How Wise Elk’s Eco-friendly Toys Connect Generations: A conversation with Kostya Rolin

EP007_02-22-24_Kostya Rolin

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, will guide you through the enchanting world of toy design, marketing, and manufacturing. Now let the unboxing begin. 

Jason Hsieh: Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Toys Business Unboxed, where we talk about the magic behind the toy industry. I’m your host, Jason Hsieh, and today we have a special guest joining us. Kostiantyn, who is the owner of Wise Elk and with eco friendly toys and very unique design and craftsmanship.

And today we’ll be interviewing and talking about the story behind the, brand and the Inceptions. So thank you for thank you so much for joining us on today’s podcast Kostiantyn. 

Kostya Rolin: Yeah. Thank you for inviting us. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah can we start off by sharing with the audience on what was your inspiration behind starting Wise Elk and what was your vision behind the brand?

Kostya Rolin: So we started it at [00:01:00] 2015. When, we have some unique features and some unique, things that we do all our production is in Ukraine. And at 2015, we thought that we have some great toys in Ukraine and we want to export them to all over the world. And our own brand, Wise Elk, is building blocks, like small ceramic building blocks that you glue together to build different models.

And, we started working with them when our partner, like they had a facility that produce, frames like ceramic frames. And those were usually the leftovers from the frame. And we just was playing around and building something from those leftovers. And that way we actually started the product. We got we, we played with our. Now breaks ourselves, we liked it, and we thought why not start to build [00:02:00] toys from this. And we found a lot of followers who wants to play with our toys also. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, and I know one of your focus with your brand is really on the eco friendliness and using a lot of the natural materials.

How does this commitment influence how you design the product and like all the different products you currently are offering as a brand? 

Kostya Rolin: We have like, we use ceramic bricks which is like great for us. It still puts a lot of extra effort to make it as reusable, as easy to use as plastic bricks or anything like that. So that still give us some extra work, but we really like what we get even though it gives us some extra work to make it as easy to use as possible it’s also give kids and adults that natural looking bricks that actually helps them to [00:03:00] create hobby models or architectural models.

And that way, as this makes this feature give us some extra, options to market our product. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s actually a good segue because I know some of your products, you designed it to be attractive for the adult audience as well. 

Do you intentionally design the product with adult in mind? What aspect do you think that resonate? The most with the older crowd in your customer. 

Kostya Rolin: Yeah, we came to this not in the first couple of years in the business. We recently came to this when we understand that marking our product, like all our product five year plus not always implies for older audience.

We understood that we need to, Separate to our lines smaller buildings or like a school project buildings for kids and more like a big hobby items for [00:04:00] adults. We see this as a huge, potential market for us. We like to work with older customers and, Yeah, we like this discovery.

We like that we discovered that like this audience also building something like this. And this helps us to market our product and sell more. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah That’s, definitely a very interesting trend. I, think when we have that initial conversation that’s a special word for it. I think it’s called KIDULT.

KIDULT. Yeah. KIDULT. K I D U L T. That’s like a very unique trend of the sound adult is more looking for a product they can also add into their collections. 

Do you find any particular challenge when you come to product development when you are trying to make sure your product is attractive to both the younger people, the kids and also the adult at the same time, how do you incorporate that?

Kostya Rolin: Yeah. For [00:05:00] kids, when you work with kids, it’s look alike. It’s enough to be attractive for kids. Okay. If we’re talking about older audience, hobby enthusiasts, and everyone who interested in like modeling then we need to go to scaling, actually very detailed scales of the models that goes both for railway, collectors and all those railway set aside buildings.

It’s also as like just travelers who want to build something that they traveled around. So yeah, but we really like, this trend, actually like at least didn’t allow the market to drop dramatically. This trend helps a lot of brands just to sell more. And, that’s become really huge, talking point for all toy industry.[00:06:00] 

Yes, we just finished with Nuremberg Toy Fair Spielwarenmesse, and it was one of the biggest topic over there. And everyone is trying to Get a little bit into this and find a way on how to market their product, not only to kids, but for adults also. 

Jason Hsieh: That’s very interesting for you to share that, yeah. That’s definitely a very interesting trend. 

Do you have a particular, I think with your product line, you have so many different unique product and also looking at your website right now some of your more sophisticated product that have a lot more pieces, will you say you designed that specific for the adult audience?

