How to Turn a Toy Idea into Success: A Legal Expert’s Guide

Jason Hsieh (00:00)
Hi, welcome to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. Today we are thrilled to have Brian, a seasoned business lawyer, over 25 years of experience. He’s also a partner and chair of Emerging Business Group with Snail & Wilmer Law Firm, joining us on the podcast. And Brian has advised countless entrepreneurs and growing companies across various industry. And he’s here today to share some of the valuable insight into commercializing toys, whether or not you’re at the start of your journey or looking to expand your toy brand.

from protecting your IPs to forming partnership and raising capital. Brian really bring a unique real world perspective to help you grow your toy business. So thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, Brian.

Brian Burt (00:39)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Jason Hsieh (00:41)
So let’s start out with, first of all, before we kind of talk about the commercializing of the toys, can we kind of share a little bit about your background and how you actually got started doing what you do? think that even we in law, there’s a lot of different paths you can choose. do you choose to do the current career that you’re currently working on?

Brian Burt (01:00)
Yeah, no, I contemplated a number of different fields, including the medical field and decided kind of in my, I my senior year of high school, I was probably better suited to the law firm world. So from then on kind of have a fairly clear path to getting where I wanted to go. I started out like most lawyers doing a variety of things, both some private companies and public companies and realized pretty quickly I was interested in the kind of private company side. Then I left.

Yeah, about year and half in to start my own startup, my own company, which I started race capital for it was in the software space and that experience. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to sell the company for 100 million to retire because I’m sitting here. That experience really kind of showed me the perspective of the entrepreneur and got me really interested in that particular space. So I sent it and that’s been

Jason Hsieh (01:42)
Yeah

Brian Burt (01:53)
almost 22 years, give or take, I’ve decided I’d like to focus on living kind of vicariously and helping entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes through their entrepreneurial journey. So that’s the short story. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. I serve in a variety of capacities on the business side, helping companies and entrepreneurs get started.

kind of walking them through the capital raise process, the commercialization process, and then hopefully figuring out some type of liquidity event on the back end. And I know we’ll talk more about the different options in today’s program.

Jason Hsieh (02:25)
Yeah, and do you have an entrepreneur bugging you to launch another startup in the future maybe?

Brian Burt (02:31)
It’s possible. It’s been a kind of slow but steady. I kind of I said, kind of live vicariously, get the kids through college and pay the bills. But yeah, certainly have one kid who’s very interested in the entrepreneur side. So we may see something come up again. But a lot of people have come up and asked to kind of participate in their venture and one way or another. So never say never.

Jason Hsieh (02:51)
I see. yeah. Well, let’s start out with the big question. Because the majority of our listeners are toy inventor, toy entrepreneur, people in the toy and the board game space. What would be the first step for the toy and the game inventor should take when they want to commercialize their product?

Brian Burt (03:08)
Yeah, so I think there’s really three main paths to doing it. I think thinking through what’s involved in each of those paths and kind of the pros and cons of them is a good first step, kind of figuring out what do you want to do. So path one would be you do it all yourself. Decide, hey, I’ve got toy here. I really want to take it the distance. I want to develop it. I want to manufacture it. I want to get it to market. I want to do the whole entrepreneur thing. That’s option one.

Option two would be to develop it to a certain point where you’ve got a prototype, but you know it’s viable. You’ve maybe gotten some interest in it. You’ve shown it to potential users, and they’re excited about it. And then you go ahead and find a manufacturer to license your idea, and then they take it the distance. ⁓ Option three would be you’ve kind of just got a, and the reason you might license it, can talk about this in more detail.

And there’s again pros and cons to each. The third option is just to sell it. In the early stages, you come up with the idea, you put it together, you maybe build the prototype, and then you just sell it and kind of walk away and you go do something else. Maybe your next toy or next invention. And those three paths, like I said, come with a variety of levels of participation. They come with a variety of levels of risk. They come with different levels of potential financial return and obviously,

involvement for the inventor.

Jason Hsieh (04:26)
And I think in my, well, throughout our podcast, you know, all the different episodes we have done, we mostly talk about the first two that you mentioned. and just be an entrepreneur and do everything yourself. That’s kind of my path that I chose. And of course, that’s the second route, which you mentioned is the licensing route. The third route, I haven’t been really discussing on the show so far. Can we kind of talk a little bit about how is licensing different?

then just selling out straight, think, guess, a poor for a big like a lumber money. Is that how is the between the option two and three?

