Welcome to the Toy Business Unboxed Podcast, where we explore the stories behind the brands, products, and people shaping the toy and game industry. In this episode, host Jason Hsieh sits down with Eric Reynolds, co-founder of Escape Mail, a company that delivers a full escape room experience through a standard letter envelope. Eric’s journey spans mobile escape room trailers, school programs across Alberta, a pandemic pivot, and two major industry disruptions in consecutive years. His story is a masterclass in resilience, creative problem solving, and knowing when to change direction without losing sight of what you believe in.
#156: Escape Rooms by Mail: Innovation, Setbacks, and Survival – Toy Business Unboxed
Episode Highlight
- 00:00 Introduction to Eric and Escape Mail
- 01:22 Eric’s Inspiration for Escape Rooms
- 02:44 Building a Mobile Escape Room Trailer
- 04:06 Escape Rooms in Schools: A Unique Opportunity
- 05:00 Designing for Multiple Students and Group Play
- 06:20 Early Challenges in Creating Mobile Escape Experiences
- 08:53 Pivot During COVID: From Trailers to Envelope Puzzles
- 10:56 Inside the Escape Mail Experience
- 13:43 Different Series and Target Audiences
- 14:30 Advice for Beginners in the Industry
- 16:02 Design Challenges: Size, Weight, and Interactivity
- 17:36 Future Plans and Industry Outlook
From Zombie Rooms to a Business Plan: How Eric Reynolds Discovered Escape Rooms
Eric Reynolds got his first taste of escape rooms in 2013 in British Columbia at a zombie-themed venue, and walked out with two distinct impressions that would shape everything he built afterward. First, he saw the medium as something with inherent value beyond entertainment, a format that could be used for education, team building, and meaningful human experiences. Second, he believed he could do it better than what he had just experienced. Those two convictions, the belief in the medium’s potential and the drive to raise the craft, have guided his work from a hobbyist garage room all the way to a commercial product shipping worldwide.
From a Garage Hobby to a Mobile Escape Room on Wheels
After building a room in his garage and testing it with friends, Eric spotted an opportunity in mobile service delivery, inspired by food trucks and mobile mechanics he saw gaining traction around him. He and his brother-in-law Paul ordered a cargo trailer manufactured in Oregon and set out to build a portable escape room operation that could go to customers rather than waiting for them to come. They relocated to Alberta to be closer to family, launched Mobile Escape, and began figuring out how to turn an empty trailer into a fully functioning dual-room experience. The trailer arrived as nothing more than plywood walls, a heater, and an air conditioner, with two complete escape rooms still to be built from scratch.
Why Alberta Schools Became Their Best Customer Base
Eric and Paul discovered early that schools in Alberta were an ideal market, thanks to strong provincial education funding for field trips and a growing appetite for experiential, on-site providers. Their mobile rooms came directly to schools, saving teachers the logistical burden of organizing off-site trips while offering something students had never experienced before. What surprised them most was how students who typically struggled in traditional classroom settings thrived inside the escape rooms, because curiosity and creativity were rewarded rather than penalized. That insight shaped not only their sales approach but also the values they carried into every product they built next.
Twelve Days, Two Rooms, and a Deadline That Could Not Move
The first major test of Eric and Paul’s resilience came before they had hosted a single paying event. Their cargo trailer arrived just fourteen days before a Calgary event drawing an expected one hundred thousand attendees, and neither of them had any background in carpentry, fabrication, or electrical work. They built two complete escape rooms in twelve days, spent the thirteenth writing the rulebook, and spent the fourteenth figuring out how to actually run and host the games. Looking back, Eric describes those two weeks as among the most stressful of his life and among the accomplishments he is most proud of.
How COVID Turned a Classroom Exercise Into a Mail-Based Business
When COVID shut everything down overnight, Eric and Paul lost around one hundred thousand dollars and faced the hard reality of having no clear path forward. The pivot came from a conversation between Paul and his wife Kara, who pointed out that Eric had spent years creating simple paper-based puzzles for the classroom portion of their school program. The concept she proposed was straightforward: take those puzzles, put them in an envelope, and ship them around the world. They launched Escape Mail as a twelve-episode subscription and had one of their best sales months ever as customers prepaid for the entire season, hungry for something to do at home.
