235 | Developing a Child’s Future Through Toys | with Annamarie von Firley

Annamarie von Firley  

[It was] wildly successful doing this popup [store.] I can sell more in 1 hour in-person, than I can in an entire week online.

Chase Clymer  

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Through technical difficulties, we are here. 

We are recording Annemarie von Firley, the president of Adventuretown Toy Emporium, the beloved educational Ecommerce toy store that cultivates children's curiosity by learning through play, as our guest. 

Welcome to the show.

Annamarie von Firley  

Hi, I'm happy to be here. Again, I'm Annamarie von Firley, president of Adventuretown Toy Emporium. And we have amazing toys that we have sourced from all over the world. 

We have toys from 42 Different countries selected for their innovation, uniqueness, and educational value. 

And I just love finding the best toy designs that the world has to offer and then bringing them back to American children, and making them happy, and encouraging their curiosity, and making the best human beings that we can hope for.

Chase Clymer  

Now this is usually when I asked people where this idea came from because you don't... 

As a kid, you don't want to usually do what they're doing as an adult. But this one is... 

Kids want to sell toys. So (laughs) I guess let's... 

Tell me your story. How did we end up here? You've got a unique past that segues into this business.

Annamarie von Firley  

So it all started back in college. So I always come up to toys [that] I really enjoyed to play. 

And my father, who was very supportive, found out that there was a world largest toy manufacturing convention in Nuremberg, Germany. 

And because he's a clever man, he created an important company and made me the vice president as an 18 year old so that I'd have the credentials to go to this big toy convention. So they have 14 football fields full of toys all over the world. 

And I went there when I was 18 years old. And I'm like, "I knew I wanted to do toys, but I wasn't exactly sure exactly what kind of toys I wanted to do." 

And they segregated the toys into different warehouses that are giant. And so there's one for baby toys, and there's another one for outdoor toys, and one that's like old model trains... 

And I walked into the one with wooden toys. And I thought for sure like "Ah pff. Wooden toys, whirligigs, wooden carts. Boo." 

But I walked in there and it was like the most innovative toys I've ever seen in my entire life. And then that's when I fell in love. 

And I got my first degree in wooden toy design and construction. But when I graduated, the problem was that... 

I tried to get internships in Europe so I could learn to build wooden toys, but they were afraid that I would steal their ideas and take them back to America. 

And then in America, the toy companies were doing G.I. Joe and Easy Bake Ovens and they were not doing developmental toys at all. So I got a second degree in furniture design. 

And then I accidentally became a fashion designer for 20 years. 

And then my son was born. And I was working on an international opera. And I'd been working for 3 months straight 7 days a week. And he had 3 birthday parties in one weekend. And it was before Amazon Prime. 

And the go-to place that I normally would go by was The Library in downtown LA and it was closed for renovation. I was like, "Argh! There's no toy stores! Where are the toy stores? I can't believe it!" 

And then [I was] freaking out because I had no toys for 3 different birthday parties, and no time to ship anything. or do anything else. And I was like, "Ah, I should have toys. I should do that." 

And so that sent me on a journey of an Indiegogo campaign to raise money to start a website and do the Ecommerce site. 

And then COVID, so still no store. But what an amazing website and an app that I created for parents of children 0 to 3 years old, so...

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Well, we glossed over something that I'd be remiss not to ask for a follow up on it. 

Now obviously, your fashion career is nothing to overlook. Just let the people know what fun stuff you are up to during your, I guess, "adventure" outside of toys.

Annamarie von Firley  

Right. An accidental diversion for 20 years. Well we did reproduction vintage clothing from 1910 through 1957. 

And in the beginning ,we designed them for swing dancers because my friend and I were swing dancers and we would destroy our clothing while we're going out dancing. 

And she said, "You know, we should start our own company making reproduction vintage clothing." I'm like, "No, we should not do that because I work for a startup perfume company." I skipped over that part. 

First, I started [working for a] perfume company in Berkeley and my boss never got paid. And [they were] like, "I can't do this. I need money! I can't just not ever get income ever again." But they... 

The company got sold. They went to Minneapolis. I wasn't going with it. And so she wore me down until we started the company. 

And after I moved the company to Los Angeles, I started working in the TV, movies, theater, museums. 

So I had costumes on Broadway, I have costumes in the Smithsonian, I've had costumes on Saturday Night Live, and 3 Tarantino movies and a Zack Snyder film. And yeah. 

So yeah, I accidentally did that.

Chase Clymer  

I think that's a very wonderful detour. But now...

