Q & A With Toy Company Owner Benny Kline

[00:00:00] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:00:30] Speaker 1: Thank you. Hey, how are we doing today? We are live as always. We've got a special one here. This is my first interview. So hopefully everybody can hear this. This is a first for me. Hang on just a second, folks. So we are just getting everything situated here. Hang on. I'm sorry, folks. Let me move some stuff around here. See if we can get this situated. So hopefully everybody can hear me. Do we have an echo if anybody can holler out? Hang on. This is, again, this is new. This is my first interview. I was originally going to do this as a Skype. Benny is actually running a little late. He is sitting in New York traffic as we speak. So we are just a little bit behind. Good. No echo. That was my only concern. Again, I'm new to the whole live streaming of interviews. So this is my first one. My first interview on another channel was on Wade's Ventures. So I'm sure many of you do know who Wade is. Wade's a real good guy, too. Just a few things to call out tonight. I will be on the Primetime Treasure Hunter. Dominic, his channel tonight at 9 o'clock. So just FYI, if anybody wants to catch that as well, too. He's a real good guy. He's got some real good videos. He's gathering a good following. I, unfortunately, pronounced his name wrong last night on last night's video. So I do apologize to him. I have a friend, Dominic, and his is Dominic. So I know it's not a big, huge difference, but I've got those ticks where I get a name in my head, and that name just sticks, and there isn't much I can do about it sometimes. So I'll probably have to apologize to him during the actual show, unfortunately. So I'm just terrible and stuff like that. So I'm just waiting for Benny to come on in here in just a few minutes. I do have links to all of his sites on various spots here. If you check down below, it's actually in the feed as well. He owns and runs Tenacious Toys. Benjamin Klein is his name. I'm going to call him Benny as long as he's okay with that. We've conversed in emails quite a few times now. I actually have my diorama up on his site. The clown will be up there. We've got other toys rolling off the line. My first experience with this actual toy company was from Adam Savage's Tested, which is a channel that I have watched for five or six years. It's one of the longest running shows that I have watched here on YouTube. I was a big Mythbusters fan. So that's where I come from with why I've discussed and brought Benjamin into it here. We hope to have the long, illustrious career in doing toys. It's just one of those things that's always fascinated me until the modern day age of now. You couldn't produce them yourself. It would just be impossible. But now with through modern technology and modern chemicals and resin casting, you can do all of this at home. We're going to talk a lot about some of how he got into it, why he does it, and things along that line, too. For those of you who know Thrift Shop Pustler Chris, he has actually dealt with Benjamin Benny as well, too. So he's got, honestly, a sincere and great reputation across the net in all the places he corresponds with. So this guy is in the know. He's got contracts and purchases from big wholesalers and big companies as well, too. He's got deals with Disney and Marvel and the whole works. He does Dunnies and all the modern toys that you could imagine. Now, for me selling a lot of these toys, you obviously know I sell all kinds of toys. I do wholesale as well, too. Part of how I know what I want to invest in and what I want to get into is from sites like Benny's, like Tenacious Toys. Christmas is coming up. You know, he's been to the New York Toy Fair. You know, he purchases at these places. So he's got a bigger know. He might see items that most people wouldn't see. He does other shows there as well, too. I believe Five Points. I think that's in June. It's a big toy show. And again, back to Thrift Shop Pustler, too. He was, he's Evilos as well, too. If you're not familiar with that, you can type that in on YouTube as well, too. And he has created some of his own toys. He's got a Gary V. And he's done some work with Benjamin Benny as well, too. So he's been around the block for a long time, Benny. He knows what he's doing. His site is honestly very responsive. It's easy to navigate. In all honesty, I would recommend at least, you know, following it and checking out what's going on with it. Because you're going to see what new toys are out there, what's hot by, you know, how quickly to sell, what's left. He also does, like, pre-orders on some toys, too. So if you're in the toys at all, you want to get into a business, you want to start your own site or whatever the case may be, looking at other people's sites like Benny's site is a huge plus. It has been for me because, again, as I said, I do wholesale, you know, so and we are branching out to our own site. We're going to have our full-fledged site up real soon here. I will share that with you as we continue our journey with Sellbright and some of the other applications that we are using. This past week has just been horrendously packed. So, you know, I do apologize for not getting to everybody. I haven't been on Facebook much this weekend. For those who don't know, we started switching our listings or at least lining them up to actually sell on multiple platforms from the main platform. So from eBay, we're going to what we actually have. But we've downloaded all of the listings we want to import into Sellbright. And we're in the process of categorizing them for the best bet to, you know, cross list some of these. And I see Benjamin is here