Brian Burt (05:00)
Yeah, so I mean, think if you look at what you’re likely to take in in terms of financial return for the inventor, it’s kind of in the reverse order. So you’ll probably get the least from the sales side if you sell it when it’s in kind of concept stage, right? You have a greater potential for reward than the licensing. And the most potential is it sounds like you’ve seen yourself from commercializing it all the way yourself. You get all the risk, all the reward. But difference between the first two.

You know, license in its simplest form is you grant some third party the rights to your invention, your toy, your game, whatever it is, and you let them run with it for a period of time. It might be two years, it might be 10 years, with the thought being you still own itself. And if they don’t meet certain criteria, you know, oftentimes there’s minimum sales.

or other criteria to make sure they can do it because just because you license it to a big company doesn’t mean they’re going to make it happen.

Jason Hsieh (05:55)
Yeah. I talked to a lot of toy inventor entrepreneur that might have signed a licensing deal, but two years later, nothing happened. they have so many other, projects, so many priority. And sometimes the smaller projects is kind of pushed to the corner and they don’t have the bandwidth to.

kind of do anything about it. So that’s also kind of the major con when you make that choices. Even so, like you mentioned, it’s a little bit less risk, but also means you lose a lot of the control over when things gonna happen because it’s really not up to you anymore. It’s really up to the other party that, you know, get a license from you. So is that pretty common based on what you see as well?

Brian Burt (06:34)
Yeah, I mean, you’re taking a chance in the ways to mitigate that risk would be to put a shorter term on it upfront, maybe two or three years. Yeah, put the minimum royalties in there, right? Those royalties are the monies you get when they sell each unit. And so it’s the minimums in there. So if they take your rights away for two or three years, you know, you’re going to get paid at least X. And then if they don’t continue to do well, and you don’t renew the license, then you get it back and you can you know, either

decide to do it yourself, you can license it to another third party, but you limit the exposure on the front end. Some people go in and give it 10 years, 20 years, you know, if they have a patent on it, for example, they do the full life of the patent. And like you say, there’s so many priorities within a company, they may, it may be a great toy, but they decide to not put a whole lot of resources behind it. And it just sits there. Making the minimum maybe, and sometimes people, if they’re not

Jason Hsieh (07:22)
He’s just sitting there, yeah.

Brian Burt (07:26)
kind of paying attention and know these terms, they don’t even put a minimum in there. So they just give it to you. They’re sitting there and they’re not earning anything. And they say, well, it’s a big company. They’re incentivized to do this. Well, not always, as you’ve obviously seen in the podcast here. So putting correct terms around it to protect you, I think, is critical. Sometimes there’s an advance payment, again, depending on how it developed, the product is. And you can license it.

Jason Hsieh (07:31)
They give it.

Brian Burt (07:50)
again, as you may know, at different points along the life cycle. I mean, it can be in prototype stage, it can be in patent pending stage, it could be in a, if there’s a patent to be, to be, you know, or it can be a situation where you’ve got some initial interest. You’ve maybe sold it to some family and friends, you’ve got some initial reaction, maybe you’ve sold online a little bit and you want to take it to that next level. And that third party can, be the one to do that because they have the, the manufacturing capabilities, the marketing.

channels, the distribution, et cetera. So compare and contrast that from the sale, where you say, ⁓ I’ve got a good, again, prototype, or I built it out, it’s ready to go. And they come along and it’s typically a one-time payment. And they take it off your hands and not gonna get a whole lot because there’s not a whole lot that’s happened in the life cycle of that toy. You’re gonna get some payment. But we do have people who,

invent lots of stuff and they say, you know what, I’m just going to kind of keep doing that. That’s what I like to do. And if I can keep getting these payments and kind of getting it out there, I want to see it in the marketplace. I don’t want to have any residual participation. I just want to have it out there and be done with it. You know, that can be very successful if it really takes off. Although again, those sales aren’t going to necessarily translate to any higher price because it’s usually kind of a one and done.

Jason Hsieh (09:09)
Yeah, And I think, I mean, in my experience, talking to a lot of people in the industry, the third option is like more far and happening less because the company is also taking a bigger risk, even with a well-off on investment of buying the product and IP outright, because you just don’t know whether that’s really going to sell until you develop it.

also like, there’s a lot of things the company that bought that IP still need to potentially improve or modify, that’s all additional time and work.

