How Photonics Revolutionize Toy Manufacturing: A Deep Dive with John Ellis

EP041_07-24-24_John Ellis

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 in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Welcome to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. I’m your host, Jason Hsieh. And today I’m calling in from my new office in Tijuana, Mexico, and today we’re thrilled to have John as our guest. And John is a seasoned entrepreneur, and he was also a optical [00:01:00] engineer, which is a very interesting background. He had made significant contribution in the toy industry. He have done a lot of different project over his career as a engineer and also as entrepreneur. In today’s episode, we’ll be uncover some of the journey behind some of the innovative, product that he have designed over his career and also even maybe get see some demo of some of the new product he’s working on. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today, John. 

John Ellis: Thank you, Jason. It’s been a pleasure to learn about you and your journey and entrepreneurship and the toy industry. And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to have a conversation.

Jason Hsieh: Can you start off by telling our audience a little bit about your background and how do you even started the current company that you have? 

John Ellis: Sure. I can, say with some certainty, I’m completely unqualified for the job that I have now. I have my college background was at a liberal arts college, and I was a history major. And my job is managing and running a team of [00:02:00] physicists who are experts in optical engineering. I have no background in science or engineering, but after 22 years of doing this, I guess I’ve learned enough to be able to keep the company rolling and keep our engineers on track. So what, we do is, in the name of the company that I’ve run and started is called Optics for Hire. An optical engineer is someone who designs systems that use light at its most basic. So it could be collecting light, the way a camera, cell phone camera collects light or sending light, the way a street light sends light or a laser. And those systems are used in billions of products and hundreds of thousands of applications. So robots use lots of optics, self driving cars, street lights, the little glowing light on your ring doorbell, medical devices that are looking at your body or your eye. You can go to the ear doctor and he’s got a optical system and otoscope that’s got some [00:03:00] illumination that’s illuminating your eardrum and then imaging it as well.

Behind all of those systems, there needs to be somebody designing the lens to send the light or collect the light. And that’s what our engineers do. They’re using simulating programs to design lenses that are collecting light, sending light, and then designing mechanical packages and electronic systems around it to manage the light or do signal processing. So it’s it’s been a fun and interesting journey and as I alluded to, it’s used in all kinds of different products. So our customers have been anywhere from Amazon to startup companies we worked on a, on actually the world’s most successful, fastest selling toy as far as this one product was in the around mid 2000s. It was the X Box connect and that system had this motion capture where sort of a random pattern of. Infrared dots that was projected onto a scene [00:04:00] and then the camera collected those, that information and determined what the people, person playing the video game, how they how they, were moving.

So that was a product that we played a small role in. And so we’re, designing and modeling these systems and then also helping people make prototypes. Not so much involved in the production of those units. So we’ve touched the toy industry, but we’ve touched a lot of industry. I mentioned the Xbox connect another one that’s related to the toy industry is that there was a Barbie doll. A few years ago maybe 10, 10, 12 years ago that had a camera in the back of the head. And then the image that you collected with that camera was projected onto the Barbie dolls t shirt.

Jason Hsieh: Okay. 

John Ellis: So Mattel doesn’t have a ton of probably, I don’t think it has any optical engineers. So they needed help from an outside company to help them with that. And that’s the kind of thing that we did in that case. We were looking at different ways to make the image on the shirt [00:05:00] as nice as possible. That was a funny one because we usually when we’re making our products, we’ll send, the back and forth and I have offices overseas as you do. So I have offices in Ukraine and also in Belarus, and I sent the Barbie doll, and it was returned and it’s the only time that’s ever happened to me. We don’t work on government stuff or military stuff usually. But the customs agency thought that this was a spy device. And they said, no, thanks. We don’t want to send it back. So my team never got to give it to their kids or use it.

You just, you n a customer in south africa acres of indoor marijuana need lights th to grow the marijuana pla 

You just never know the solar projects tattoo removals so we had a customer that was, I don’t know if you’ve ever, if you have any tattoos, but the lasers that they use to remove the tattoos are very [00:06:00] powerful and it looks like it really hurts.

Jason Hsieh: I don’t have any tattoos. 

John Ellis: Yeah. I never really considered one. I definitely didn’t After watching. And helping design the tattoo removal lasers. Because they’ll burn wood and they zap this thing to zap the pigment out of your skin. You need an optical engineer to design that laser system for it. 