Three Series, One Envelope, and a Thirty-Gram Weight Limit
Escape Mail offers three distinct series, each with its own tone and format. Family Secrets is the original, a lighthearted 12-episode treasure hunt built around a character named JJ and designed to be accessible for a wide audience. Shinobi is a single premium episode delivered on a 3-foot canvas scroll complete with wood, string, and a real metal key, built for a more immersive, higher-end experience. Shackleton draws from the true 1914 transantarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton and spans six episodes, offering real depth without the full twelve-episode commitment. Every product must stay under 30 grams to hit the lowest postal tier, a hard constraint that constantly creates tension between what makes the game great and what can actually fit in an envelope.
When Plans Fall Apart: The Postal Strike and the US Expansion Setback
Escape Mail’s Q4 2024 was derailed when Canada Post entered a prolonged strike right after the company had invested heavily in advertising and stocked warehouses. Eric and Paul chose to keep shipping rather than pause subscriptions, but absorbing parcel rates of seven to eight dollars per unit on a sub-fifteen dollar product gutted their margins. Their 2025 recovery plan was to crack the US market, until new trade tensions arrived one week after the team committed to it as their sole focus, with American distributors ending calls the moment they heard the company was Canadian.
Advice for Newcomers in the Toy and Game Industry
Eric’s most practical piece of advice came from a conference speaker about a year before the episode: your cost of goods sold should be twenty percent or less of your retail price. The toy and game industry is structured around a long chain of distributors, consolidators, retailers, and wholesalers, and every link in that chain takes a cut before the product reaches the consumer. Even if you sell direct and bypass those intermediaries entirely, you still face advertising costs, fulfillment fees, and platform charges that compress your margin. Eric notes that some of his own products are creeping above that twenty percent threshold and the pressure is real, which is why he does everything he can to stay at or under it. If the margin is not built in from the beginning, no volume of sales will fix the underlying math.
Conclusion
Eric Reynolds’ story is not one of smooth sailing or overnight success. It is a story of twelve-day builds, pandemic pivots, postal strikes, and trade policy shocks, each one requiring a fast decision and a willingness to rebuild from what remains. What stays consistent across every chapter is a clear belief in the product and a drive to make it better than what came before. For anyone entering the toy and game industry, his experience is a reminder that challenges are not the exception but the environment you are signing up to operate in, and the ones who thrive are the ones who expect it.
Connect with Eric Reynolds
If you’re interested in learning more about The Escape Mail or connecting with Eric Reynolds you can reach out through the following channels:
- Website: Visit The Escape Mail’s official website for the latest news, game updates, and more
- Instagram: Follow The Escape Mail on Instagram for visual updates, game previews, and creative inspiration
- Facebook: Follow The Escape Mail on Facebook for updates, discussions, and behind-the-scenes content.
Transcript
Jason Hsieh (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. Today we’re diving into the world of puzzle and creativity with Eric, a co-founder of Escape Mail, which is a mobile escape and a mastermind behind all the creation. He had been working with major brands like Lego to bring escape room to school before and later pivot to mail-based experience during pandemic. Eric’s story is one of the bold innovation and also full of surprises.
Thank you so much, Eric, for joining us on the podcast today.
Eric Reynolds (00:29)
Yeah, thanks Jason.
Jason Hsieh (00:30)
So first, if you can share with our audience what sparked your love into this industry of creating like escape room in the past and before you escape mail.
Eric Reynolds (00:39)
I Became familiar with escape rooms maybe in 2013 or 14. I did one while I was living in British Columbia and it was zombie themed. I’m not a big zombie guy, but we went on a Friday night with some friends and had some fun. And as I did the room, I had sort of two distinct impressions. The first was that while this was being positioned.
Jason Hsieh (00:52)
Okay, yeah.
Eric Reynolds (01:05)
As a fun activity purely for entertainment, I thought it had more potential than that. I saw the medium as having inherent goodness or quality about it that could be used for much more than entertainment. And secondly, my second impression was that I could do this better. The craftsmanship was fairly poor. The industry was still quite young, and so all it needed
Jason Hsieh (01:23)
Yeah
Eric Reynolds (01:29)
at the time was just to have a place where you could lock people in a room and tell them to escape. Okay. The bar is now much, much higher, because there’s people like me who have come in and said, I can do this better. And I came to learn the hard way. It’s quite difficult to do it better. But yeah, that was sort of my initial experience, my initial exposure. And those two impressions have stuck with me till this very day.
