Carlton Calvin

Founder and president, Razor USA

“In 1995 the ‘it’ children’s game was Pogs, and I wanted to capitalize. I saw a scorpion paperweight and had an aha moment: What if I made a playing disc, called a slammer, with a preserved scorpion inside? I got my hands on 100 scorpions, developed the product in my garage, and brought it to a trade show. A distributor asked if I could make 200,000 more for him. I did and then used the profit from that to order 500,000 more scorpions. Then the Pogs craze crashed, and I had $150,000 tied up in scorpions. Crazes have short shelf lives.”