already. He is in the chat here. Let me pop over here. Again, I am new to the whole interview process. So we may or may not have some issues here. So I do apologize ahead of time. As long as this goes well, we are going to have a couple more interviews here as well, too. So, again, I love toys. I collected toys. I grew up on toys. My toy history goes back to 1976. Well, actually, probably before that with GI Joes. For those of you who are collectors, we'll give Benny's almost ready, it looks like. How are you doing, Benny? [00:07:16] Speaker 2: I'm good. I'm good. I was just letting you talk. I am ready. Can you hear me? [00:07:24] Speaker 1: Can you hear me, Benny? [00:07:25] Speaker 2: I can hear you. I can't. You can't hear me. Okay, let me see what I can do here, too. Internal mic. I can't hear Benny. Okay, let's see. That is very weird. FaceTime camera, default internal microphone, internal speaker is. Let's see. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Let's see. Just a second here. I can hear you just fine. Let's see. Everything seems to be normal on my end. [00:08:03] Speaker 1: I still have no sound. [00:08:05] Speaker 2: You're not getting sound? [00:08:08] Speaker 1: Okay. I still can't hear anything at all. And I tested this, like, for an hour yesterday. No sound. Why don't I have sound? [00:08:24] Speaker 2: I think everything's good on my end, I think. [00:08:27] Speaker 1: Hold on. Do you have any settings on your side, Benny? [00:08:29] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, apparently this is the right settings based on camera. I need to install a extension. Let me try Safari. [00:08:48] Speaker 1: Let me try Safari. We might have an issue here. Hang on. Let me go back in and check one more setting because everything should be set to go. [00:08:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't really test this before. [00:08:59] Speaker 1: We do not know why we aren't. [00:09:05] Speaker 2: Let me try the other browser. [00:09:07] Speaker 1: Still can't hear you, Benny. I apologize. I tested everything. What about, oh, can we have the chat? [00:09:16] Speaker 2: Can we chat? [00:09:21] Speaker 1: Can anybody hear Benny? Besides, I can't hear Benny, so hopefully. Yeah, I can't hear Benny at all, which is really weird. Let me try. [00:09:38] Speaker 2: It looks like it's registering sound. I got the little green. [00:09:40] Speaker 1: I should have sound all the way across the board. Got a little green thing. Well, this is not good. I cannot hear Benny at all, so this is really bothersome. Let me end this for just a second here, and I'm just going to go to straight Google Hangouts, and we will just do a normal one. I don't know why I can't hear Benny at all. It does not make much sense on my side. I might be able to do it on my phone. Everything is set up, and it was tested this morning. I can't even hear myself now. That is really weird. Hang on. Give me just one more minute. Sorry, Benny. [00:10:36] Speaker 2: It's okay. [00:10:37] Speaker 1: Why don't I have sound? Let me check one more setting here for everybody. Hang on just a second. I think I got one more setting here that looks like it's set. I just did an update this morning, so that would be my guess. Hang on one second here. If I can get my app to open up. It says I have sound all the way across the board. Let's get my app to open up. Oh, okay. I think I got you now. You got me now? Yeah, I got you now. Sweet. Let me move this back around. [00:11:31] Speaker 2: Yay! [00:11:32] Speaker 1: Okay, sorry about that. I'm assuming it... I'm assuming it had something to do with my update. Okay, so here is Benny. I'm on a delay, so this is just a little awkward. I'm sure there is some setting having to do with the update that I just did this morning. So hopefully we are set to go. I'm sorry about this. So why don't you introduce yourself, Benny. Tell us who you are and how you got into what you actually do here. [00:12:18] Speaker 2: Okay, so my name is Benny Klein. Essentially, I sell designer toys on the internet. I guess the short version of the story is I have an art degree and I graduated in 2001. And that actually was about the height of the designer toy movement. It's kind of tapered off since then. But I discovered them around 2004. Did a little buying and selling. Didn't know how to make a website. So we started a small scale on eBay, essentially. You know, buying a case of toys here and a case of toys there. And eventually that whole thing just snowballed. I stuck with it. It's been 15 years now. We've been selling designer toys, art toys, limited edition, action figures, resin statues, customs, and things like that on the internet for about 15 years, essentially. [00:13:17] Speaker 1: Well, that's kind of interesting. Do you remember the big red toy box by chance? [00:13:22] Speaker 2: No. Was that a shop? [00:13:24] Speaker 1: The big red toy box used to be like a newspaper. And then they went into actually selling on their own. And then they opened up a huge eBay store after eBay popped into the market. And then pretty much eBay took over from them from there on out. I guess that might be a little before your time. I might be a little older than you. I'm bordering on 50 right now. So that might be an age-related factor, I guess, on that one. [00:13:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't start doing anything of this sort until 2004. So I didn't even have an eBay account until 2004. [00:14:00] Speaker 1: Are you a collector as well, too, then, I guess would be the issue here? Is that something that you collect as well? [00:14:07] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the house is full of toys. I mean, I have toys