Jason Hsieh: Don’t hold kind of crazy 

John Ellis: Tattoo removal. 

Jason Hsieh: On our previous conversation before the interview I think in 2016 you began licensing some of your own toy invention as well What motivate you to make the shift on just consulting with other people to like creating product of yourself.

John Ellis: It was just really by chance we had a customer who had some experience at selling toys and actually selling books. He had a very successful book series that included, pages that kind of animated as you turn them and he had an idea for a toy, which you know like a lot of projects [00:07:00] it didn’t work. And you still have to go down the road cause he’s cause the path from it didn’t work to, something that works, you just have to follow that path. So his idea was that we would have a toy, that would make a 3d object floating in space. And that we Kind of a panel almost like a small little racket with a whole bunch of little LEDs on it Yeah, we would spin it around really fast and because each LED at any second was in three dimensional space Yeah, I could turn on or turn off the LEDs and make it look like there was a little figure or a little

Jason Hsieh: What’s you

John Ellis: I don’t have that one with me and when I say fail, it worked. It was cool. It looked good. But that is only like the first part of making a successful product. Equally or more important is what is the price that you can make this thing? Two. And that thing you needed 50 LEDs, you need a powerful motor to spin it around, you needed some, batteries. And as you start to add up all these costs, even if it’s [00:08:00] 25 cents here, also this starts to go and go. And then you say who’s going to buy 300 toy? Because the way the market works is if you manufacture it, the price the consumers for Maybe five times more than what it costs to make it.

If it costs 40 or 50 to make, then it’s 250 product. Nobody’s going to buy that. So you can’t even pursue it. Yeah. So we, talked to different companies and learn this over months. And I was involved as a partner, he didn’t want to spend the full amount for the design. So we said, let’s share this. If it ever becomes successful and for years it wasn’t successful. 

And so what it changed to was instead of doing this three dimensional thing with this figure glows, what if we just have it spin in a circle and do a two dimensional object? And that’s going to be a lot easier. It’s going to not use 250 LEDs or 50 LEDs. You can use 10 or 15. And now we can get to a price point that’s more reasonable. That’s reasonable and here’s the next step of [00:09:00] potential, because we were going to license this technology.

We’re going to find an existing toy company that was already in the business, already had distribution, had stores, had manufacturing. And that, we would make an agreement with them and they pay us a percentage of their wholesale costs. It’s usually how it works. It could be 5%. Could be 10%. We got what we thought was a really good deal. They’re gonna pay us ten percent. I think, it was ten percent of wholesale, which is great. You never get that good of a rate usually for a toy. It’s usually five. The question is how many of these things are they going to sell? So we, they were going to do a wholesale cost of I think it was going to be 10 products, say 5 wholesale costs, right? So we would get 50 cents for each one sold. But the company that we worked with, which is called toy Smith, which is a well known company, You’ve probably seen their products. Their products are in every well company. We like the people, good organization. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. I met a few people the Astra trade show fund for instance. 

John Ellis: Yeah, it’s, they have a great business and [00:10:00] they’re good to work with. 

Jason Hsieh: Yes. 

John Ellis: However, for them, they have a huge catalog that they have. I don’t know, hundreds, maybe thousands of products. You go to their booth at the trade shows and there’s just dozens and dozens of little products. And so for them, a six, a big successful product is it sells 50, 000 units or 60. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, 

John Ellis: And if we’re only making 50 cents each and he and I are splitting it, we’re not even going to recoup.

Jason Hsieh: That’s not no margin in the product 

John Ellis: cost. And, the let alone, even if it’s successful, because who’s gonna buy it, right? So our product had like horses and fish that was the animation that was shown. It was a too d thing. It was a fan that spun around. It was basically a fan. And you held push a button. 

Jason Hsieh: Do you have one of those? 

John Ellis: I’m gonna show you the next one. I’m gonna show you where it actually succeeded, which is my next one. 

Jason Hsieh: Okay. 

John Ellis: So first one, 3D product worked. Money didn’t work out. Second one, product worked price point was pretty good, business partnership wasn’t so great. Because the content was just like a horse jumping over a fence or something. 