Jason Hsieh (01:50)
Yeah. And I know in your journey, you start out with creating the escape room experience in trailers. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about that? How do you put the trailer together? What is actually in the trailer?
Eric Reynolds (02:01)
So that’s how my love for escape rooms began. I then built an escape room on my own, just in a garage, invited some friends over. And then wanted to build this into a business and noticed the increase of mobile service delivery. So food trucks, mobile mechanics, lots of this sort of style of delivery. And I thought, well, hold a second. Does this exist? And so I Google, you know, a mobile escape room, and ⁓ there wasn’t one in Canada and there’s only a handful in the States.
So my wheels got turning about okay, could we build it inside of a structure that would be portable. And so we kind of researched a bunch of different options and eventually landed on a cargo trailer. Yeah. And so I moved from BC to the province right beside, which is Alberta, and moved closer to family. And that’s where I got connected with my brother in law, so my wife’s brother. And
Jason Hsieh (02:35)
Mm-hmm.
Okay. ⁓
Eric Reynolds (02:54)
We became business partners and started this venture together where we called it mobile escape and our goal was to awaken wonder and we sought to do that by bringing escape rooms to schools. We actually discovered early on that schools would be one of the best customer bases for this. And sure enough it did really, really well in the school system.
Jason Hsieh (03:14)
nice, nice, nice. So the school actually needs to reserve an escape trailer and then you show up and say, okay, here it is. Is that how you work?
Eric Reynolds (03:23)
Yeah, so I mean I think schools everywhere do field trips, but especially in Alberta, there’s a really rich ⁓ education climate where ⁓ a lot of funding is available for these trips. And so sometimes it’s they go off site, but sometimes they have providers come on site. We were that. We came to the school saving them time and money and effort, and they really appreciated that. And our experience is quite different than any other field trip where there’s a lot of rules and you got to, you know.
walk in single file like in our room, the kids would go in there and you know, your quote unquote like bad kids did great. They loved it. Because they got to be creative and curious and they got rewarded for touching that thingamajig or for talking too much. And so it was really fun to see how ⁓ especially kids with some challenges in a traditional classroom excelled in our escape rooms.
Jason Hsieh (04:12)
I see for your setting is it like 10 student at a time or how does it work?
Eric Reynolds (04:17)
Yeah.
So we were able to solve that problem. There aren’t a lot of mobile escape rooms, but there are a handful and they all kind of fall into the same pitfall, which is having one room, one experience, which is only good for four to eight people, maybe ten if you’re getting really crafty. So what we did is we got a really big trailer and we made two rooms, two experiences. So we could fit half the class in we usually take a class of say like twenty-eight kids.
Jason Hsieh (04:37)
⁓ okay.
Eric Reynolds (04:43)
Split them up into four groups of seven. So two of them would be in their rooms outside in the trailer, while the other two would be inside. So Paul, let’s say Paul’s running the trailer. I’m inside the classroom. And I would be doing one of two things. Either at one station teaching the kids how to do what we do or, we built these like big props, like big tabletop props that would probably be about two by two by four feet.
And you could gather a group of six to eight students around that. Like we built a time machine, a treasure chest, we built Parthenon, scale replica of the Parthenon, pirate ship. So we built all these cool props that we would bring into the classroom and then students would solve that tabletop escape game.
Jason Hsieh (05:24)
I see, yeah, that’s awesome. I have never had that kind of a field trip when I was a kid.
Eric Reynolds (05:29)
Yeah, it was cool. It was really cool.
Jason Hsieh (05:31)
I see. you say was some of the early challenges to create an awesome experience like that for the kids?
Eric Reynolds (05:38)
Everything was challenge. There was nothing that we did that didn’t have challenge because we didn’t know what we were doing. We’d never built an escape room. I built one escape room as a hobbyist. So we never built escape rooms before. I’ll tell you a quick story. This might be fun for your listeners. Go ahead. ⁓ because you make your plans, right? Yeah. You make your plans, but sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Of course. And the best story early on was that we invested our own money into being at
This big event in Calvary. It was gonna be our first show, our first event. We’re gonna do a big, big launch. a hundred thousand people come to this event. So we’re like, all right, we’re gonna do it. It’s gonna be great. And so we put in our money, which at the time was a ton of money, the fee to be at that event. We do we pay up front and we bought our trailer months in advance. Now when I say bought the trailer, we’re buying the empty shell. It’s just a cargo trailer straight from the factory.