everywhere. Like, literally, you can't even see them right in front of me. [00:14:17] Speaker 1: Oh, wow. [00:14:18] Speaker 2: You know? I mean, they're just everywhere. Okay. Here's one of the... So I've always collected toys. My first thing was Hot Wheels. So this is actually a car, one of my favoritest Hot Wheels cars that I saved. Didn't get lost or smashed. I saved it from my childhood. This is a Hot Wheels from 1980. This is a dream band. So, like, this is the first thing I started collecting. And, yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm still a kid at heart. I love toys. And I love art. So sort of having, like, a designed art object that's designed by an artist is very appealing to me. So, yeah. I mean, we're collectors. And we sell. And, you know, it's actually very difficult to do both because, you know, you kind of have to look at the products, like products, and look at your sales trends and data and make hard decisions about what you're going to sell. And that really, that kind of kills the fun in collecting a little bit. [00:15:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, I get that, too. We collect way too much these days. Toy-wise, most of my toys, I had the original Redline Hot Wheels, so I know those all too well. I was bad with mine. We had firecrackers, and I don't know how many I blew up in our backyard. And back in the 70s, early 70s, we had cherry bombs, which were like 10 times what the fireworks are now. Yeah, they were huge. They would blow a hole in the yard, actually. So most of my toys were totally trashed out. Now, when Star Wars came out, that's a different story. When I started to get the Star Wars toys. Do you think it helps you a great deal? I know you said it's a little hard sometimes because you keep so many items or you collect as well. Do you think it's a plus that you actually collect as well to kind of have an in on toys to start with? [00:16:21] Speaker 2: Well, I don't think someone could actually do what I do without having a distinct interest in the items. Because, especially with designer toys, you really need to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on. Designer toys are very transient. So they're limited in nature. So an artist in a company will put out a toy and it'll be limited. And then it would be my job to assess whether I can sell that or not and whether I want to sell that, whether I like it enough to put a thousand bucks into buying some and think I'm going to turn a profit. So you can't do that without being inherently interested in the products and follow them. You'd be a terrible toy store owner if you had no connections to the whole industry and community and what's going on. So you kind of have to be a collector. I know every single person I know that runs a toy store, whether it's brick and mortar or online, has a giant impressive collection that's like unmatched. They've got all these different things from special stuff, prototypes, customs, like all kinds of stuff that no one else has because you just can't. The toys are like attracted to me by a magnet. Like people send them to me all the time and people gift them to me at shows and I'll pull one out from the inventory and keep it for myself. [00:17:53] Speaker 1: Which, what do you have right there? Is that a Nightmare Before Christmas? [00:17:58] Speaker 2: No, this is way, the stuff I sell is way weirder than that. Way weirder. So if you're thinking Nightmare Before Christmas stuff, you're thinking too mass market. So this is an artist who goes by Command Z. His name is Johnny Rodriguez. You're actually the first one seeing this. I'm dropping this toy on April 8th. No one's really seen it yet. So, okay, people have seen this, but not this color. This is my shop exclusive color. So this is a water tower bird. So Johnny is a painter and he has these beautiful painterly paintings that are sort of urban, decay. He uses a lot of birds and things like that. Here, let me move my, so you can see it's a bird, right? That's really unique, I have to say. A little water tower. Sorry, it's a little, the light's a little weird in here. But I stocked the regular color of this, and I sold through them quickly. And then my distributor said, hey, you know, if you keep reordering, do you want an exclusive of this? And we have some here that you can claim for your shop. And just sitting there, like, you know, so I'm like, oh, great. What are they? This one, actually, the legs and the sides of the water tower are glow-in-the-dark plastic. So this is the glow-in-the-dark colorway. [00:19:25] Speaker 1: Oh, that's pretty cool. [00:19:26] Speaker 2: It's a water tower color, and then the bird is a black color. So I'm actually releasing these on Monday, next Monday, April 8th at noon, and there's only 75 of them. [00:19:41] Speaker 1: Don't forget, everybody, I have a link down to his site, too, if anybody would like to. It's down in the comments. It's actually in the feed, and I have it in the description as well, too. So it's a rather interesting toy, in my opinion. I'd love to see the artwork on that as well. I'll have to actually look that one up. I got the, let me flip back over here. I got the privilege of meeting Tim Burton in the past, and that's kind of why I say that. Let me call out Flippin' Hustler here. He gave us a super chat. I honestly appreciate that, too. It's always great when somebody supports these type of endeavors. It's kind of hard sometimes to get a good following. So I do appreciate that, Flippin' Hustler, for the super chat. In my experience and in the time, I've been just fascinated with toys. So, you know, as I've said before, Benny popped on here. I've advanced into doing this type of stuff as well, too. And