Kostya Rolin: Not always specifically. Again, that’s more like, history objects or travel objects or buildings for railroad enthusiast. So we have different audience that can mark get our product. And we have [00:07:00] like bigger pieces models, but they’re quite easy to build like just break on break, or we have a smaller models with less amount of breaks, but it’s actual pyramid, which is completely hollow inside and that’s make it very hard for kids to build it. It’s one of our hardest model to build. It has 840 pieces so yeah, that’s the case for us then we just try to give like older customers what they the correct scale or more historical buildings or just some Like just a kid’s models, it can be also fun for adults just to spend some time after work, just to relax and have some good time.

That’s, one of the, one of the drive of this trend is when people were really, anxious and all the COVID things, all the closeouts started. And after that, a lot of idols just trying to find anything to relax. [00:08:00] Then we saw a huge trend in puzzles, painting, all the hobby art stuff. And after that, it just developed into a lot more.

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and that’s very interesting as well. I know all your toys are made in Ukraine. 

How does that particular, identity, influence the brand when you come to marketing or perception? Because I, I know a lot of the toys brand that’s well known that they, most of them are actually made in China as you, as we all know.

Does that create a particular challenge to have everything made in Ukraine? 

Kostya Rolin: It’s a really big, like bigger goal for us to develop more brands here and to bring more brands to international market. In Europe, there is like some countries where you have a huge amount of producer of toys just because of, like people’s thinking or anything like that nearby current country, Poland is really huge with toys.

[00:09:00] And in Ukraine, we have factories that produce plastic toys. We have factories that produce, wooden toys. We have factories that produce Plush toys. There is a lot of opportunities here. Current situation in Ukraine is really bad. And but we try to, work all together as a toy industry just to develop everything that we can.

We just, again, we’ve been on pavilion, like all together. We had, in New York where we had all the industry. Yeah. There was a lot more companies and with the current, trend, I think as soon as the situation in Ukraine, improves there is a lot of possibilities for companies to produce here.

Because we saw the trends when everyone was producing in China, then everyone moved to try to move to Vietnam, India, whenever. And we have good prices for labor. We have [00:10:00] factories that are ready to take orders. So I think we can be a huge part of, the industry. In the future, and some of like Ugears were born in Ukraine which was a huge deal breaker for puzzles and 3D puzzles and Joyziwood, a lot of other companies started here, so it is a huge market to produce toys here.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And I understand this with the ongoing war that’s still going on with with Russia and Ukraine, it’s definitely a very challenging environment. Are you taking any particular me measure to to make sure everyone’s is safe and how are you taking those additional safety measures with your company?

Kostya Rolin: Yeah, so we have three factors that we work with in Ukraine. We’ve been helping everyone on the factories a lot all of them which is great. [00:11:00] They’re located in Western parts. So it’s at least a little bit safer. We had several humanitarian aid projects with American toy association, with, like other with Lego, with other companies to help with refugees to help with everyone else.

And, but we still try we, not, we’re not searching for some charity or anything like that. We are trying to do business. We are trying to develop our brands. We’re trying to grow. It’s hard. Logistic is very expensive for us right now. But as I know, a lot of companies are doing this and we’re trying to, develop our brands and trying to be proud of what we’re doing and try to help as much as we can.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, thank you for doing that for the community. It’s very important to get back and as much as you can and try to help your fellow citizen. So I understand that’s definitely a very challenging [00:12:00] situation to be in. So I want to switch gear and talk a little bit more about the uniqueness of some of the product.

If I understand correctly, is some of the product is also being handcrafted? By the factories do you remember there or how is the manufacturing process is being done in the three different factory right now? 

Kostya Rolin: It’s we have some hand work, but again for me, when you have account on Etsy and sell products over there and you can be qualified as handcrafted.

We’re not qualified for those. So we have a lot of manual, works that we do like with cutting like wooden bricks or ceramic bricks, but that’s still not qualified and it’s good for us. Because again, when you market your product, sometimes it’s good when you market it for end consumer. Handcrafted, but when you are working with stores, where’s distributors, they want to [00:13:00] have, perfect quality in each of, the product and that can be usually made just by manufacturing it on the, production facility in the factory and to minimize the work that will be done by hands which is, again, it’s good marketing tool for end consumer, but it’s not always it’s best to, give to bigger chains or stores or an hour. 

Jason Hsieh: For sure. Yeah. And I know let me share my screen here for those of you that’s listening, you can also watch the videos on our YouTube channel, but you have a lot of like very unique product out of all the product that you currently carry.

Which one do you feel like is you have a very unique story when you come when, you come to the product design? 