So, since you have worked with so many startup over your careers or over decades of the work that you have done in the startup industry, what are some of the common mistakes that the creator, the inventor that you talk to make when they’re trying to ⁓ scale their businesses in early stage?

Brian Burt (09:57)
So we’re talking, I assume, you pick option one in terms of commercialization.

Jason Hsieh (10:00)
Yes, yeah, commercialization, yes.

Brian Burt (10:03)
I think the big upfront mistake is not putting a business plan together on the front end. A lot of people, as you know, are good at inventing, good at creating, but they don’t have the business expertise. And so I think getting a good business plan in place that really tells how are you going to, well, A, can you even make money doing this, right? To the expenses of running this business, manufacturing and selling the product, outweigh any profits you can hope to make.

And you’re not going to understand that until you put together a realistic plan. That’s going to determine who needs to be on the team, what resources you need to bring to bear, whether you’re going to outsource the manufacturing, for example, or you’re going to attempt to do it yourself ⁓ in-house and build a facility around that. Are you going to outsource marketing distribution? Or again, are you going attempt to do that yourself on a website or through Amazon or other channels? But figuring out whether you can make money on this particular

or whatever the product is you’re selling critical building that financial projection realistic financial projection because sometimes you’ll see in these business plans they think the family’s working for free for the next 10 years you know they’re going to reject you know this particular toy or again whatever it is you’re selling is going to sell a few units in the first year

increase second year and then it’s going to sell 400,000 trillion units in the third year and obviously it’s not realistic, right? realistic expenses, realistic projection in terms of market penetration and sales and then kind of bring together all that in the plan to outline what’s required and ultimately what’s the exit strategy and so I think without the plan you’re just guessing and sometimes you’re successful in spite of yourself but typically I see

much higher rate of failure. I startups have a high rate of failure anyway, but even within those that succeed versus fail, the rate is much higher failure rate if there’s no plan in place. So that’s number one. Two, you want to get experts around you that do what you’re not good at, right? If you’re good at it, you don’t know how to do the legal stuff or obviously the financial or

to do the marketing or to figure out how best to manufacture it and put systems in place to do that. I all these are different skill sets. So I think building the A team around you is another thing that people tend not to do. And it doesn’t mean you need to bring everyone on board and pay them for a full time, full week, day one, right? Some people you might use sporadically. you put the team around you to be able to flush out those areas that

you’re not good at, you don’t want to be bothered with, you don’t have the expertise in. The other thing is not raising enough capital. It always costs more than you think. Always costs more and sometimes it’s, know, two, three, 10 times more. And so people attend, you know, tend to do with kind of a shoestring budget and say, Hey, we’ll just, you know, we’ll just self-fund it and not realizing that, you know,

Jason Hsieh (12:47)
How much it actually cost.

Brian Burt (12:49)
And you know, you’re have to redo that maybe there’s a bad shipment of the product that comes out and someone’s gonna pay for that There’s a need to evolve the product which you know many toys do as to all products and you say hey the first iteration Didn’t sell too well. We’ve got a lot of feedback. So we’re gonna iterate it. Well, that’s now you’ve got what do you do with the first run? Well, you might have to eat that cost and then you retool and get it out a second time. So

And I think the other big thing and there’s others we can talk about is what’s the exit strategy? You know, the goal to kind of run this thing until the popularity declines and you kind of just wrap it up? it to build it to a certain point and sell it? Is this is the first of many toys or whatever and you’re just you’re going to build a company and brand that’s based on, you know, multiple components there. Difficult to

scale and sell, if that’s the goal, is ultimately sell it and have a good return with just one product. I’m sure you have lots of companies where it’s a one product, one show there, and buyers aren’t going to be that interested if it’s like, the whole revenue is contingent on this one thing. Popularity comes and goes. So having a strategy to kind of have a brand and have a, I think that’s the final thing I’ll mention, is having a brand.

Jason Hsieh (13:47)
I don’t know.

Brian Burt (14:03)
kind of around that product and protecting the IP. I know we’ll probably talk about that a little bit associated with it, whether it’s trademarks, patents, et cetera, and taking the steps and investing the dollars upfront because, know, especially in the toy industry, it’s so easy to knock things off. I mean, it’s very narrow easy and putting that protection in place. Sometimes it’s only a trademark. Ideally, if there’s a patent available to get that, even if it’s just pending initially.

huge competitive advantage once you get out there. And lots of people just don’t want to spend the time, or effort to really invest in those things and find out, know, month two, there’s three competitors already in the marketplace and there’s not a whole lot you can do if you haven’t taken steps to protect yourself.