Benny just seems to be one of the in-know guys. And as I said, I've seen him on some other shows as well, and I've watched most of his videos. I followed Tenacious Toys for quite a little while here. I kind of constantly look on there to see what's new, to see where I want to do with stuff. So for all of those people out there that, you know, don't know what they want to do with it or they're trying to get their own site, Benny is a perfect example of somebody who's done it from scratch. So, I mean, anybody can do this to a certain extent as long as you have the willpower and the need and take the time to, you know, explore this. Let's get to another question here. One question that I was asked to ask you is how hard was it to get the contacts, to get these people to come to you and to get the dealings and to get the business going to start with? I mean, that always seems to be the biggest case is the startup cost. So could you go into that maybe, Benny? [00:21:26] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, those are two different things. The costs of doing it are one thing, but the contacts are a whole other thing. I mean, I think in any business, essentially your Rolodex is your most important asset by far. You can always get more money. You can always place more orders. You can always manufacture more stuff. You cannot regenerate contacts that you have ruined. So how did I get all this? Someone actually asked me that before. He was confused about why I could get, you know, have these interesting products in my shop and other people can't. It's just normal human interaction, which I think is a concept that's been lost in the Internet age. You need to show up, shake people's hands, be genuine and friendly, and just show through and through that you're not out to screw people and you're out to help people. And I think once you've established that with people, they can talk on their own about you without you there, and they only say glowing things, and that's because you've conducted yourself in a professional manner. So for 15 years, I've attempted to be the most professional and helpful person I can within this industry. And, you know, and I've seen other people make the mistake of being jerks, frankly, and it always comes back and it eats you up. You really have to, you have to be genuinely helpful and the industry will come back and it will, it'll, it'll play nice with you. You know, you make friends and, and be a good person. And that's, that's really the long and the short of it. That's it. [00:23:15] Speaker 1: Well, that brings me back to, you know, some of the conversations I've had here on this channel as well, too. He, he's literally messed, made his interaction with people the most important part. And I know a lot of people will look at eBay or whatever platform you're doing that, you know, once I get the item in the mail, that's the end of it. Or I'm not going to worry about how quick I get it out or any of these other interactions with it. And I've talked about feedback. I've talked about customer service to, I'm blue in the face. People still don't get it that Benny, he's, he's giving you the perfect example of how he got to be this. And you can look around on, on the net as well yourself. Benny's site has more unique and interesting stuff to me personally than most any other toy site out there. I'm not into the big mass market myself either. So the designer toy market has a big interest in my heart. We've been to the Detroit show. I want to do Dragon Con. We want to do Comic Con. And I'd love to get to one of the New York toy fairs as well, too. But customer service is literally the number one thing you can do to keep your business going. I'm sure there's more to it than just, you know, selling the item. I mean, I preach this constantly. I've got a couple other questions here. As a person with an IT degree myself, you say you started it off all yourself. So do you do all of the maintenance on your own site as well as the other sites you do? Or do you have like a staff or a IT go-to person for your business? [00:24:39] Speaker 2: There's no staff. It's just me. So everything you see on the internet that's Tenacious Toys, I made it. So whether it's a piece of copy, I've written it. I try to get other people to provide the photos. But the shop itself is a Shopify platform. So clearly I did not have to code that myself. I would rather have a platform that I can use and customize with their app store. But nothing out there has been made for me. I created it all based on the tools that anyone can use. So like I'm not doing anything special or unique technology-wise. I'm just using the best tools that I can find and figuring out all the little nuances and all the little details of them and trying to use them to my advantage. That's all I'm doing. [00:25:32] Speaker 1: So again, he's doing a Shopify, folks. He's got his own Shopify. Look at his site again. Check out the links. I've got them right down below there. Check them out. Look how professional, top-notch. I mean, the site's the bomb in all honesty. It gives you updates, new things. It's all linked into Google searches and the whole works because it shows up on even my main pages. So, you know, anybody can do this if you spend the time and get it. He's telling us right here he did it all himself. You know, he's been at it for 15 years. Obviously, just like me, I've been in it for a long time. It takes time. You know, it's going to take you some effort to get this here in general. So, again, it's a Shopify store. He's on eBay. He's on Amazon. He's across the net. Same process we are taking. I don't know if – do you use like a Sellbrite, like another application to help pull items