Jason Hsieh (06:28)
Okay.
Eric Reynolds (06:29)
And it has things like an air conditioner and a heater, but it’s just plywood walls. There’s nothing in it. Yeah. So we order it months in advance and we get closer and closer to the launch event. And we’re like, so when’s that trailer coming? And they’re manufacturing it in Oregon. Yeah. And so it has to get, you know, shipped to us and we get delay, delay, delay, delay, delay. And so it gets so close to the event that Paul and I are like, I don’t know if we can pull this off. Yeah. So
It’s two weeks before the event. We have no trailer. So it does arrive. So fourteen days before the event, it does arrive. Okay. And we’ve never built an escape room before. We have no trades, like we’re not tradesmen. We don’t know how to like fabricate and manufacture and we’re not like woodworkers or carpenters or electricians. And our event is in two weeks.
Jason Hsieh (06:59)
no. Okay.
Okay.
Eric Reynolds (07:20)
And so we did it. We pulled it off. We built two escape rooms in 12 days. And then we had one day to write the rule book for the rooms, and then we had one day to figure out how to run it. We’re like, okay, we built the rooms, but how do they work? How do they run? How do we host it? So, anyways, that some of the most stressful days. Exciting days looking back. I think I wouldn’t want to do that again, but I’m proud of it.
Jason Hsieh (07:25)
Yeah.
Eric Reynolds (07:42)
journey and what we’ve overcome and the resiliency that’s really been built through all these challenges.
Jason Hsieh (07:47)
For sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. For only 12 days to build, to accomplish such a big project like that. So good job. And thank you so much for sharing that story. That’s pretty incredible. So I want to kind of progress into the next stage of your journey. And I know obviously sounds like that was going fairly well for you before COVID happened. Can we kind of talk about like the pivot and the transition you did since COVID?
Eric Reynolds (08:11)
Yeah. So COVID really upended our plans once again. We had two locations with two trailers, so one in each location. We had managers in each city, we had staff in each city, our bookings were increasing, revenues were increasing, and then it was all over overnight. You know, we lost like a hundred thousand dollars and had to, you know, pay back vendors who we weren’t providing services for.
So it was pretty And I’m usually a creative guy. I didn’t have ideas. I didn’t have creativity. I had my head in my hands, much of a clue what to do. And I just remember very distinctly I was working from home as we all were. So I was sitting in the basement and Paul, my brother-in-law and business partner, he comes down the stairs and he says, you know, Eric, I was chatting with his wife, Kara, he says,
Kara this idea. Like I already mentioned our field trip program. Remember, I said that if I’m inside, I’m the one teaching the kids about how to do what we do. Yeah. And I did that with simple materials. We did that with simple materials. We did paper, pencil, scissors, glue. And so the concept was: hey, take everything you’ve been doing for years, these simple puzzles that you’ve been creating based out of paper and pen, put them in an envelope, and
Ship around the world.
Jason Hsieh (09:23)
Hmm,
Eric Reynolds (09:25)
And
so we called it Escape Mail ’cause it’s like an escape room in envelope. And we created a storyline and we promised people that we would make twelve episodes. We would make one for every month of the year. Okay, you could order them as a subscription. And people loved it. It went crazy. Like we had one of our best months ever, even to date, one of our best months ever. In early days of COVID. Because people were looking for something, right? They just wanted something. Mm-hmm.
Jason Hsieh (09:48)
Nothing to do, yeah.
Eric Reynolds (09:50)
And they actually prepaid for the season. They bought the whole season upfront. From a cash flow perspective, it was amazing. We were like this is incredible. We were seeing stars and we were really excited. And so we were off to the races creating an episode.
Jason Hsieh (09:53)
I’m out.
I see. Can you also kind of, since you have the product with you, can you kind of explain what is actually inside the episode? What does the experience look like for your customer if they do want to try one?