So [00:11:00] now we move to the one that’s actually successful. And this is all due to my partner, Rufus, who was just, He’s doggedly pursuing this over years, where he finds a new partner, which is called CandyRific. So CandyRific is a company that had an innovation of discovery not related to technology, but related to selling. And their innovation was that if you put a toy in the candy aisle, then you could attract the attention of kids and their parents. So Candyrific sells toys that have, happen to have a little bit of candy inside, and they’re have distribution at Walmart, Target CVS, you see them everywhere. This is an example of one of their toys, you’ve probably seen these things around. And they have all different kinds of toys. Products they have ones that are just fans and they have ones with star wars characters on. Yeah So there’s you know, two innovations here on the business side that I think are interesting. First is it’s got candy. So there’s candy inside [00:12:00] here. It’s just selling your candy aisle. Another I guess there’s three innovations One is that they take all the cost out that they’re very good at driving their cost down Okay, and the third one is that this is this it’s made by Candy rfi, but if you’re buying this, it’s Jurassic Park. 

Jason Hsieh: Ah, they have licensing? Yes. That’s big. They have licensing. 

John Ellis: So Toy Smith, which was the one that didn’t work out, we had the horse jumping over a fence. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. That’s nothing too exciting. Yeah. 

John Ellis: When we work with Candy rfi. There’s an Elsa Anna. There’s a there’s a marvel. 

Jason Hsieh: Turn it on for me. I’ve never seen it. 

John Ellis: So this is, this is, if I turn it on, we’ll start to see. 

Jason Hsieh: Whoa. Okay. 

John Ellis: Jurassic Park 

Jason Hsieh: content. 

John Ellis: So there’s 10 seconds of Jurassic Park. Content and then 

Jason Hsieh: this is cool 

John Ellis: because, and then since they’re licensing it there’s a frozen one and then all the stuff. now we’re at a price point, all the wholesale costs. That’s maybe like 3 or something like [00:13:00] that. 

Jason Hsieh: Are they selling it in Disneyland? This is yeah, 

John Ellis: yeah. That’s one of their customers. So then, and also they’re not going to pay a 10 percent because Disney gets if Candy Refric sells his toy, they got to pay Disney because that’s why the people are buying it. They’re paying. I don’t know what they’re paying you 5%, 10%, 

Jason Hsieh: yeah. Usually 15 percent in the licensing industry was a minimum guarantee over two years. That’s a typical arrangement. 

John Ellis: Yeah so they get 50%. So now we’re not getting 10%, we’re getting like 3%. And the wholesale cost isn’t 5, so it costs 3. However, because of where they are in the candy aisle the price point the content they’re selling millions of them, right? Yeah That does work as invention licensing. So that was the path that we went on that from a toy that was like this idea 3d toy very expensive 2d toy found the partner business part didn’t really work to something that now this is great It works for them and it [00:14:00] works for us and it’s a long time running You know successful product and we help develop the animation and I guess I should have said earlier. We did get a patent on this. So that was that’s what they’re that’s what they’re licensing. But just to tell a story about you know This and how they drive cost and what that means if you’re developing your own toy there are 15 little leds here. 

Jason Hsieh: Oh, there’s 15 on it. Okay 15 

John Ellis: 15 little tiny leds 

Jason Hsieh: Okay.

John Ellis: Now the toy is going to work better. We believed that the visual would look a little better if it was 16. 

Jason Hsieh: Oh, you think so? 

John Ellis: And we said it needs to be 16. And Candyrific, they know, a lot better than we do. And if we were going to add the 16th LED, they would have to use a different processor, which would cost 18 cents more. Yeah, and the other led and they said no way it’s too much. We can’t do it You know, we’re not we don’t want to add I think it was 18 or 16 cents 

Jason Hsieh: Oh their number really well to 

John Ellis: the bill of materials because 16 cents of the bill of [00:15:00] materials adds another 50 cents to the wholesale cost and another yeah Two dollars to the customer or whatever it is. No way so and that was stunning to me because you know our business optics that we do a lot of these systems are thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars and here we are, arguing over 16 cents. That was definitely interesting. Of course, the toy industry is very price driven.

So if you have an invention, you need to know your numbers and you need to know how you’re going to get it to the price point. 

Jason Hsieh: 100 percent is especially if you’re selling at the volume they are the margin of like 18 cent can make a huge difference. That’s a very unique story. Thank you so much for sharing that with our audience.

My next question is like, how do you stay ahead of all the technology advancement in both optical engineering, which you specialize in and also toy design? 