down when you sell them, Benny? [00:26:26] Speaker 2: Shopify – so I had a different system previously. I'll tell you about that later if you want to know. But now I'm not using any third-party listing tools. I'm using the Shopify channels, the eBay and Amazon channels. And, of course, I've got Facebook, Messenger, Instagram. I'm using those channels as well in Shopify. Like, do you have a Shopify? [00:26:52] Speaker 1: We are just getting into Shopify. We're going into the Sellbrite aspect to at least get our listings created so we can save copies of them. I'm still new to Shopify, so we have branched out. We're literally just downloaded and are organizing our listings. We've got like 55,000 listings. So it's a huge process for us. [00:27:12] Speaker 2: So the tool I'm using in the back end of Shopify is probably not appropriate for the number of listings that you have. So I have – the number of SKUs I have is in the hundreds. So it's much easier to manage than tens of thousands. It wouldn't work well for you. But in the back end of Shopify, there's little sections. Like, I can sell stuff on my online store, but there's also a section I can click on that's Amazon. And Shopify, once I get the Amazon listing up on my Amazon seller's account, I can link the product in my Shopify to the product in Amazon. So basically, I put one unit up in Amazon. And I then go – after about 30 minutes, I can go in and I can say, hey, Shopify, here's the product in Amazon. And here's what it's linked to in the shop. And so when I get a sale in Amazon, it automatically, instantly gets taken out of my inventory in the shop. And it becomes an order in my shop. So – and ditto for eBay. eBay, I don't have to create it on eBay first. I create – I send it to eBay from the eBay channel in the back end of Shopify. And it becomes an eBay listing. So I had a third-party selling tool previously, which costed money and didn't update instantly. So it would take several hours for it to update inventory quantity in the back end of my Shopify. And that created a lot of overselling problems. When I had a really hot release and I was selling it in all three places, sales would come in on eBay and Amazon after they were out in Shopify. And that was – that's no good. So now everything's integrated in instant and it's working much better for us. [00:29:05] Speaker 1: Well, I actually just wrote that down just to look into that because I was unaware that Shopify had that kind of link. We do Etsy too, so that might be a deciding factor too. I'll definitely have to look into that. Let me think here. I've got a maintenance on that one. The other question now, this one was asked by someone else as well too. So I hollered out for some questions from a few of my patrons and subscribers as well too. So one of the questions is, are you specifically an online-only site? I know you've talked about like the Five Point Show and some of the other things. Do you have a brick-and-mortar presence of any kind or a show presence routinely from year to year? [00:29:45] Speaker 2: Well, I live in Manhattan. So operating brick-and-mortar in Manhattan is, in my opinion, prohibitively expensive unless you have some kind of in with the building owner. So I've never had a brick-and-mortar. I've always been online only. But I have been going to New York Toy Fair as a buyer for, I don't even know how long. It's been a really, really long time. I guess it's been 15 years now. I have a, I'm about to do my 10th year at New York Comic-Con. So I've been consistently exhibiting in a large booth, a collective-style booth actually, for the past several years at New York Comic-Con. And Five Points is a new show. That's in Brooklyn, and it'll be the second year, and that is in June. So it's a nice balance with the fall show. We have a summer show, too. And I don't really travel outside of New York, although some of my, some of my buddies, the artists travel on a weekly basis all over the country, selling at all these different conventions. But we don't, we don't do that. I have, it's just too expensive to move all the toys around, and I don't have the time anyway. [00:30:58] Speaker 1: Well, backpacking off on that here, is the, I've heard stories about the New York Toy Fair for quite some time. I had a friend who went a few times as well, too. Is it just a madhouse of everybody pushing their wares, or do you get to get personable with some of the businesses and companies and manufacturers that are actually at New York Toy Fair, just because of the sheer size of the event? [00:31:21] Speaker 2: Well, it's, I mean, it's a little bit of both. I mean, so, so like you walk in there and the first booth you see is the, the TY, the, the, the tie plush booth, right? And that's, that's huge. And that's always in, in, you know, it's, it's big mass market, big business. There's all these huge companies that are there, which are always there and have huge booths. And, and actually a lot of, even more now are closed off, they're walled off. And you, you go up to a receptionist and you're like, can I see the stuff? And they're like, do you have an appointment? And like that, a lot of the booths are like that. They're trying to protect themselves from people stealing their IP. But there are a lot of booths at Toy Fair, which are much smaller. And it might be an independent, you know, toy creator, someone like me and you who has a business. They finally got a booth at Toy Fair. They have a little booth. And yeah, you can talk to the owner and, and get to know them. So Toy Fair is a lot of getting to know you. If you want to look at it like big business and like, you know, this is very serious. Like you can do that. But, you know, I, I like to go in there