Eric Reynolds (10:14)
For sure. Yeah, for sure. So the frame of reference that is most close to it is like an escape room. But it’s hard for people to say, like, wait, an escape room in an envelope, how does that work? and so really kind of in the genre of like murder mystery. And so on the back here you can see some of the things you get. You get like a piece of cloth. Like, why is there a cloth in there? A string. Like that’s a mysterious object. Why would there be a piece of string in a game? Yeah, this here is like
Coins, you can see a phone there. It’s really important that you have a phone because we have a lot of digital interaction in our game where the items in your game relate to something online, whether it be like a text message that you’re getting from ⁓ your cousin, JJ. he’s this guy here. So it could be coming from JJ, or maybe there’s a website you need to go to, or maybe you need to send a different kind of message to someone else, or there’s a video you need to watch or something. Yeah. ⁓ you’ll also see like a pen or pencil.
So you’re you’re gonna be having a lot of like write on this thing and see what it spells out, or because we’re escape room builders, we love that interactivity. So there’s lot of like hands on build it, slide it, move it, rotate it, shift it, fold it.
Jason Hsieh (11:21)
I see, I see, I see. How many players each of the experience is designed for?
Eric Reynolds (11:27)
you can play in solo if you want, but like escape rooms, it’s better in a group. you know, you wanna have that teamwork communication, seeing things differently. Like I’ll see a problem one way and then you’ll see it a different way, and I would never have been able to see it the way that you see it, ’cause you’re Jason and I’m Eric. We’re different. And we love that about puzzles. And so we recommend a max of four, but you could play with five or six. It just depends how many cooks you want in the kitchen.
Jason Hsieh (11:49)
Okay, okay, okay. How long does it usually take to solve one scenario?
Eric Reynolds (11:53)
Yeah, that can really depend on your level of experience. It also depends on how willing you are to take hints or not. but we find that most people fall within the one hour to maybe hour and a half range. Some episodes go a little longer if you don’t have as much experience or if it’s just a harder episode. All the episodes are up here on our rack yeah, there they are. You see all the different color down.
Jason Hsieh (12:15)
⁓ okay, okay, okay.
Eric Reynolds (12:17)
And so when we go to fulfill our orders each day or every other day, ⁓ we go and we just pick the right envelope out based on its, you know, color label or whatnot and the address and mail out once.
Jason Hsieh (12:26)
Okay.
Yeah. And I know last time when we met, you have different series as well, besides the original one. Can you also talk about that?
Eric Reynolds (12:36)
I have three series here. So our first series called Family Secrets. Yeah. that’s our flagship series. It’s got twelve games. all twelve are in this box set. So you can get them in a box or you can get them as individual like letter mail. Yeah. and that’s like a fun, lighthearted story of treasure with your cousin JJ. Yeah. Then we released Shinobi, which is a ninja scroll. Very, very cool product. there’s really nothing else like it. It’s an actual scroll.
It’s three feet long. It’s made out of canvas with wood and string and a real metal key. Like it’s a kind of a very high quality product. A little bit higher price point. It’s just one game. Yeah. And then our latest game is based on a true story, which is also very rare. it’s based on the 1914 transantarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. ⁓ one of the greatest survival stories of all time. And this is a six episode series, ⁓ unlike Family Secrets, which is a
twelve episode series. So half the length, but a little more accessible for people. Si twelve’s a big commitment. Six is a a little a little bit easier to swallow.
Jason Hsieh (13:35)
I see. Yeah, you have so many different versions of it. For the beginner that have never done this kind of escape room experience, which one do you recommend people to try first?
Eric Reynolds (13:47)
Yeah, I think they’re all they’re all accessible. one of the unique things about our company is that we have designed something we call a flow card. Let’s see if I have one. The flow card is our way. We just found that in an escape room, there was like an inherent logic to a puzzle. because you would go, you’d walk in the room and you’d see a three-digit lock, and then you would unlock this box and get three numbers and know that it goes there. And so there’s sort of this like
Jason Hsieh (13:56)
⁓ okay, tell me when.
Eric Reynolds (14:13)
Inherent physical logic to the room. With our packages, you don’t get that as much. It’s you get it all at once and you’re like, what do I do? And so some in our industry have chosen to put their games in different envelopes and tell you when to open each envelope, which is fine. Our method’s a little different. So we have something called a flow card, which can look like this, can look different as well. ⁓ And this would just tell you, hey, focus on these items in this order.
So don’t focus on this one yet. Focus on these. It’s not telling you how to solve it. It’s just giving you a bit of a like, hey, I at least I know where to look. And a lot of players appreciate those. Some don’t want them. Some flip it over or they just don’t don’t look at it. Yeah but most people find it very helpful to know what to focus on.
