Remaining relevant in tough times
Wham-O looks to reinvent its toys for the digital age
LOS ANGELES — Life was once an easy summer breeze for Wham-O. The toy outfit, founded in a South Pasadena garage shortly after World War II, churned out Frisbees and Super Balls by the millions.
Its Boogie Board (devised in 1971 by surfer Tom Morey) stood sentinel in suburban garages. Only squares didn’t own a Hula Hoop (introduced in 1957; 100 million units sold within three years).
In Wham-O’s television ads, its iconic starburst logo dropped into living rooms like a Super Ball off a third-story balcony.
Times sure have changed. Of the many businesses disrupted by the digital era, few have been upended like Wham-O. Even the notion of a firm devoted to plastic playthings seems like an anachronism.
Wham-O has had a rough time financially too. Sales fell sharply from their peak, but were still hovering around $80 million as of 2005, according to public documents and company statements. Since then they’ve slipped further, to less than a quarter of that as of 2015.
But a new set of executives isn’t convinced the company is doomed. Since they took over at the start of last year, they’ve come up with a number of new ideas and, like Super Elastic Bubble Plastic (introduced in 1970), set out to put some air in them.
“We think there’s a way to make our products the new cool,” said Wham-O President Todd Richards. “Being outside can be the new iPhone.”
Richards is in his groundfloor workspace at Wham-O headquarters in Carson, an office in a series of low-slung industrial-looking buildings tucked off a main road outside Los Angeles.
Around his desk sit various distractions — or are they research? A miniature basketball hoop. A water balloon “aqua bow.” Balls, discs and an assortment of flying objects. Richards turns to them when he needs a break from thinking about how to modernize his company, or as inspiration for the same.
For example: the YouTube channel the company has created, in which users can do things like upload videos of their creative uses of the Slip ’N Slide.
“Officially the box says under 12,” he said of the watery backyard implement. “Not everyone abides by that.”
Richards oversees an area staff of about 30 employees. (A second office of about 50 staff members is in Hong Kong.) The group’s mission is to tweak designs and marketing for the 21st century.
Wham-O sent ambassadors to the Coachella music festival this year where they handed out Hacky Sacks (first licensed by Wham-O in 1983) and talked to concertgoers about how to master the mini-sphere. The idea was to update the toy’s image.
“A lot of young people would love our products if they got the chance to know what they are,” said Olyvia Pronin, the company’s director of marketing. “We’re trying to show them what they’re missing.”
After being run as a family
business for nearly 35 years — the company was founded in 1948 by USC alumni Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin, who capitalized on what were then cutting-edge chemical and industrial advances — WhamO in the last few decades has endured a revolving door of owners, including Mattel, not to mention a series of retail woes.
Richards took over as president when the faltering Wham-O was sold to his privately held Carson-based InterSport and Hong Kongbased
Stallion Sport for an undisclosed sum at the end of 2015. The seller was Cornerstone Overseas Investments, which had owned Wham-O for about 10 years.
Richards believes he has finally hit upon a winning formula. Soft-spoken but physically imposing — he’s a dirt-bike aficionado who commutes to work on his motorcycle — the executive was a vice president of sales for Wham-O in the early 2000s. After leaving the firm, he watched with some consternation as WhamO under Cornerstone tried to compete using more generic products like beach sand pails.
Richards had little hope he
could do anything about that until Stallion’s chief, Joseph Lin, approached him several years ago with word that Wham-O was available. The two parties soon had put together financing and closed the deal.
With eBay and other entities driving a huge nostalgia industry — the company has a store on the retail site, for shoppers looking for vintage Wham-O products — Richards made the acquisition under the belief that WhamO was well-situated and just needed some new energy. He quickly created a startup environment to rethink how Wham-O does business.
The company’s Carson offices feel like a space where employees of a Silicon Valley giant might engage in some much-needed toy-based relaxation from their stressful jobs. Only in this case, the toys are the stressful jobs.
Wham-O also is using a crowdsourcing model, hearing as many as several dozen pitches per week from ordinary citizens who think they’ve come up with the next great toy; the ideas sometimes find their way into the company’s product-development pipeline. The idea is to make all outdoor Wham-O toys as ubiquitous as Silly String (invented in 1972, terrorizing New Year’s revelers ever since).