and have fun. I talk to people when they seem like they, they want to talk and, and they're, they want to tell you about their business. And, you know, the booths that are all business and very serious about it, you can really tell right away, you know, that, that is how they are just by walking up and seeing how they approach you. You know, it's your, your, your experience of these different booths at Toy Fair is very different based on the size of the business. You know, you can get there, but it can happen. We'll talk more about that after the show. [00:33:02] Speaker 1: It's not that hard, definitely, definitely interested in that aspect of it too. As, as my channel knows here, I've been an artsy person for quite some time. I've created, God knows how many different types of artistic endeavors. We're working on some dioramas, some sci-fi stuff, some vintage retro toys. I've got my hands all over the place. I know I shouldn't branch out so much, but we've got employees. I've got eight people here besides me. So, you know, I've got the, the, the means to do it. As you can see, you know, he's done all the legwork too. He does the legwork. So I constantly get people asking questions on, on how do you make these contacts? He's, he's telling you, he's going to these events. I go to trade shows as well too. So you can consider the New York Toy Fair, Comic-Con, the whole works. It's basically a trade show for those specific areas of, of the industry. So, and I've had similar experiences trying to talk to some of the bigwigs. I'm lucky enough, at least that I worked for Disney for 10 years. So I do have some ins in the, the purchasing department for the Magic Kingdom and the, the Florida area as well too. So I've luckily enough had some ins on some things. It doesn't take anything like that to start in most any business. For all of those who are on here, who have, you know, started your own business on eBay or Amazon or wherever you're selling at, you know, it takes that legwork. And, you know, you can see Benny's just a real social guy. He's, he's good talking to the folks. So, you know, I, you can't go wrong if, if you're personable and you can read people. I guess that's the point of this because he's telling you right here is just as I have that you can kind of judge who's interested in talking to you and who's not, you know, and, and take it that way. And if you want to just be strictly business on everything, that's great. But, you know, I'm personable. I know it may, may not show that here, but when I'm in public, I'm, I'm friendly. Um, I've got that rapport. You've seen some of my videos where I'm purchasing stuff. So, you know, that that's what it takes to get this going here. Um, let me think here. I had another question related to that, um, to the fair itself here. How do you know what to buy is, is, is one of the questions, not only me having, as well as other people have asked that same question. How in the heck would you know what to buy in such a humongous place? And if, if anybody here hasn't seen what New York toy fair is, there's a huge segment of videos on YouTube right this second showing, you know, the floor and the whole works and people walking it. So take a look at that. Um, let's see what Benny's take on, on that part of it is here right now. [00:35:32] Speaker 2: Well, okay. Toy fair is really, really huge. So you can't go everywhere. You can't see everything. You might be able to, it would take all four days. Uh, you can't buy everything that's it's none of us can buy everything there. So I, my best suggestion is if you're in business already, you've already determined your niche. Um, I don't know if like, like, do you sell like everything or do you sell specific verticals? Like, what do you, what do you do? [00:36:08] Speaker 1: Um, I've got like key niches, niches, however you'd like to pronounce it. I know my pronunciation is not the greatest on some words, but I sell a ton of vintage Victorian trade cards, paper, postcards. I sell a lot of toys, military. I don't do, mostly it's collectibles and vintage is pretty much everything I sell or toys. I do media, but they, again, they all tie in. And some of the items that I personally sell cross multi-category interest. That's what I look for. I look for something that would be interesting to not just one niche, but more than one. And of course I do center in toys. I do marks. I do star Wars. I sell hot wheels. Still. I sell red lines, anything toys that I remember as a kid. I sure as heck look for those every day of my life. I love vintage action figures, retro. I love the new stuff too. So, I mean, if I could just sell toys and make a living at it, I would be happy as a clam. I'd branch out in art too, but you know, I love history. So I would never give up the history aspect of it either. And we sell these on, I sell history stuff on Amazon. I sell the same things I sell on eBay. I sell on Amazon and do very well on that, believe it or not. [00:37:13] Speaker 2: So, so, you know, you, you have specific areas which you are interested in and you sell stuff there. So when you do toy fair, you have to go with that in mind because you really have to, you either have to do one of two things, look at the list of exhibitors, which is organized by genre, which you can very easily figure out who is where and who you should, who you should hit and make a list of the booths that you really want to see and go in there and make sure you hit all those booths. And then I would actually also set aside like, like free roaming time, you know, part of your day where you can just roam around and like, and like go to the other places that you haven't seen yet. But it's, it's best if you're not going to see