Jason Hsieh (14:47)
Okay.
I see. Okay, okay. That’s definitely a very interesting concept. And based on your background in the design, as far as translating some of the physical element into this tiny envelope, which I think is quite challenging initially, what are some of the struggle or challenges you had initially trying to translate all the idea into a tiny envelope?
Eric Reynolds (15:19)
Yeah, not only is it a tiny envelope, it had to weigh under thirty grams to fit the postal requirements. So we could fit under that price tier. You can send more, but it just jumps up, right? So the challenge was always between me and my business partner Paul and our staff, because we had we had some staff at that time, was always that pushback, right? Like, hey, is this gonna be heavy? You know, have you thought about like
Jason Hsieh (15:24)
Thanks for
Eric Reynolds (15:46)
And I was always like, Come on, it’s fun, it’s gonna be great and then it’s always Yeah, but it’s heavy
Jason Hsieh (15:51)
It’s heavy.
Eric Reynolds (15:52)
Or you know, or it’s expensive or it’s too many items or whatnot. So there’s that always that like healthy friction between, you know, creativity and ideas and practicality and reality. So…
Jason Hsieh (16:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I forgot there’s also a weight requirement, not just size. That makes it even harder to kind of come up with a decent design that’s still interactive and entertaining.
Eric Reynolds (16:13)
That’s right. In fact, in episode three of Family Secrets, we wanted to send players a room, like an actual paper room that they would build and have these like little figurines that moved around the room and kind of like a chessboard. Okay. and so we tried to do it and we did, we pulled it off under the weight restrictions. Okay. We learned a lot in that process. We made some mistakes along the way, and we’ve upgraded and improved the game multiple times.
Jason Hsieh (16:30)
wow, okay.
Eric Reynolds (16:37)
And now it’s just one of the most fun episodes where you get to actually feel like you’re in that space, that the player is in. So..
Jason Hsieh (16:43)
I see. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. What is like looking ahead? What are some of the plans that you have for the next couple of years for growing the business so far?
Eric Reynolds (16:53)
Man chooses his plans, but the Lord directs his steps. You know, we’ve made a lot of plans. Well, I have this sort of humorous moment where I can just actually there’s a few and I’ll tell each one. As a business podcast, this is important. 2024 summer, we’re gearing up, we’re getting ready for a big Q4. Yeah. And
We’re investing in creative, so for advertising, so we’re making new videos. We’re investing in product and inventory, getting them into warehouses and distribution centers. So we’re we’re putting out a lot of cash in the summer. And we’re moving towards a sale of our business as well. So we sold the trailers, mobile skate. So we’re really ourselves for a big Q4. And our product isn’t exclusively letter mail.
‘Cause we have bo boxes and packages and parcels, but we do a lot through letter mail. a about half, maybe just under half is subscription
Jason Hsieh (17:44)
Okay.
Eric Reynolds (17:46)
And then in Q4 our country, our postal service, has a very long strike. They’re not sending any letter mail. One of the longest in recent history. And so as a result, we have a couple options. We can just say we’re not sending, in which case you have to pause everyone’s subscriptions and pause all your revenue and hurt that customer relationship. Or you find another way to send it.
And as you know, like sending this by letter mail is a dollar or two. Yeah. Sending it as a parcel or a package is like seven or eight. And this is only a twenty dollar product or actually usually less if you’re buying a subscription. It’s a fifteen dollar product. So if you’re willing to take half your margin just to ship a product, right? So that was our Q4 kerfuffle and it it threw a wrench in our plans.
Jason Hsieh (18:29)
Huh.
Eric Reynolds (18:36)
But we’re a resilient bunch, so we’re like, all right, that’s okay. Well, 2025 it’s gonna be better. Like, here we go. And our big plan for 2025 was the United States. We believe that there’s this big customer base, the United States. We haven’t gotten there, we haven’t tapped it. We got a lot of momentum in Canada, but the United States is just we’re ready. Let’s do it. So we have this team meeting, It’s January 17th or something, or January 19th I forget the day, but it was you know, mid January.
And we have a team meeting and we say, you know, rah-rah, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna go to trade shows in the States, we’re gonna work on wholesale in the States. Paul was gonna dedicate his entire year just to focusing on this. And a week later, a week later, Mr. Trump says, yeah, you know, we don’t like Canada anymore, which is like the first time in our history between our two nations. We do business together.