Annamarie von Firley  

(laughs)

Chase Clymer  

...you're trying to find toys for some birthday parties for your son, you realize that there's no toy stores around. What is the next step of starting a toy business? 

Obviously, you did the Indiegogo. But what were you doing before Indiegogo?

Annamarie von Firley  

Before I started Indiegogo, I was... Yeah, that was it. That was the very beginning. It was like founding... 

"I already founded a company before. So I knew how to start one." So I just started doing all the paperwork for creating an LLC, and bank accounts, and URLs and all of that. 

And so the Indiegogo was the first step after all the paperwork business, filing trademarks and whatnot. Yeah. 

And so we were successful in our Indiegogo campaign. I was hoping to dovetail that into like getting investors into a 10,000 square foot experiential toy store where all the toys that were available could be played with. 

But it was really hard to get people to invest in retail at the time and even harder after COVID. So yeah, but finding the toys... 

So I went to Spielwarenmesse which is the toy manufacturers convention I was mentioning in Nuremberg, Germany. 

I returned there, I think, 30 years to the day of being there the first time and went to start selecting all the awesome toys, and boy howdy, it was so exciting. Because the things that you get in the US... 

You don't see the European stuff, you don't see the stuff from Asia --well, other than stuff made from China.-- But there was so much innovation there that's just not brought over to this country that I just... 

It was just…

I was a kid in a candy store. I just could not believe it. And it's so much easier to be a curator than a manufacturer because there's just so many... 

I've been a manufacturer for 20 years and I just really wanted the instant gratification of just selling something without every sale to be hours of my life that I'm giving up for each each order. 

So, I don't think I answered your question (laughs) but I think somewhere in there, there might be enough information that feels like I did.

Chase Clymer  

Oh, no, it's perfectly fine. With the Indiegogo (campaign) though, what was like the offer? What were people backing? What were their rewards?

Annamarie von Firley  

Oh, gosh. So what we did was the website. We divide all of the... 

Okay. My conceit with toys is that from 0 to 3, you really want to focus on developmental toys. So these are skills-based toys that are helping with child's development. Once they're around 4, they start picking up their interest. So we separated the toys out into different categories. 

So we have Makers toys. So these are the kids who like tinkering, engineering, like to build So we have Makers toys. So these are the kids who like tinkering, engineering, like to build forts…

And then we have another section for Designers. And those are all arts related stuff. 

We have Scientists, so all kinds of sciency kids like anything from chemistry, to nanotechnology, to geology, astronomy, like that whole panoply of amazingness. 

Thinkers are kids who like puzzles and games and brain teasers. 

And Storytellers who are the kids that do imaginative play. So stuffed animals, dolls, dinosaurs, whatnot.

And I believe through observation that seeing what types of toys kids are drawn to, is their future, right? 

So the kids that are really into nature and science are gonna, they're gonna be your scientists and the kids are playing with the imaginative play --whether it's GI Joe or even video games-- these are your storytellers. And you can just... 

We invite parents to observe their children and find their interest, discover their interest, and then feed those interests to see what kinds of humans we create. 

What happens if every child's interests are cultivated over time? What kind of human beings we'll have in the end? 

Oh and so we're talking about Indiegogo. (laughs) 

So getting back to Indiegogo, the prizes that we gave were in those categories. So we had Makers prizes, we had Scientists prizes and whatnot. 

So depending on the level that you gave out. We had a big gaming event for adults at a certain level. 

Gosh, this is like 6 years ago and I'm trying to remember what all the prices were. T-shirts are some of the things that you imagined that other people have given as well. 

And what it was funding was the website. The website. Yeah. Because I didn't think out of the gate that I could get a couple million dollars for a toy store. 

(laughs) I set my threshold bar a little bit lower to make sure that I actually made that so...

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Chase Clymer  

You have a successful launch. What happens after? Obviously you got to fulfill your agreements with your backers. But then what?

Annamarie von Firley  

Then we start working on the design of the website, start curating the toys, putting them into different categories, working with designers to get all the visual collateral for the site if you go on the website, and we have an animated logo, and we have all the different icons. 

I use the same designer who's just this amazing woman from India who's just got the most amazing vision. And you know what I did? 

At the time I thought it would be really fun to use 99designs. 

I don't even know if they're still around anymore. But basically you put your idea out there and then a bunch of different graphic designers send over their ideas. 

And because I didn't really have a fixed idea of what I wanted the logo to look like, I thought that would be a really interesting way just to see what other people how they perceive it. 

And then I narrowed it down to her and then her vision is just fantastic. And we ended up using her as well when we developed the app. Yeah. 

And then from there, I tried to do equity crowdfunding for the toy store but that was less successful. So...  

Chase Clymer  

So you found product-market fit through Indiegogo and these things are... They're starting to sell online. 

How do you find customers beyond Indiegogo? How do you scale the online business? How are you getting these curated products in front of new potential parents and children and fans?

Annamarie von Firley  

So well, while we were still trying to do the equity crowdfunding we did pop-ups. 

We did over 200 different pop-ups around Los Angeles and got the toys in front of parents and on a smaller scale. It was wildly successful during these pop-ups. 

I can sell more in like one hour and in-person and I can like an entire week online. Super validating. So exciting. What I love to do some... 

Because I think that children should be able to play with the toys before they buy them. So I set them up so they can be played with and then the parents can see whether or not the children are engaged. 

And then while the children are engaged with the toys, they can say, "Oh, these are the different things that are doing." For instance, there's this amazing... 

A mat with little nubbins on it, and he never had a little tile with a letter on it. So not only did it have like this sensory feedback, there's really soothing like picking up the little tiles and putting them in the little nubbins. Because you're still counting... 

It was soft, it was just really soothing. But also because it had letters, they were building their fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, they could learn to spell, color identification, like it was so much good. 

And I just sold the snot out of those because the parents are like, "My kid loves it. And look at all the educational goodness that is happening." Yeah. 

So that's what we did until COVID, because then we could not be in front of people for 2 years.

Chase Clymer  

So that's a great transition. How did the pandemic change the trajectory of your business?

Annamarie von Firley  

March 2020, I even still have my calendar where we keep track of [when] we were doing pop ups, probably about 12 or 13 a month. And my calendar is frozen in time. I still haven't erased it because I just wanted to see what the before times looked like. 

I had to pivot immediately from 90% of sales in-person to 100% of sales online, which is really tough. Because visibility has always been a challenge. 

Back in 1998, when I did my fashion business back in the day, I was grandfathered in. 

We were there in the beginning of Ecommerce and never had any trouble getting visibility, getting 3 million hits a month. It was all fine. 

Now it's 20 years later. There are 10 trillion companies out there. And suddenly visibility is a hard thing. So [it was] not such an easy nut to crack. 

So we reached out originally to parent groups and newsletters, social media, trying to get people. It was right around Easter. Nobody could go to Easter stores or go to toy stores to buy Easter baskets. 

So we found a way to change what we used to do in real life, which would be an Easter basket bar. [We] tried to translate an Easter basket bar, which is like a salad bar where you could pick all the components in your basket, and then pay for it. 

We had to turn that into something that could happen online. So I spent 18 hours a day with developers trying to break the template in the website to make it happen. 

And then that was all very well. Parents said "You saved Easter. Hurray!" 

And then August came around and the second wave of COVID hit. [We're] like "Oh man, this isn't going anywhere." 

And knowing that 80% of the brain is developed in the first 3 years of life, I knew that the kids that were the youngest now are going to be more profoundly affected than anybody because that's a "use it or lose it" situation. So I decided that I needed to do something to help them. 

So I created an app for parents of children 0 to 3 years old, to help optimize your child's development with play-based exercises, and milestone tracking, and then a subscription box because we're a toy store and we've got 3000 toys. 

And we can pinpoint the different toys to put in the boxes to tailor to each child's developmental needs. And so that's really been transformational because still now we don't know whether or not we can open our store. 

But this subscription box is the only one that's available that tailors to each child's unique developmental needs, whether they're delayed or on track, advanced, or asynchronous. This is actually... 

It feels like to me like this was where I was always supposed to be because I studied so much child development when I was getting my toy degree and I never could quite figure out how to dovetail toys and child development and helping children and and now I feel like it's all sort of come together. 

And it's like, "This is my calling. This is my journey. My legend."

Chase Clymer  

So if I'm a parent, and I'm listening to this podcast, and I'm excited to see all the awesome toys that you have, where should I go?

Annamarie von Firley  

Oh, so the Adventuretown Toy Emporium is our toy store. And the URL for that is adventuretowntoys.com. 

And if you are a parent of a child who is under three years old, I can help you help them with your child's development by going to fledglingsflight.com.

Chase Clymer  

Awesome. Annamarie, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Annamarie von Firley  

Yay! Well, thank you for having me.

Chase Clymer  

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes, that really helps us out. 

Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.