everything, you're going to find specific things. For me in the designer toy industry, it's very easy. I, I go to certain areas and other areas I'm, don't apply to me. But, you know, it's, it's a big, it's like, it's like hiking on a trail. You need to, where are you going? You need to map out where you're going, make sure that you have supplies for the day and comfortable walking shoes and all the stuff, all the gear you need in your bag and all that. It's just like going on a hike, except instead of like stopping to take pictures on the top of a mountain, you're stopping to give someone your credit card information, basically. [00:38:38] Speaker 1: That's kind of an interesting take. Somebody else has just caught, Louis Grace, thanks for that. You cannot regenerate contacts that have been ruined. And that's straight from you, Benny. That's, that's a real good example on, on this whole atmosphere of this. As he's talking about, the niche market is literally the best place to start anywhere. I started with, with just clothing years ago. I've always done collectibles for my own sake. I was a monster collector. I bought everything I found at every resale shop or anything. Obviously at some point we had kids and that all changed and it all went up on the market. So we started our business with similar as, as Benny's talking here with a niche, a way in something that you can center in on and learn. And then we've branched it out from there. I've got a real basic question here. Now I completely understand what the whole designer and custom figure market is. Could you just explain that just real quickly, the basics on it for everyone here? Because I think there's a few folks that still, they understand the toys in general, but there's a, there's a big difference between the, the customs and the, the, the designer toys versus the mainstream. Could you go into that just a little bit, Benny? [00:39:45] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't need to explain mainstream toys because we all know what they are. They're the Hot Wheels. Here's Barbies, um, you know, from our generation, like Furbies and all the other stuff that are made in super high quantities and you can buy them at Target or Walmart, or you used to be able to buy them at Toys R Us. So there's that stuff. That's mass market toys. Designer toys is, is a terrible word for plastic sculptures designed by a specific artist and manufactured in limited quantities. So the bigger companies can make action figures. It's like, so for instance, this is actually an action figure. This is an action figure by a company called 1000 Toys. And even though it's an action figure and you have to make action figures in higher quantities, this is a limited edition piece. So this is a, this is a, uh, a collaboration with Realhead. This is just a series of action figures that they, um, that they put out. That's one thing. Um, art toys. Okay, so this, uh, this is another good example of an art toy. So this is made in, this is designed by an artist that I talked about before. And, and when I say designed by an artist, I mean, he's a painter and a company called 3D Retro had someone 3D sculpt, um, an object, this object based on, um, a character that appears in his paintings. So he's like, he's not even a 3D sculptor. So translating another type of artwork into a 3D object and then manufacturing it in. I, I'm not privy to the actual manufacturing numbers of this actual object. I would imagine it's a thousand or less because this one, there's only 75 of them made 80 of them, but five of them had damaged boxes. So 75, um, the one that I sold earlier, which was a different color of the same object. Uh, there's probably more of those because it was run through a distributor, which sells to the art, art toy shops. So they probably made a thousand or 1500 of them. So that's like a super tiny quantity of product in that, in that sculpture, that sculpture is made in, in quantity of about maybe a thousand or 1500. I'm, I'm pulling that out of my, out of air, but, uh, that's, you know, that's pretty much how that stuff goes. If you make more than that in the art toy scene, it becomes really hard to sell it. You can't really, it's such a small scene. There's so few collectors that it would be super difficult to sell 5,000 of the same item. It, it, it usually doesn't happen. And, um, combined with that, the people who collect this type of toys specifically are looking for items with the lowest production numbers. So you got that, that, those two things working against each other, right? You, if you make too many, you can't sell them, but also the people that collect them, they don't want too many made. That's, that's, that would go, that would be antithetical to the purpose of their collecting. So they want stuff that's super rare. They want things that are, are more and more and more limited, um, to the point where you get down to one, like a custom, which is custom painted by another artist, uh, which is pretty common actually. So, uh, it's, it's almost the opposite of a mass market toy. It's, it's designed by a specific person. It's made by a specific company that you might follow. It's not sold in a store that's within driving distance from you, usually. Uh, so it's, um, the collectors in, in the designer toy scene kind of have to chase these things down, communicate a lot about where they're being released. Sometimes they have to send a friend to a show to pick up a toy. If they can't make it to the show, there's a lot, that's called mewling. There's a lot of mewling going on at the shows. So someone will be like, Hey, is anyone going to, to, to, um, Taipei next month? Can you get this product for me? And someone will be