John Ellis: I would say that the work that we do is based on physics principles that have been around for hundreds of years. It’s [00:16:00] mathematics and we’re applying it to, all different areas. So really, our customers are the people who are in the cutting edge. So we have a customer right now, who is working on, basically optical processing. Computer processor, that’s not electronic, that’s doing photonic switching and stuff. This is like really advanced stuff. And we don’t, really know about that. We don’t know how to do that exactly, but we know how to create the lenses and things that do what they need to do. So we’re just applying science and physics to these new applications. Same with self driving cars, right?

So it’s, a laser you have to have a spot that goes out and hits the scene. So how do you design a lens that makes a laser spot? And then there’s a lens that collects the laser spot. So how do you, design that? That’s what we do. The figuring out all the software, how to make the self driving car drive. That’s other people’s expertise. And in terms of the toy industry, in terms of consumer products, I guess what we’ve what I’ve been thinking about over the past year since we worked in this licensing [00:17:00] is finding ways to do very inexpensively some of the photonics technology that to us seems basic, Yeah, I mean I have another product if you want to see another example product.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, please show us. Yeah 

John Ellis: So after we did this licensing thing with this thing and I started to learn about that we thought well, what else one of the things can we work on it? one of the ideas I had, is that I have kids who play hockey You And if you’re skating, it’s really important to have sharp hockey skates. And you have to get them sharpened every so often. And I wasn’t sure how often I needed to sharpen them, so I thought maybe we could bring some kind of sensor that would tell me how sharp something would be. So we built a sensor that would tell you how sharp a hockey skate was. However, the hockey skate market is not very big. But the knife market is huge and there really isn’t any product that’s a consumer based product that tells you how sharp your knife is. So I had a product idea that we would come up with a system that would tell you how sharp your knife was rather than just cutting a piece of paper. And so we created [00:18:00] this system, which we then licensed to this company called Farberware, which is owned by Lifetime Brands.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, that’s pretty cool. How do you use it? You put a, 

John Ellis: this, is a, this is basically a kind of a regular knife sharpener. There’s a course and then fine here, but this part, this slot is our sensor. And so there’s a little optical system inside of here. That’s going to be looking at the edge of the knife and it’s going to be sensing is the knife edge sharp or dull. And the way that it’s doing that is there’s a, laser and a photo receiver and light is shooting up and hitting the edge of the knife and then bouncing back and telling us how much light is there and the more light the duller. So let me just show you how this works. 

Jason Hsieh: Interesting. 

John Ellis: So this is a I turn on the sensor, okay, and this knife here is sharp. At this part. Okay. But I’ve intentionally, dulled it. I thought I intentionally dulled it. 

Jason Hsieh: So it’ll give you a light? Is the light an indicator? 

John Ellis: The light is indicating it. So if it’s green, it’s sharp. So it goes [00:19:00] sharp here. 

Jason Hsieh: Okay. 

John Ellis: And then if it’s dull, it’s red. Okay. So that’s sharp. It’s dull at the end.

And if it’s, totally dull, use the other side of the knife where it’s, not even cutting, right? The light doesn’t even turn on. It’s so dull. Let me see if I have a better one. 

That one is all sharp. What is this one? That one’s dull here. I’ve dulled it at the end. Okay, this part is sharp, right? So the way that in the past people tell whether a knife is sharp is they cut hair off their arm. Maybe they cut a piece of paper or something like that. This is a very subjective measurement. So there is no and has never been any tool that tells you how sharp your knife is and whether you need to keep sharpening it.

Maybe you’ve started, maybe you’ve sharpened it, you don’t know whether you should keep sharpening it. That was a product that we invented that uses optics technology. And then we made a prototype. We spent time to figure out, could it be made [00:20:00] inexpensively? And we had all that information in a patent. When we had a patent, when we had a prototype, When we had quotes from factories that said, yeah, you could make this for a good price. Then we went to potential licensing partners, including this one, Arborware to see if they wanted it. And they, did. So they, gave us a license and they’re paying us a percentage. And they’re doing the, they did the final design. They did the manufacturing. And then they have good distribution. So they’ve had this on, QVC, it’s on Amazon. They’ve had it in, I don’t know different, other retailers. But that was taking a complex optics technology and then putting it in consumer product.

Jason Hsieh: How long does that take your team to create something as complicated as that? 