Jason Hsieh (14:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, some of the toy we developed have that same exact issue that you just mentioned. We have a lot of coffee cat. I think in hindsight, just depends on the type of toy you’re launching. It’s pretty hard to get an IP around it. It depends on, of course, how sophisticated the design is. But I want to transition to one of the big elephant in the room is capital because

If you want to do the first commercialization route, which is a lot of people I’m talking to, that’s what I’m working on. And that’s something we also help support them with the work we do at Toy launch. And how can the toy entrepreneurs raise fund in the initial stages if they need to bring their product to the market? Any tip for those starting out?

Brian Burt (15:33)
Yeah, you know, so I hope companies and a variety of industries raise capital all the time. And there’s a few tips. mean, one is to do it legally, because there is a kind of a whole set of rules, both federal state rules that govern the ability of raising capital. And to the extent that you don’t follow those, it’s felony. So that’s a bad day for you and your company. And a lot of like I said, a lot of people don’t know the rules, those who have heard of them.

Taking a quick look they’re fairly complex, but this is one of those few areas the law as an entrepreneur You don’t want to cut corners Lots of other areas you cut corners. Maybe you lose a sale. Maybe you lose the company, but you don’t go to jail, right? And so this is one of those few areas where you want to make sure you do it by the book from a business standpoint People read about in the paper those who go out and raise capital Yeah out of the gate and they brought in five million bucks or ten million bucks from some venture capital firm. That’s not reality

Typically, that’s what we read about in the paper, That’s why it’s news. Typically what happens is a fairly standard approach, which is founders are gonna fund it themselves. And then they’re gonna go once they’ve kind of tapped out their resources, they’re gonna go to family and friends. They’re gonna go to people who they know, who know them and will wanna support them financially because they think the toy is cool. But they like to, they wanna support the person.

And these people will be the ones who write the checks when maybe you’re in pre kind of concept stage, maybe you’re in prototype stage, there’s no sales yet, you’re just getting started. And those are the people who will support you. Now, if those people aren’t willing to write checks, then you probably got to rethink your idea, right? But people who will ask the fewest questions again, they want to help you and everyone’s pool was a little different, right? Some family and friend groups can raise 10 grand, some can raise, you know, a million bucks. It just depends on your

family and friend network, but that’s who you go to and that together with the founders dollars typically get you to proof of concept. You’ve built it, you’ve taken steps to protect it from an IP standpoint, you’ve gotten some sales. We demonstrated that this is a viable product. People are interested in it. They want to buy it at the price you’re selling it for. You’ve kind of worked through some of the evolution. And then,

once you’ve shown that this is a viable product, you kind of unlock opportunities to go to people you don’t know. And those could be angel investors that are either individual or organized in groups. And there’s different groups in every city across the country, as well as online platforms that you can use to raise capital, both from a crowdfunding perspective, of a Kickstarter type mode, as well as the equity crowdfunding approach. And then

you know, once you’ve really demonstrated the viability of generated revenue, you’ve got a track record at that point is typically when a institutional player, if needed, right? And you may not decide not to go to that route for different reasons, but if needed, and you say, I need $5 million to really get this thing blown out globally, for example, or nationally. That’s where those folks would step in to make that investment. But typically they’re fairly risk-inverse. So they want to know that

especially in a space like this, you’ve shown it’s viable and you’re now in growth mode as opposed to proof of concept mode, if that makes sense. So from a business standpoint, legal standpoint, those are the main takeaways, but it is a very difficult process. It’s probably the most painful thing. It’s not always successful. A lot of people say they’re interested. have a couple we’re working with as we speak.

Jason Hsieh (18:50)
Yeah.

Brian Burt (18:57)
in a couple of different spaces. initially everyone was interested. We got a million and a half dollars ready to go. We got the documents ready and we’re ready to start taking those checks. And all of a sudden people disappeared. And so now we’re down from a hundred or maybe a million and a half to maybe 400,000. Well, that’s not going to get them where they need to go. So now they’re having to reevaluate, this, you know, as viable as we thought, because people are backing out.

Jason Hsieh (19:09)
There you go.