Kostya Rolin: Unique stories. I think we, Wise Elk is fully our brands. That we create and built every model [00:14:00] we work with for production facility, which has, those paint by number sets. And we like work with factory who get wouldn’t where we get wooden tops. If you want like for Wise Elk, we work with really Specific requests for the market where we research the market and we have California missions in yeah I think there are one of the unique one of the most unique products that we have, because we know that kids in America needs to build, you can search mission on a top. 

We. We have three we have three models right now. Yeah we know that kids in California need to build a mission for the school project. At, I don’t [00:15:00] remember at which grade, but yeah, I just need to figure out. They do it usually from sugar cubes. They do it from whatever materials they can find.

And we thought that’s a great market for us. We can help them. We can prepare everything that they need do it in a correct scale give some, objects that, Yeah, that helps to create a unique story around the building. We also, this is one of the products that we have with all that paste that put, on top of the bricks.

So the building looks completely like, really beautiful and unique. And yeah, that’s that’s how we try to business for us. We try to search for products that can easily help people to deal with their issues, with their needs, and we try to develop it and [00:16:00] bring it to market. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. So each of the brick is actually individual piece by itself.

Kostya Rolin: Yeah, yeah. And they build it together. It’s 1, 200 bricks. To build it together, it comes with a paste, with a glue, with everything that you need. And yeah, it’s just helps kids to create the great project. And spend more time with parents learning about the mission. And not just searching for sugar cubes or for anything, or from, for ice cream sticks or whatever they can build it from.

We try to prepare everything in one set. And that’s why we, think that this is a great product for everyone. 

Jason Hsieh: I see. And they glue it together, right? That’s, 

Kostya Rolin: yeah, they glue it together. So yeah, so white glue is on the left over there. And yeah, also the great thing for the product [00:17:00] is, they can rebuild it by putting it in water and if they want to build something else, they can put like they can buy Elmer’s glue or use the same glue and build it again.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay, so you can, they can actually take it apart and rebuild it too. Okay. I didn’t know that. Okay. 

Kostya Rolin: Yeah. That’s we try to make it as easy to use as Lego, as easy as a usable as Lego, but still from natural ceramic bricks. 

Jason Hsieh: That’s really cool. Okay. And I think so this is very interesting product.

And when you come up with the design, do you did the design drawing first, then you come up with can you walk walk the audience through how you come up with the design and how, do you come up with the material to use? And maybe talk a little bit about the of course, not Mary in depth, but the basic of the product development process for your brand.

Kostya Rolin: Yeah, again, like for this objects it’s easy for us. We work with historical buildings. We work [00:18:00] with the buildings and everyone knows how to looks like. So we have a special program, like basically kept architectural project program. That helps us to separate those pictures or drawings of the building to individual pieces.

Then we just use, we try to use as much of our like prepared and basic breaks that we have. But sometimes we just need to create a special breaks for each of the models, which 3D printers or like special molds help us to do. Okay. And, yeah, we just try to recreate it in a bricks. That’s easy for us.

We don’t need to like, think about how can, I don’t know how can, some kind of plush toy can look like we have design, we just need to recreate it in our own bricks. 

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Winding down to the toward the end of today’s interview. 

If you have a one piece of [00:19:00] advice that you want to share with someone else that’s either already in the toy industry or starting out in the toy industry, what would be the advice you would give to the fellow people as the listener that would be interested To learn more about the toy industry.

Kostya Rolin: Yeah. Toy industry is really fun. It’s a lot of work. Don’t be, don’t think that it will be like one day you become a millionaire or something like that. It’s a lot of work, but it’s very, very like very interesting and unique part of work because there is a lot of independent toy stores that if you have a good product, they will help and support you.

There is a great community in the States and all over the world of toy makers. This is we are one of the unique markets, especially in the United States, where we are not like totally 100 percent big box PR community. [00:20:00] We, we help each other and just take your toy, bring it to the show. Bring it to like sales reps, stores nearby, do the work. It’ll be fun. And there is a lot of people that will help you.

Jason Hsieh: I see. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your little bit piece of advice. So where is the best place for people to find you? 

Kostya Rolin: They can look wiseelk.us, dos. on a web page that you shared a couple of minutes ago.

They can look on amazon walmart We are michaels we are in Yeah, a lot of independent toy stores. We like to work with them and People can find our products there 

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Sounds good. Thank you so much for being on the show today and sharing your story and sharing your experience with the follow audience.

And thank you [00:21:00] so much again for your time. 

Kostya Rolin: Thank you.

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

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