John Ellis: First we did skate blades and that took a while. And then we decided we didn’t want to do skate blades, we want to do knives. So the knife thing probably took six months to develop. And the knife tester took six months, but then it takes a while to patent, then it takes a while to find a partner. Then the partner takes a year to to bring it out [00:21:00] when you sign a licensing deal, it’s usually they don’t know, they’re not going to start making it the next day usually they, have a year or something like that, and if they don’t start making it, selling it in a year, and then you get your patent back and if they don’t hit certain production volumes sell certain number of units then you get it back those are the basic things in the license and dealers, you know What percentage am I going to get? What are the minimum orders that they’re going to give you What’s the timeline how long are they going to have this? Exclusivity, assuming they have exclusivity. 

Jason Hsieh: It’s a very complicated and time consuming process. Will you mind sharing with the audience how big is your team right now, including yourself?

John Ellis: We have 12 engineers. 

Jason Hsieh: Oh, wow okay. 

John Ellis: And most of the time we’re working on the optical design stuff. So we did two licensing ones. And then about two years ago, we thought, let’s do our own thing. And again, is there precision technology that we can create something that doesn’t exist in the [00:22:00] physical world using things that we know about? Okay, so this is a roll of tape. And it’s just a standard roll of tape. And what I found, as I got older, that one that I needed reading glasses, which I didn’t do.

I didn’t know, but when I turned 40, I started to lose my vision and that isn’t fun and I would be shipping things to my colleagues and I would lose the edge of the tape roll and then I’d waste five minutes trying to figure out where it was because I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t have fingernails, whatever. So we created this little device here and you put it on the edge of the roll of tape. Okay. And when you roll it around, When it finds the edge, you see that little light coming on? That light, and show it, but that light is basically telling me that’s where the edge is. 

Jason Hsieh: Oh, okay. Okay. You saved the shipping department a lot of freaking time.

John Ellis: And [00:23:00] then, yeah, especially when the shipping department is me, or you’re returning your Amazon packages or whatever, your home. So then, I use the scraper thing. Now that I know where it is I can use the scraper to pull up the edge and lift it up and I’m, back in business. That’s the latest invention and that’s one that we’re selling ourselves. And that’s also been interesting. 

Jason Hsieh: How’s the sales for this one? 

John Ellis: Pretty good. We placed our first order, I think we made 2000 units to start. And and that was about just under a year ago. And we’ve sold about 1, 200 of them. And so it’s not a home run yet, but I don’t think we’ve, I think there’s a lot more people who get frustrated with tape that, we’ll be reaching and, we’ve tried different selling methods and I’ve, learned we’re in ACE hardware and we’re in on Amazon and other 

Jason Hsieh: how’s the sales on Amazon for this particular product?

John Ellis: Sales on Amazon is okay. Sales at Ace Hardware is not too good. I think that I needed to do better packaging, which is something that I learned because this is such a new thing, I would have to do it again. I would do a better package that explained it. [00:24:00] Sales on Amazon is tricky because no one is looking for this.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s no search volume, which is always going to be tricky. 

John Ellis: Yeah. Yeah, it’s not like a water bottle that you would search for a water bottle you could find a better water bottle, but there is no search volume for this. So the thing that has been most helpful is more discovery platforms. There’s one called grommet, which is the discovery platform and then influencers and stuff. So people Going on their Instagram feed. 

Jason Hsieh: Did you find a Kickstarter campaign for this? Because it’s so innovative. 

John Ellis: I didn’t, I might, I don’t know, I just, I’m scared of Kickstarter. Have you done Kickstarters? 

Jason Hsieh: I’ve done Kickstarter before, yes. Yeah, 

John Ellis: they scared me. 

Jason Hsieh: It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of work. 

John Ellis: Yeah, they kind of scared me. You need to build an email list of 5, 000 people. 

Jason Hsieh: We did a Kickstarter many years ago for one of our weighted toys, so our design is a weighted blanket that you can write on using a water pen. It’s an interactive weighted [00:25:00] blanket. However, as you think about the demographic that shop on Kickstarter, They are looking for the latest like toys, the latest backpack, the latest board game. They are not looking for a product to help kids with special needs. That’s just not where our audience is. Despite all the marketing effort, we only raised like 10, 000 at the end of the campaign, which is not a lot of money.