Yeah, I think that’s also one of the reasons why at the end I decided to go the bootstrap route, which is another route. I first started the business back eight years ago, I did try some of the things you mentioned, including the friends and family round and tried to actually do some pitch competitions and all that. But just like you say, because the nature of this industry

It’s not a sexy, a SaaS. The investor wants to invest in SaaS that they can have like hundred X return. Whereas a toy business is a little bit more of a slow to grow because also the margin is slower too. We’re talking about usually for a toy business net margin about like 20%, whereas like a SaaS like margin is very, very different. and when I was trying to do the fundraising myself or my toy business back then,

That is like a lot of the pushback I got is like, okay, so how fast can you grow to a figure? How fast can you grow? But know, it’s the type of business that I and a lot of listen around the growth projectory is not a lot of the investor is looking for. So that’s also, you know, create a lot of, you know, I guess, headwind as far as fundraising goes in this particular.

industry, of course. So and that’s also the reason why a lot of people will try to do the licensing route, but also limited amount of success. Like I share with you is ⁓ overall is the industry as a whole is growing. But I feel like we really need more startup company to get into the space and create something really incredible and different than all the major, you know, what all the major toy company and working companies currently making. So

Brian Burt (21:06)
I think you hit on something there in terms of the revenue might not be a billion dollar company, right? That’s tough to create or even a hundred million dollar company in the toy space. what people I think and investors and participants we’ve seen who go into the space realize that a lot of it is luck, right? Is you get the right ⁓ person to…

promoted on social media or it catches on and it kind of goes viral. A lot of, as you know, well, a lot of toys that’s what becomes successful versus not. think of, you know, like coming up on Christmas, right? There’s always a, you know, toy or two that really takes off and you have no idea why. That’s not that exciting, but for every reason, that’s the thing to buy this year. so everyone cleans the shelves, right? With it. And I know

That was the case when our kids were growing up. There was always one toy that everyone wanted. And how you get to that point, there’s not, unfortunately, unlike you mentioned, know, software products or other things, where you can kind of know what to do to tweak it to get there. It’s really difficult to have a formula for success. It either kind of gets adopted and does so, maybe it’s marginally successful, but the big home runs, there’s really no formula to get there. There’s a lot of hard work. And then even with all that,

you know, just being in the right place, kind of the right time, having, you know, folks catch on to it is now we have seen, have seen where, and I always call this plan B or C or D never plan a, but from a kind of a marketing standpoint, to the extent you can get a, you know, a celebrity endorser or someone to show interest in it. I mean, that can be a very powerful way to do it. Now it’s hard that you can’t force that, but

to the extent that this is across a variety of spaces, but certainly this space as well. We’ve seen some really good success for folks who, and most of it wasn’t planned, it was just kind of luck where they saw people using it and they said, hey, would you help promote this? sure, I love this product, right? And they start doing it and before you know it, they’ve exposed it to their two million followers as opposed to you spending five million bucks to reach.

that many people through traditional means. So that’s, know, and again, there’s not a straight formula as to how to get that done.

Jason Hsieh (23:17)
Yeah, I think, you know, there was the current digital landscape is the attention is really the new currency is how can you get people’s attention for whichever toys or board game they’re designing. And that’s why you see like YouTuber launching their own product. know, people’s attention, you know, launching chocolate, launching burgers and other items. But because they have the attention and sometimes as an inventor or like

entrepreneurs that focusing on so much on product development, that’s not really their expertise to really create that creator and attention of the people and their potential buyer. And I want to kind of transition the next part of the interview to talk a little bit more about the intellectual property, because that’s one of the things you have really strong on. And that’s also very important in the role of commercialization of the toys or the game that the inventors.

and entrepreneur is working on. Can you kind of elaborate a little bit about couple of things to think about as far as IP goes?

Brian Burt (24:20)
Sure, I mean, there’s really kind of two main ways that you’re going to protect your product, your toy. You know, the most common, of course, is to create a brand around that. everyone can do that. Everyone needs to do that. for most, that’s as much as they’re going to get, right? It’s not going to be a patentable type product. And so you’re really relying on the brand. And that’s involving a creative name, creative logo. And being able to protect that is fairly easy. Two steps.

