 

Arturo Alvarez: Good, what’s going on? How you doing? 

Jason Hsieh: I’m doing [00:01:00] good. Can you first start telling the audience a little bit about the inspiration behind your toy company and what was your entrepreneur journey look like? 

Arturo Alvarez: Yeah, sure. First, thank you for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. For me, I am new to the toy industry.

I have been in the industry for three years, and most of that has been the development of my first product line. Before those three years, if you had asked me if I had ever thought about picking up a career in the toy industry, I would laugh uncontrollably because it was not even on the radar.

But here I am today. So how did I get here? It’s because my son. He was five months at the time and let me back up a little bit. I had served several years in the military, I had really developed this passion for mentoring young [00:02:00] soldiers. I carried that ever into my civilian career and now I’m about to have a son and I was like, Great. Like I really get to be a mentor and really see the impact of my guidance as this child gets older. So, my son was five months at the time and I saw him developing a bond with a plush, right? A stuffed animal. It was a great comfort toy, a soother but being that mentor, I wanted more out of it, more functionality. Ways that I could use to develop some of his motor skills and his cognitive development, things like that. So I looked online for a stuffed animal. There’s got to be something where you can put accessories on that are sensory developmental.

Nothing. I couldn’t find anything in the marketplace. I decided to take this endeavor on. The funny thing about that story is, I had just quit my job like six months prior to [00:03:00] that to do real estate and I was doing sales, industrial sales for eight years. And so I came to my wife and I was like, Hey, I want to be a real estate agent because I’m not being fulfilled, I don’t feel like I’m making an impact on people’s lives. So she backed me after a long conversation and I quit my job. Then six months after that, come to her again I was like, Hey, I have this idea again. And I want to make yet another pivotal change in my life, are you willing to support me? And thank you to my lovely wife. She did, she just want to make sure we had all our ducks in a row. But after I laid out a plan we ran with it and here we are today. 

Jason Hsieh: Do you have a product that you’d like to show the audience? Because you have a very interesting product and it’s hard to describe it. So for those of you that’s listening to the podcast, please watch the YouTube video as well. Arturo, you want to go ahead and show one of the product and kind of explain what is your product? Because that leads to my next question, how [00:04:00] do you ensure your product design is different than all the other competition in the toys market that is also in the plush space?

Arturo Alvarez: Sure. So behind me here, you can see there’s six characters. But I got one here. It’s just a plush, right? There’s a little bit more than your average stuffed animal. I got a lot of testing done for this so that it could be rated zero plus. That was very important because I don’t know if I threw this term out earlier, but that bond that individuals at a young age, babies, right? They start to connect with whether it’s a stuffed animal, blanket pillow, it’s called a transitional object. It’s so important in our lives to have something like that. It could even be a person. For my wife, we have a little girl now and my wife is her transitional object. the only one we can see her.

But so you know, at glance it may look like stuffed animal. But, I [00:05:00] had focus groups. We did a lot of research. It’s weighted the right size, all of that. So a lot went into just the stuffed animal itself. Which I don’t call it a stuffed animal per se, it’s more, I call it a comfort toy.

But the activity suits and this is what makes it novel, are these activity suits that slip on. These activity suits are interchangeable with any one of these characters. So that was another thing that we went back and forth with, I hired a consultant designing company and we went back and forth just to make sure that we got this right.

So there are six of these and each one of these suits are geared towards developmental milestones as the child gets older. And why is that important for the child? I’ll ask you, Jason, what was the most important time of your life? Could you tell me what comes to mind?

Jason Hsieh: When my first son was born?

Arturo Alvarez: I would say, jokingly, obviously, I’d say wrong. You’re wrong. The most important time of all of our lives, it is zero to five years of [00:06:00] age because we are building the foundation of who we are today. You know the things that we take for granted right like how to eat how to tie our shoes, the way we speak and socialize, right? All of that It’s based at its root right in those critical years. For instance, this is Sammy the sloth and she’s wearing the high contrast suit. Literally from day one to about three months, children see very blurry, right? They can’t see very well. They open their eyes for a little bit because things are bright. You still want to stimulate them and their vision. They can’t really hear too well either. So getting them to move their eyes is very important and high contrast is the perfect way to do that. If you were to squint, that’s when high contrast really you can, it’s not identical, but you’ll be able to see how high contrast pops out when blurry vision. So with my little one who was just born. Last, she’s a year now, but last [00:07:00] March a one, I was in the hospital and I would take the high contrast suit and just for a couple seconds throughout the day, this was the only thing she could lock on and she would move back and forth. And just by doing that, you are already bridging neural pathways inside of the brain. So that just goes to show you just how important it is and to get a jumpstart on cognitive development. As they grow older, I have other suits. 

I think I got one like tummy time. This one’s geared towards tummy time. This is the one, two, three, look at me. And as you can see, it has tags. All along the bodysuit, so they can pull and that’s you want to develop their pincher grasp is what they call it. Great for dexterity. So not just cognitive, right? This is also for fine motor skill. 

Jason Hsieh: Fine motor skill. Yeah. Okay. 

Arturo Alvarez: And then I have one here. I don’t have it in front of me, but I have two pretend play outfits. There’s the night suit and the little [00:08:00] builder. Those are good for socializing, for social emotional, and then also imagination pretend play that a night suit is like little PJ’s. Funny enough, I got my son to brush their teeth with that suit. 

Jason Hsieh: Oh, whoa. Nice. 

Arturo Alvarez: Yeah. So like we would get his character ready and we put his PJs on, both of the PJs, and then we would go to brush their teeth for a week. I’d say, can you help Scout? This is Scout the Hound. Can you help him brush his teeth? 

Jason Hsieh: Oh, okay. Okay. 

Arturo Alvarez: That’s the novelty of the toy, right? Great, lovable, fun character. But this is that fun educational aspect that grows with the child. So there’s a lot more purpose. So tying back to my story, like now I can be that mentor with my son daughter or anybody else, right? But also do it with something that they have built this bond with and so this is not just a stuffed animal for my son. This is Scout, his best buddy, that’s there for him whenever he’s crying, when he’s [00:09:00] scared of the dark and we’re not just limiting to that but we’re also playing like this one, I do one two, three blast off. It’s all these experiences and memories we’re building, but the most important thing out of all of this and this is what I have really wrapped my company, this is like the main pillar for my company is creating toys that engage both the caregiver and the child in some form or function.

Engagement is the best part. Sure, children can develop on their own and learn and grow, but I like to say where the magic really happens is where the caregiver is getting involved and trying to play. I know everybody’s busy, just a couple minutes throughout the day I think.

Jason Hsieh: What is the ideal age range for the product that you currently offer?

Arturo Alvarez: The demographic is zero to about six years of age. When I go to local trade [00:10:00] shows. I have eight year old kids come up, nine year old to like teenagers. Just because the fact that it is a cute character and they have this story, each one has a personality and there’s a story behind it. That’s why I didn’t package the suit with the toy, in case older kids really wanted the product. 

Jason Hsieh: I know your products also got listed on the TT PM’s most wanted list. Can you tell the listener a little bit more about that particular program? 

Arturo Alvarez: That was a great honor actually. Bob Glaser, oversees that whole thing with TTPM, the toy authority. And I got connected with him at the Astra toy show last year, marketplace and academy. After speaking with him, he presented this idea of, Hey, here in New York, we do this annual toy show where it’s not really open to the public per se, but [00:11:00] it’s really big for like press marketing and then we also pick in honor and award. Some other like toy companies who you know everybody who’s who’s coming out to the event. There’s a lot of people there and some new like me Manufacturers, and then you got big names like Hasbro. When I got there, they unveil this table that they have at the very front and it’s this, the small selection of hot toys for the upcoming season that they push and promote. They picked my toy and I was very honored. I had no idea, very unexpected and just as a good feeling to be put in that bunch where there are some of these big names in the toy industry who have really obviously over the decades and years. 

Jason Hsieh: Do they have a review committee that review the product and decide which one they are going to highlight at the event? How does that whole process work? 

Arturo Alvarez: I’m not really sure how [00:12:00] that whole process works. I believe it’s a committee. I know again it’s a small selection of beyond that. I’m not too privy to that information. 

Jason Hsieh: So the reason why I asked is because a lot of the listeners are also Toys for Entrepreneurs. Do you think that is something they can also consider to get on to their wanted list? So they can also get some PRs and publicity for their toys. If so, what is the best way for other toys entrepreneur to look into that opportunity? 

Arturo Alvarez: Yeah, so I would start by reaching out to them because just in general I sent them my toys and they did a whole comprehensive review. They not only did a review, but they also posted it on online through social media. And if you’re not familiar with the toy authority, you need to be because some of their reviews all of their reviews really are in depth and then they give a scoring at the end and they’re not biased by any means like they give fair scorings [00:13:00] and I told them, you know when they had reached out to me. I was like, man, this is awesome opportunity because when I first started I would just be watching their toys reviews to familiarize myself with the toy industry and I would be playing it everywhere in the house to the point where my wife would get sick of hearing everything about toys, but it was a great way. They do this in depth review and talk about all the intricate details of your product, and I love that. They took this concept of a plush toy with the activities and really dove into it.

I think it was great, nicely done. So that would be the 1st step to get them to review your product. And then the 2nd step would be look into going to the, media show that they do in New York.

Jason Hsieh: Do they charge a fee to just do the review? 

Arturo Alvarez: No, I don’t believe so. You send in their product and they select it, if they want to review it or not. 

Jason Hsieh: Can you share some of your insight into the Challenges that you have faced as a toy entrepreneur in the [00:14:00] industry. How have you overcome some of them over the past three years? 

Arturo Alvarez: Man, that could be like a whole week. I’ll just I’ll touch on like the big ones. Through a process of from highlight from the start to where I am today. So starting again, never expected to be in the toy industry. Before I even started developing the toy, I was trying to soak up all the knowledge of like how to be a good father, what to expect, and like even to the point where I was researching all this stuff about the baby and what my wife’s going through.

So I really get into the data and the numbers and the research. And so like I was so ready to do that with toys. I dive in and start searching, looking, and come to find out it is difficult to find information about toys because the companies who have been around for a [00:15:00] long time they gatekeep that stuff and I understand there’s a lot of IP. Getting costs, manufacturer connections and the process from a breadboard prototype to fully finished production piece. I’m very thankful that when I did hit that blocking point again, that was one of the biggest challenges that I partnered with a consultant, a toy consultant and his names it’s design edge and my point of contact,

Jason Hsieh: Matt. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 

Arturo Alvarez: And great team. I got nothing but great things to say about that group. He took this idea I had in my head and this, I had sewed up together like a little teddy bear. I don’t have it near me, but if I show you, it’d probably give you nightmares. In the suit and everything. He’s so good at what he’s doing. I think he’s been doing toys since he was six. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

Arturo Alvarez: And he was able to see, My vision just by me [00:16:00] showing him this scary looking stuffed animal. The head like, didn’t even attach it fell off . So it’s amazing to get to that to this they also do package design. Matt went to school for package design, so like that’s his bread and butter. So I would say when you hit that roadblock and you have the extra capital. Partner with somebody who’s has legacy in the toy industry, right? These experts, because, they’re going to have all these shortcuts and things, all these pain points that you will find out later on if you do it yourself, they’ll have that worked out and dialed in. Further down the road, I had to get to a point where now I need to launch this toy. I wanted to bring a different perspective in and also find a community where I can just reach out to people like people have like on Reddit, right? Where they’re like, man, today I was trying to build a toy. [00:17:00] Running tall, these issues and people can answer that. So I stumbled upon Agile and yeah. The toy coach and dove into that. She’s got like a whole course built out with like several modules. It can really give you some insight. She has gone above and beyond on what she offers for the price and these modules are so in depth. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, we are actually planning to partner with Agile and creating a dedicated module about Amazon product launches for it.

Arturo Alvarez: Oh, y’all are going to do great. Yes, she’s just a a wealth of knowledge. Mastermind and she’s really good at putting these modules, her and her team, putting these modules together. Sometimes I felt like I had homework to do, it was like, I felt like I was in school, but that’s good. That’s what you need to learn and pick up all and immerse yourself.

And not only that, she has done a great job building out this community of other inventors, [00:18:00] manufacturers, people who’ve been doing it for maybe five, 10 years, or people who are just starting like me, and it’s awesome just to have that community at any point in time, you got a question. So for launching it was just great to build off the momentum of everything that I picked up. Going through that course and finding that whole community. 

And then last year, you launch and it’s not anything what like you expect, right? I think we launched at the beginning of last year and it was like drinking water through a fire hose. I had this whole business plan built out within the first three months that was thrown out and it was like, what do we got next? Let’s try something different throwing that out, trying something else. Just trying to ride that momentum of those initial cells, but man, there’s just a lot of ups and downs and anybody who’s an entrepreneur, not just in the toy industry. Understands, you know what I’m talking about. It’s just a roller coaster of [00:19:00] emotions. One of the biggest lessons that i’ve learned last year was, the way you vet partners, vendors. And so I had given. Matt just joined the chat.

Jason Hsieh: Oh yeah. Hey man, Matt is watching that interview.

Arturo Alvarez: But one of the lessons that I learned was a really hard one for me, where was at Astra, I had picked up a retailer. I was excited, we landed a big order it was like 10, 000 order. And then months later I’m struggling to get payment. Drags out going into the end of the month, into the year Q4. I can’t get them on the horn.

Now I’m getting worried. You really have to come to realization. It’s okay, I got to cut my losses. What do I do moving forward? How do I assess? How I can protect the company next time. And looking back, there were a lot of things that I could have done, but the main specific thing is you got to add a little bit more friction to the buying [00:20:00] process. Not vetting the company like I did, where you look on and see if they have history, Google them, things like that. It’s getting them to sign a form. Maybe even taking a deposit 50 percent or something like that up front. I got them to confirm the invoice and everything before I shipped it. They did seem like a credible company, but I think doing like just those two other things would have saved us a lot of heartache. In the long run and lessons learned, a tough one, but it makes you stronger. 

Jason Hsieh: How do you navigate the digital marketing aspect of the launch? What kind of insight or what kind of strategy that was working well, or wasn’t working well that you would like to share with the audience?

Arturo Alvarez: I I don’t feel like I navigate the digital market. I’m more or less stumble along, right? Digital marketing is a beast. There are so many segments to e-commerce and social media like they could all be broken up into [00:21:00] specific jobs. Like digital marketing, right? I was never big on social media before any of this. That was like baptized by fire just like trying to learn social media and I think I’m still getting the grasp of it and trying to build that but a lot of that, what I found is pay to play. It’s not just financial, right? You got to play to the algorithm and sometimes you got to throw a trendy song on a video you put out or maybe a picture down to the hashtags, or you literally got to pay to play where you are paying for advertisements. And that stuff gets expensive because it’s hit or miss. You can spend 500 bucks like that and maybe get one cell with that off of it. 

Jason Hsieh: It’s definitely a tough landscape to navigate sometimes. 

Arturo Alvarez: Definitely. I tried some of the influencer stuff last year Oh yeah. And, and we did that. It’s [00:22:00] like a volumes game, right? Because you have some influencers that will get the product and never even 

Jason Hsieh: do anything about it. Yes. 

Arturo Alvarez: And then you have influencers that will get the product and review, maybe just post a photo and it’s like just the product like this. So you know, you could tell him all day, but it’s we’ve been doing free product and so they’re going to do what they want to do at the end of the day. My real push has been creating dialogue and content with myself. Because again I know I started with this toy, the adventure crew, but for me, Nobori toys is actually the passion, the vision moving forward and it’s about empowering caregivers to feel like they can take a couple minutes to engage with their little ones and not only do that, but have the confidence and knowledge to understand why it’s important that they learn to reach at a [00:23:00] very young age and pull things down.

I think by having this platform and this brand that I’ve built out, it’s something that I meant to do is like communicate to caregivers, all these little tidbits of information on purposeful play and why it’s so important zero to five, some of the stuff that I was talking about earlier, all these things.

So that’s the mission first is becoming using this platform, not just to sell the product, but also sell information and everything that I’ve learned because I haven’t just learned toys, right? My toys are specifically towards very young Children and educational aspects. I want to share that knowledge because if you look at some toys now they’re just now starting to come out with what the benefits are of this toy and how to use it, but 2, 3 years ago, that wasn’t even a thing on a lot of these boxes. So I think videos are important too. 

Jason Hsieh: Have you also tried to do any kind of [00:24:00] community outreach as part of your marketing strategy? 

Arturo Alvarez: Yeah. I am huge with community outreach. That’s a big proponent in my life, not just the company, but my life. At a very young age, I remember I think it was like seven or eight where my grandpa and the family, we would go on the side of roads and pick up cans and litter, and something like that I was complaining at the time, as a kid, I’m like, my friends, they’re going swimming today and I’m out here just picking up garbage now that I’m older I’m like, man, that was so impactful to me to think about others, people I’ve never even met before to do something selfless like that. And I think large in part that led to me joining the military, serving this country. Also because my dad would watch things like Rambo and Delta four, but when I left the military, That was another void that I really wanted to fill. So I dove into [00:25:00] my local community. When I started the toy business, I just tapped that right into the community that I was already a part of. There’s this organization called Pharaohs here locally, they’re a branch off of this organization I’m a part of, it’s called the National Exchange Club. Our main like national project is prevention of child abuse and this branch to address that here locally is called Pharaohs. They deal with educating parents and rehabilitating individuals on how to parent their children from like nutrition. So it’s not just play or any things like that. Really heavy stuff. But one of the things they do is they go to hospitals for new mothers and they educate them. And I just recently donated some toys along with this first activity suit as like that starter pack. Like here’s their forever toy, hopefully.

And then here’s [00:26:00] this aspect where you can connect and bond with this child and help springboard this long lasting relationship moving forward. So that’s just some of the stuff that we’re part of locally, but yeah, outreach is a big proponent and will be moving forward as this company grows.

Jason Hsieh: That’s also something I try to incorporate some of my own toys brand with different nonprofits collaborations and really try to get back to the community. So thank you for doing that with your own toys brand as well. 

Toward the end of our interview today, the final question I would like to ask all the guests that we interview is if you have to share just one piece of advice with someone that’s just getting started in the toy industry. What would that be? 

Arturo Alvarez: I’m a big mindset guy and I think it’s important in any endeavor, especially the challenging ones that you gear your mind appropriately as best you can. What do I mean by that? Just [00:27:00] expect that it’s going to be difficult, right? Accept that upfront and then also ask yourself questions like, how much are you willing to take on? Really doing that, I think whenever you immerse yourself in this difficult task or whatever it is that you’re doing you can always look back and be like, Hey, these are the goals I’ve set mentally. This is what I said I want to do and that’s always something that you can revert and also grow off of. But if you go into something without any kind of real tangible expectations. You’re setting yourself up for failure. Being an entrepreneur is not easy at all. There are days, even the best of us will doubt yourself.

But if you have these things, almost fail safes, did you set in the beginning or in times of highs those are always things you can reach back to and connect and draw off of. So mindset is a big thing. 

Jason Hsieh: I can relate to that. You need to have a very important why. So when the things get really tough, you don’t [00:28:00] give up easily. You’re going to have multiple things that happen that you just want to give up. 

Arturo Alvarez: And you could even do that by putting in like the pillars, right? The vision statement, the mission statement that could be your why for the company and then you have your why for yourself.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. I have a really good book I can recommend for the listener that want to look into this further. There’s a book called tractions. They talk about entrepreneur operating system and one of the big component they talk about in the book is to come up with a solid vision for the company.

That’s one of the initial step if you want to be a solid business that can go on and operate with or without you. And where is the best place for the audience or the listener to find you and find you a company?

Arturo Alvarez: Yeah. So you could go to noborytoys.com, look us up and then from there at the bottom it’s all our social media handles. Again, I’m not just promoting toys. I encourage [00:29:00] people who are listening to come give us a follow because I give other kinds of advice too. Just General updates about the struggles that as entrepreneur that I go through on a day to day and we’re currently selling at a few retailers throughout nationally, and then online as far as e-commerce goes right now it’s mainly on Amazon. 

Jason Hsieh: Sounds good. I’ll make sure I put that into the show notes so the listener know where to find you. And thank you so much again for your time today and participating in our podcast.

It’s honored to have you and have you share your own entrepreneur journey in the toy industry.

Arturo Alvarez: Hey, it was honored to be here and I’m honored to be here and for your time. 

Outro: You’ve been listening to Toy Business Unboxed, hosted by Jason Hsieh. Thank you for joining us and exploring the fascinating world of toys and the ingenuity behind them.

To stay updated with the latest episodes and continue your journey into the toy business, remember to subscribe and follow us. If you found today’s episode [00:30:00] insightful, please leave a rating and review and share this podcast with others who share your passion for toys. Until next time, stay curious and keep innovating.