It was a very tricky platform for us, especially for the type of product that we designed, which is for kids with special needs. It’s a very niche product. A market, but I think for product that is innovated to have a mass market approach and that is also catchy and people that’s like shareable, that’s where the kickstarter can really shine. You want to have product that can potentially go viral on social media. 

John Ellis: Right, So you’re of that 10, 000, how much of that do you think was like kickstarter and how much of it was just people you sent to kickstarter? 

Jason Hsieh: I would say a lot of it is people we send to Kickstarter. 

John Ellis: You have to find them, right? You have to find them on Facebook or whatever. Yeah, [00:26:00] it’s expensive. Yeah. 

Jason Hsieh: It’s expensive. It is. Like I said, it only work the best for the product that go viral naturally on the platform. Yeah. Then you can drive people in and you create even more of an upward spiral. Then you can raise like millions of money, like dollars. But you require a certain type of product. And unfortunately, the product, I try wasn’t one of it. 

John Ellis: Yeah, I’ve been talking recently to distributors in Japan and there’s a, there’s another Japanese Kickstarter platform. I’ve forgotten the name. Are you familiar? 

Jason Hsieh: I forgot the name as well because I haven’t done that in Japan. That’s one in Japan. 

John Ellis: You haven’t tried that one? 

Jason Hsieh: I haven’t tried that one. Yeah, because in Japan it’s even worse for my brand because the Again talking about the awareness and people not searching for the product that you sell. I have the same exact issue But in Japan it’s even worse, because like I shared with you when we first met, there’s a huge taboo around disability in Japan in general. That’s what forced me and my wife to move from Japan to the U. S. [00:27:00] because we couldn’t find help and support. It means people are also not searching for the type of product that I create in Japan as much. That’s the struggle with at least for my product. I’m pretty sure some other product might work as long as it’s innovated and that’s something Japanese consumer like, and that’s something I specialize in too. And actually taking and helping some of our clients to launch in Amazon Japan right now with some of their tools. 

John Ellis: So what distribution method was most successful for you for, that product? Amazon. Okay. Because people were searching for that. They were searching for weighted blankets or something.

Jason Hsieh: Yes. Yes. There’s such volume in us for my project. Yes. Yeah. 

John Ellis: And then you could, because they were looking for weighted blankets, you could be the coolest weighted blanket. You could be the one that was. 

Jason Hsieh: Exactly. So we are winding down in today’s interview. The last question I want to get your input on for our listener and the audience that interested in bringing their own toy design to the market. Because you are, a [00:28:00] really good inventor. You create all this different, wonderful product in different spaces across different vertical. What kind of advice will you give someone that’s navigating both on the product design side and also on the licensing side you will give to someone that’s new to this industry?

John Ellis: I think solving a problem that you have is, good because then you have at least one customer. And if you can build something that solves it for you, then there’s probably other people. The second one is, you’ve got to have all of these things the product has to work. The product has to be able to be manufactured for the right price. You have to have protectable IP, or you should. So you have to go through each of these steps, do a patent search, search to see if somebody’s already selling it on Alibaba, find a vendor, you have to figure out all this stuff in tandem before you even really want to put a ton of time into it.

And then if all of those things are green lights then [00:29:00] you need to make a prototype and try it and make sure that you’re doing things in small steps. I only made 2000 my first production run, but as I said, I wished I’d done different packaging, so I I probably should have made, 500 and then I would’ve learned the packaging was better. ’cause there’s just so many that part of the path from like your idea to something that’s successful. There are so many landmines or pitfalls or traps. If you put too much money or have too much hope or put too much time into any particular idea without thinking about each of those landmines you’re gonna run into trouble. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. That’s a really good piece of advice. So where can our audience find you online? 

John Ellis: I’m on LinkedIn. John Ellis, I think one of the few people, John Ellis in optics, And then also my websites are opticsforhire.com and this tool is that roll ranger, that’s the name of the product rollranger.store. 

Jason Hsieh: Thank you so much. 

And thank you [00:30:00] everyone for tuning in to today’s episode of Toy Business Unboxed. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support and would love it if you could leave us a review and share the podcast with your friends and colleagues. For more resources, tips, and the latest update in the toy industry, visit our website at toy-launch.com. And join the next conversation and connect with us on social media using hashtag #ToyBusinessUnboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestion for future episode until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, and keep bringing joys to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on toy business on box podcast.

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