You come up with something, again, creative, you think will get people’s attention. Two, you see if it’s available. Someone else in your particular field locked up those rights, and that’s pretty easy to turn in. Then if not, then you take the steps to file a federal, not state, the federal trademark, which protects in all 50 states, and you can also file in other countries. You have to figure out how broad you want to take it. And obviously, the more filings you do, the more expensive it gets.

Jason Hsieh (25:07)
Yes.

Brian Burt (25:13)
It’s not super expensive to go ahead and do that. And that’s something that everybody should do. Because that may be all the protection you have. And some people you’ll see, they say in the original X, they use that terminology, like, hey, we were first out there with this. And knowing there’s going to be replicated products, there’s going to be people who do copycat type things. But they’re the original. And people tend to view that as the superior version. We’ve got all these.

also-rans, but we’ve got the original and that’s what I want. want the original. Yeah. So that’s something everyone can and should do. And again, I’m not a marketing expert, but you and I have both seen a lot of different campaigns and you kind of know what clicks and what doesn’t. So you really want to get some expertise if that’s not what you do and get the professionals to help. And again, you can loop folks in a fairly cost effective way to help create that brand. And then two,

⁓ A second option is if you can get it is a patent. And typically that’s going to require you to have come up with something that is novel, non-obvious. And that’s pretty difficult to do in the space if you can do it. And there’s those products out there in toy space who have accomplished that. But it’s few and far between. It’s not the standard. Because usually what you’re doing is kind of, ⁓

taking an existing concept and maybe evolving it in a new way, right? And it hasn’t been done before, but it’s not necessarily so novel, so non-obvious that you can put a patent around it. But it always helps to do that check. Don’t guess, don’t play a lawyer on the internet. I go to a patent attorney and get an analysis and say, hey, this is what we’ve come up with. This is how we think it’s different than what’s out

and get some professional feedback. Because oftentimes people assume they can’t get it and then they never do the investigation. And turns out maybe there was a chance to do it. Now, some people, and this goes with both capital raising and it goes with potential licensing is patents take a long time to issue, years in some cases. So to the extent that for folks who say come to our firm, we’ve got lots of ⁓ IP lawyers on staff and we say, hey, we think there’s a chance you could get a patent for this.

Jason Hsieh (27:05)
Yeah.

Brian Burt (27:24)
No guarantee until it’s issues. We think there’s a chance. Having that be patent pending, even if it’s in that status for, could be two or three years, right, depending. Could be shorter, but let’s say it’s a period of years, has a impact in a number of ways. One, it shows potential investors and if you’re commercializing it yourself, or if you’re licensing it to that potential big company you’re licensing to, shows that you’ve taken the steps to protect.

which they’re gonna wanna know first out of the gate, did you do everything you can to protect this? Because I don’t wanna invest in or license necessarily a product that you didn’t take the basic steps to protect, right? Because then people are gonna come in and take it over. Second, it helps kind of ward off competitors, right? Because they don’t know if the patent is gonna issue, but if it’s on the box and it says patent pending, at least it is a deterrent for competitors. And if it buys you-

a couple of years to maybe deter a few folks out there that would otherwise jump in. That gives you a competitive advantage because you’re kind of first to market. You’ve been able to be only one to market or at least one of the few for a period of time. And that’s all before it issues on the licensee side. Same thing. know, a licensee is going to want to know that if they’re licensing this, you know, what am I paying you for? Right. What I’m taking a lot of risk to manufacture and distribute this. So if I’m taking the risk, I want to know you’ve taken the steps to

because otherwise I may invest all this money in it because I’m the one spending the money as the licensee. And if you haven’t taken steps to protect it, that may be a wasted investment when a replicated product comes on the market two months later. So it has lots of value, even if ultimately it doesn’t issue and you have to obviously pivot at that point, you wouldn’t have that protection. But for that period of time, it can be pretty valuable.

And there’s two types of patents. You can do a provisional patent, which kind of gets your placeholder on file for a year. And if you’re not quite there with the complete product, that can be a good starting point. It’s cheaper, kind of holds your place in line. And then ultimately, you file the full-blown non-provisional patent. Or you could just jump right to it if you know where the product is complete. are the main two ways that you’re going to kind of protect yourself as you.

Jason Hsieh (29:23)
Hmm.

Brian Burt (29:28)
as you look to launch. And those are things you want to do, by the way, before you start going public with things. Once you start talking to people about the product, you can lose rights. And certainly on the patent side, and you can also disadvantage yourself from a brand standpoint as well if you don’t take steps to protect it before you launch it. So these are things that you do on the front end as opposed to waiting and seeing if it’s successful and having a

you know, one of our colleagues at the firm say, hey, you’ve waited too long and now you’re not able to pursue those rights.