Borders are open. It’s been a beautiful relationship for so long. And for the first time ever, a week after we make this plan, it sort of all comes to a crashing halt. Paul was on the phone with distributors and they literally were like, you’re from Canada, and they just like hung up the phone. So yeah, it just it kind of stopped things just immediately. Now, we still have been doing business in the States, so we still are overcoming those hurdles and obstacles, and there are plenty of Americans who want to do business with Canadians.
Jason Hsieh (19:48)
Yes.
Eric Reynolds (19:49)
And so you know, it’s not impossible, it’s just really altered things. So I feel like those two moments almost humorous in how like distinctly challenging and sort of stopping up your plans and in your tracks. You have to pivot and come up with some other idea or overcome the obstacles. And that’s kind of been our story the last well, for years, but especially the last year.
Jason Hsieh (20:10)
Yeah, 100%. It’s like we discussed before the interview, like I think entrepreneurship is never a dull moment and there’s always something changing coming up. I think tariff especially all the new charm on the administration that they have been trying to do is really hurting a lot of the small and medium sized business like us.
Eric Reynolds (20:29)
Yeah. Yeah. At least in the short term. I don’t know if in the long term it’ll all pan out and play out fine and people will adapt. But at least in the short term, yeah, it’s causing a lot of issues.
Jason Hsieh (20:37)
For sure, for sure, for sure. So we are kind of wrapping up today’s interview. If you had to share one piece of advice with someone that’s getting started within the toys and game industry, what would that be?
Eric Reynolds (20:47)
Yeah, there’s sort of two pieces of advice. One is like really, really practical and granular, and the other is more like conceptual. Yeah, I think from like a big picture, like going into it with the right expectations with the right mindset of like I this is gonna extremely challenging, but I believe in this thing, and so therefore it’s worth it. I think hold on to that, don’t ever let go of that, no matter how hard things get.
If you believe in it, expect it to be difficult and expect your belief to help you overcome that those difficulties. I hope this is really helpful. We learned it’s probably a year ago, we were at a conference and one of the speakers was presenting and said, Hey, when it comes to getting your product to market, make sure the cost to produce the product.
Is twenty percent or less of your retail price. So cogs twenty percent of MSRP, right? Like that ratio needs to be there. I think if you don’t have the experience, you don’t know why that number’s so important. But the industry is built in such a way with distributors and consolidators and retailers and wholesalers where there’s a lot of people taking a lot of pieces.
And even if you don’t go through those channels, you still pay. Like there’s not a way to not pay. You have to either advertise or unless you’re like a viral sensation overnight, which may only last you six to twelve months. you need healthy margin. And if you don’t have healthy margin, you can’t survive. And so our products are all at that point. Some are creeping a little bit over and it hurts. It’s not great. And so we do our everything we can to get under that like at or under that twenty percent, which
Jason Hsieh (22:08)
Thank you.
Eric Reynolds (22:21)
Sometimes we’re more successful than others.
Jason Hsieh (22:23)
Of course, that’s actually a really good piece of advice. And that’s something when I’m consulting with people that I always do a profitability analysis with the people I’m talking to to make sure they have enough margin. Doesn’t matter what platform they use, just like you mentioned, because there’s a lot of other costs that sometimes happen or sometimes not expected. So if your margin is not there, you couldn’t eat all the costs. You will immediately put your business in red. So that’s definitely a very good and very solid piece of advice. So thank you for sharing that.
And for our listeners that’s interested to learn a little bit more about you and the business that you represent, where is the best place for people to find you online?
Eric Reynolds (22:57)
Yeah, our website’s probably the best place. It’s theescapemail.com.
Jason Hsieh (23:02)
OK, I’ll make sure we put that in the show note. And thank you so much again on sharing your experiences, a lot of the story, that’s very interesting story, your journey in the industry as well. Thank you so much for your time today.
Eric Reynolds (23:14)
You’re welcome, Jason. Thanks for having me on your show.
Jason Hsieh (23:16)
And for our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in on this episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today’s 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. We would love it if you can leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleague. For more resource tips and the latest update within the toys end game industry, visit our website at toy-launch.com.
Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using #toybusinessunboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joy through toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone.
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