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Thursday, 12 February 2009 08:32 |
Posted February 12, 2009
Another cold clear morning here in Chicago, as the bright white, nearly-full moon wanes in the morning sky. Winter is so beautiful. You have to live here to understand, because to those from warmer locales it must look like unending hardship.
We are heading off to the New York International Toy Fair, my 30th, more or less. I got into the toy industry quite by accident, unable to find an industrial design position anywhere in Chicago in the Summer of 1979. Someone suggested I contact Marvin Glass and Associates, the legendary Chicago toy invention studio. Never heard of them, or of toy design, but out of desperation I called, got an appointment, and was invited back for a second interview.
I was broke at the time. I had $200 to my name, an old Volvo, and my sewing machine from my years in the leather business. I had always been self employed, so I didn’t qualify for unemployment. I figured I would have to apply for welfare, food stamps or whatever, or starve. Pulling out all the stops, I cut my shaggy hair, took out my earring, and……Harry Disco gave me my shot. Hallelieuia! I will be eternally grateful to him and to Marvin Glass for the experience and opportunity they gave me.
I had long wanted to be an inventor but had no idea where one might pursue that in the real world. By happenstance, the Good Lord set me down in a company, in an industry that is driven by innovation. The toy industry brings out hundreds of new products each year, many of them the result of independent inventors like ourselves.
As each new invention typically has a life of only 6 months, the market chews through an endless stream of inventive new products year after year, unlike the much slower pace of innovation and new product introduction in other industries. Why that is remains a mystery to me. But that need for the new and different year after year gives me and my talented team the opportunity to continually create new concepts and develop new technologies that will make it to market one day - we hope.
So we pack up and ship our samples of new, never-before-seen product concepts to NYC and present to companies we hope will love them, license them, bring them to market in 2011, or 2012, or 2013, or…… This is a business built on irrational optimism and boundless hope.
Fingers crossed, I will let you know how it goes.
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Bruce Lund, Founder
Lund and Company Invention, L.L.C.
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