Jason Hsieh (29:58)
Yeah, that’s definitely a lot to think about, a lot to digest. And thank you so much for being on the show today. question I want to ask is, what is some of the one piece of advice you can give to the aspiring toy and game creator who want to really turn their invention into a striving business? You mentioned a few things already throughout today’s interview. Any other thing that you want to add?

Brian Burt (30:23)
I mean, I think the tips in terms of business plan, kind of the A team, think, making sure there’s capital available. I think the biggest thing is to be persistent, right? This is a journey. This is not a kind of short event. It’s not going to take two or three weeks. You’re going to take lots of risk. I think just going into it knowing that most of these companies don’t succeed and that maybe your third

toy or your fourth or your fifth is the one that takes off. I think a lot of people go in, the first one doesn’t hit and they just give up. they say, you know, I tried, spent two years on this, didn’t go, I’m going to pack it in. I think understanding when you go in that it may not be the first one that hits it may be particularly in this industry, may be two or three down the line. I think that’s the best way to approach it because you’re going to be in it for the long haul.

And if you set up your company, you set up your structure, your team, you’ll be able to use those same pieces for the next one, right? And you can create some momentum there. I think continue to be the kind of related pieces, continue to innovate, right? Continue to be working on stuff, whether it’s you or together with your partner, whoever you bring in, so that you have stuff in the pipeline. So again, if the first one doesn’t work, you’re not waiting five more years to bring the next product on. You’ve kind of got something already cooking.

Jason Hsieh (31:43)
Yeah, only way to expand is to launching and innovating new products.

Brian Burt (31:48)
It helps keep me interested and involved. I think keeping that passion for it is pretty important. But realistic expectation is probably the best way to sum all that up, right? Knowing it’s a tough path, it’s a tough space, but there’s lots of opportunities there. with being able to sell, whether it’s on Amazon or other platforms, there’s lots of ways that you didn’t have historically.

Yeah, I started out, you know, 20 some years ago. You didn’t have all these platforms to be able to do that. Hey, do I get into a big box store? And that’s the only way I’m going get out there. Now you have the ability to sell it for very little yourself. And so everyone can potentially start and run their own company if they want to. So there’s tons of opportunity. You just got to have realistic expectations.

Jason Hsieh (32:31)
For sure, for sure. It’s definitely a lot more options nowadays for smaller players to get into the industry and really make a big difference. And also for those of the listener that is listening, what kind of services and help that you can provide to the creator and how can people find you online?

Brian Burt (32:50)
Yeah, sure. mean, best way to find us, you can go to our website, which is http://www.swlaw.com. You can shoot me an email. My email is bbert, so b-b-u-r-t at swlaw.com. You can reach me also via phone, 602-382-6317. And I think in terms of services, you know, I typically come alongside the entrepreneur, whatever stage they’re at.

just a concept stage or they’ve kind of evolved things a little bit. And we have kind of a one-stop shop at the firm to provide a variety of services. I deal with all things on the business side. We’ve talked about company formation. We’ve talked about raising capital, bringing in partners, building your team, incentivizing that team, and creating manufacturing relationships and contracts. So all those things that you will need to kind of grow the company are things that I do in my practice. And then we…

loop in experts from other areas that you’re going to probably need to mention IP. It could be employment. It could be any number of other areas that you’re going to, as you can grow the company, you’re going to need to loop in. so it’s like I said, kind of a one nice one-stop shop. And, you know, I head up our firm’s emerging business group. So I spend my entire day working with entrepreneurs. So that’s all I do all day long and again in a variety of spaces. And so I’m to, always happy to chat with people.

get a free initial consultation and kind of get a sense of what you’re trying to do and how we may be able to help you. We also offer a variety of free programs and seminars that are all geared toward the entrepreneur to different points along the life cycle. And they’re welcome to ⁓ kind of log on and join those as well.

Jason Hsieh (34:30)
Okay, thank you so much for sharing. We’ll make sure we put that into the show note in the recording as well. And for our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We hope you have enjoyed the conversation and find it insightful and also 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 we love that 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 and 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 suggestion for the future episode. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, and keep bringing joy to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unbox podcast, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone.