Rich Mazel and Jeff Wilcox on the ‘Invent-to-Consumer’ model that fuels All 4 Fun Toys

“We can prove there isn’t just a three-year life cycle for great inventions”: Rich Mazel and Jeff Wilcox on what to expect from All 4 Fun…

Rich, Jeff, it’s great to catch up. Let’s dive into your new company, All 4 Fun Toys. How did the venture come about?
Rich Mazel, VP of Innovation & Inventor Relations, All 4 Fun Toys: It was a confluence of things. Jeff and I actually grew up a couple of miles from each other in Michigan. We didn’t know each other, but we had friends of friends and we got to know each other out here in in Los Angeles around 20 years ago. We’ve always been rooting for each other in our respective careers, but we always felt it would be cool to do something together. Then, we found an opportunity to engage and help inventors in a different way – different to the more traditional way of doing things.

In what way?
Rich: Well, it’s tough for inventors. There’s not as many toy companies as there used to be and the challenge of limited shelf space. You know the business – a toy goes into the market and stays there for two years, maybe some stay longer… And the challenge is that the toy company gives the rights back to the inventor after a few years – even if it does well – and then the inventor has it back… But there’s not many places to go now because it’s already been to retail – the buyers remember it and that can be a blessing and a curse. As a result, a lot of great inventions end up sitting on the shelf gathering dust. Also, there are inventions and toy lines that are sizeable for the inventor, but do not sustain the large overheads of a traditional toy company.

Now, to pivot for a moment, look at what Jeff has been doing to help companies thrive on Amazon. Jeff had taken on a lot of large clients – Mr. Beast, Artic, Libbey Glassware, Nixon Watches… – but he then took on a toy that had been sold for two years by one of the majors. Once it had its run at retail, the inventor got the concept back. The inventor then sold direct to Amazon and were making around $5,000 a month. Then they hired Jeff’s consultancy Elevate to help them with their strategy, and this past year they did $6m in sales! This is all Direct-to-Consumer – and it’s been a huge success.

I heard this and a light turned on for me. Jeff knows this side of the business, I know the inventor side of the business and have seen plenty of great ideas that deserve more time in the sun… So we decided to come together and launch All 4 Fun Toys. Half the business is consulting, and half is production as a toyco.

Terrific. Before we dig into this a little more, Jeff, can you expand a little on your background and work in DTC?
Jeff Wilcox, General Manager, All 4 Fun Toys: I cut my teeth in product development at companies like Belkin and Epson a long time ago. At Belkin, it was very entrepreneurial and I was brought through the whole process. That’s where I first thought: ‘Why don’t I do this for myself?’ Then my wife and I had an opportunity to move to Australia. We lived there for a while and had a couple of successful Kickstarters with a partner there. In the meantime, I had a couple of close friends from Belkin that had started a screen protector company and they were selling just on Amazon. They were a couple of months in when I moved back to LA, and I then went in with them on that. We became a top 10 seller in all of amazon for about 18 months – it was an incredible ride.

Then my wife and I started a baby and toddler clothing company on Amazon and that was successful… But throughout this time, we would have friends coming to us and asking us for help and advice on selling through Amazon. That’s what led to the launch of Elevate. We’ve helped clients of all sizes succeed there.

When Rich and I started talking, we realised there’s there are amazing inventions and I can find branded search volume for anything on Amazon… I can look that up and see where there’s demand. We can prove that there isn’t just a two- or three-year life cycle for these things – and that’s great news for inventors.

Rich: We like to term ‘Invent-to-Consumer’ and I like the idea that more of an inventor’s portfolio can be income producing rather than gathering dust.

Nice, so not DTC but ITC.
Rich: Exactly! It gets the inventor and their products closer to consumers, avoiding any potential walls that you can sometimes run into in the more traditional way of working.

For inventors reading, what sorts of concepts is All 4 Fun looking to take on?
Rich: It’s interesting. I’ve obviously been involved in putting together a lot wishlists before, but it’s always worth taking those with a pinch of salt because the real success stories tend to lie outside of those. I remember Dougal Grimes saying: “No-one was asking for Furby!” That said, I am going put out a wish list in Q1 – but it’s not going to look like any wish list I’ve ever done before. It’s going to get back to the basics. We’re looking for things that are fun! It doesn’t have to fit into a brand – and it doesn’t have to become a brand! Are people going to like it? Is it fun? That’s it. And Jeff and his amazing team have incredible data and research. That will guide us too… It won’t all be gut-feel!

And we should mention that you have already launched a few products. Let’s start with RingSlingr!
Rich: Yes! This is a fidget toy that you put it on your finger, but as you spin it, it can showcase animations, logos, all sorts of stuff. That’s new to market from inventors Josh Carlson, Jeremy Madl and Scott Wetterschneider.

Nice! And the second is Dream Tents?
Rich: Yes, from Paul Von Mohr and Phil Neal – great friends and great inventors! As well as looking for new inventions, we’re also interested in hits from the past. Dream Tents sold four million units the first time around. It’s a canopy tent that goes over a kid’s bed, transforming into a cool private space. The first theme we have for this is unicorns – and this is where the data aspect to what we do comes in. We can make fast design decisions based on the latest data. We can take an insight around what people are searching for on Amazon, create a design and launch it within a few weeks. The first theme came from Jeff’s insights.

Jeff: This came from us identifying there’s a ton of search volume for these ‘Swifty’ bracelets – and there wasn’t a lot of products on Amazon at the time. If we can start capturing some of those searches for our products, why wouldn’t we?

Rich: Yeah, we could print anything we wanted on the tent so why not let the data help drive the design. Then we aren’t guessing.

What made these products winners for you?
Jeff: With RingSlingr, when the inventors showed us it, I was like: “That’s cool!” That played a part!

Ha!
Rich: It’s true! I’ve seen over 100,000 things or whatever, and so you have certain expectations. If you whip out a car, I’m thinking it’s going to transform or maybe it’s an R/C… The special moments in a pitch are when it does something completely unexpected. That was the case with RingSlingr. It was cool and there was a gut-feeling for me. I first tried it at a dark restaurant and I saw people looking over to see what I was doing. That speaks to its potential for User Generated Content on platforms like TikTok and Meta. Content creators and influencers make up a sizable portion of our ad spend.

With Dream Tents, it had a proven track record of success. Also, we can officially announce we’ve signed a deal with Sega Toys, so we’re going to be distributing and selling things in the US that are Japan-only exclusives. This is for Sonic and their anime products. Also, we are happy to have Top Secret Toys – formerly Rehkemper – as clients. We will also be able to announce two large new partner deals – likely by UK Toy Fair… One an exciting master toy license for All 4 Fun and the other a large international toy company on the consulting side of the business.

And I should say, if one of our products becomes huge and we need to get into bricks and mortar, we’re going to go back to traditional partners – because they’re so good at it. They have these networks across the world made for that. But we’ll lower the risk for the large toy companies because we’re not just bringing them a prototype… We’re bringing a prototype, sales data, influencer data… This will help de-risk the decision for the toy company as we will have proven out the demand.

I imagine this approach has been well received by inventors.
Rich: It has! The only challenge for us is that there’s so much stuff out there that’s good! In previous roles, I’d see over 4,000 concepts in a normal year… And most of them are good! Inventors are smart people; they’re professionals. What I will say is to keep in mind that we are not a large company, so seeing 4,000 ideas a year won’t work in our model. We’re going to be seeing fewer things and proceeding with fewer things. But when we do, we’re going to be all in on them.

Before we wrap up, why do you feel you work well together?
Jeff: Being a serial entrepreneur, I’ve done maybe a dozen different partnerships throughout my whole life – but this one feels like I’m doing it with my brother. It feels easy and simple, and we complement each other’s skillsets.

Rich: I feel the same way. I also really appreciate the fact that we’ve known each other for 20 years, but we’ve never forced doing something together until like the right opportunity came along.

Last question! What’s the most underrated product you’ve been involved in bringing to market?
Jeff: One of my products at Belkin was called the TuneStudio. It was a four-track recorder – like a band would use – but the iPod Classic could dock into it. You could record four separate tracks on the iPod Classic and then mix them together and have a song… And this was before the first iPhone came out. It’s a beautiful product and I’m really proud of its design. At Macworld that year, Steve Jobs said that it was his favourite Apple accessory of that year… And we probably sold seven of them!

Ha!
Jeff: It was a $600 iPod accessory! A labour of love.

And Rich?
Rich: My pick would be a labour of love from a good friend of mine who I actually met at the old ToyNews inventor event you ran before launching Mojo Billy.

Ah yes!
Rich: I won’t give too many details, but it was a Holy Grail type invention! I still hope it sees the light of day somewhere.

Before we go, where can inventors find you over the coming months?
Rich: I’m back on the circuit! I’ll be at London Toy Fair and the Inventors Dinner too. I’ll also be at Nuremberg and New York.

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