like, yeah, I'm going to Taipei. Okay, great. Can you get this? Okay. And they'll pay them an extra 20 bucks for standing in line and grabbing that item and shipping it back to them or something like that. You know? So it's, it's a chase because they're so rare. You got to chase this stuff down. That's what makes them more special. [00:44:13] Speaker 1: That's pretty, pretty interesting. I haven't heard the term mewling before. Um, just like he's talking about with anything you sell, like, and I've talked about the same philosophy. I cannot flood the market with specific items. I may get a thousand of something in, but I cannot list a thousand of it. Same philosophy works with the designer toys or whatever your terminology would be for them. Um, I'm in a toy, so it doesn't matter where they come from. If I like it, I like it. But again, you can't flood the market. I've talked about this before that I've got a 90 day scheme on a lot of things. I'll set stuff aside sometimes for a year before I sell it again, or before I list an item sometimes seasonal or whatever the case may be by an advance. I list them out slowly. Like, um, if I have 20 of the same card, that's like a $50 card, there's only going to be so many people looking for any specific item that you have in the market. Um, like I, I do the art postcards, as you all know, I, I, I literally sold out some of those already. I've got a second order on, on the, the pop most popular one I have. I can only do so many of certain things on certain sites. And we sell across many gamuts, just as Benny does. He's on, you know, many different sites. So, you know, you've got to play it by, you know, supply and demand comes into play here, obviously. So even on small custom and one-offs and one of a kinds there, there's a ploy in all of this that, that I personally see, um, piggybacking off of that question a little bit here, you're buying in advance at the New York toy fair, um, for the most part, the way I would say you've got to do pre-orders. And I know you have pre-orders on your site. I've, I've looked all over your site. I don't think there's an inch of your site that I haven't looked at. So pre-orders are a big thing. Is there, I guess I have a risk when I buy wholesale stuff because a lot of people who follow me know that I do do wholesale on Amazon. I do wholesale and music and things along that line too, from some religious groups and stuff. My concern in the past when I first started was the worry of purchase orders and shelling out money. Do you have like a initial investment or a worry that you are going to pick the wrong toy and it's not going to go well or come Christmas time, it's not going to be selling or something along that line when you do these fairs and festivals and, and stuff when you're doing this, Benny? [00:46:28] Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I, I, I worry about that every day, all day long. That's all I worry about is, is, did I, am I going to recoup this investment? Am I going to make money? Cause I don't just want to recoup money over and over. I want to make money. I need to make money. I have a, I got a baby. I, you know, I'm not, I'm not in business to lose money. So, so yeah, I mean, that's, that, that's what I was talking about when I'm saying you have to sort of be plugged into what's going on on the internet. See what's selling, you know, have these relationships, keep track of who's buying, what is really important and, and how, how vigorously they're buying that stuff, you know, and then you can base your, your, uh, you can base your purchases on that. But yeah, I mean, you know, toy fair, I mean, you see stuff and you think it's, it fits and it's going to sell and you place those orders and then you just do your best. I mean, for me, um, I have a, I have a whole workflow of things that I do in order to promote new items. So, um, in some cases you were, you're talking about my pre-orders in some cases, it makes sense for me to put up pre-orders, uh, for items, which I do not have yet. Um, and in a lot of cases I do that because other shops have pre-orders for the same items. So if I want to get that initial interest, I need to capture it as early as possible because the interest might not be there two months down the line when I actually receive the product. But some of my vendors have, um, eliminated pre-orders. You're not allowed to do pre-orders. So it's just on release day, it's just a free for all. Um, this, um, Kidrobot specifically switched back to that, um, that mode, uh, recently after, after just having a free for all style pre-order system, um, now with the Kidrobot products, they're one of my, my major vendors. Um, I have to wait until the release, the scheduled release date to sell the items and, and they make sure that the items are in my warehouse by that date. So I can actually ship them out immediately. Um, but as far as the other stuff goes, um, I make sure that I promote all of the new items that I put up on my site, uh, via social media, um, make sure they hit all the social media accounts that I have that I use, which are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the major ones that we use. Um, I make sure that, uh, they're in the correct categories in our shop, um, uh, which happens actually automatically in a lot of cases, but, um, they're in the pre-order section. They're in the manufacturer section. They're in, they're in the category like vinyl toys or resin sculptures or whatever. Um, I make a blog post. Um, the blog post itself automatically feeds our social media, which is another thing we do. And I send out, um, emails to our list. Um, I do a lot of email marketing. Um, and if it's a big enough deal like this, uh, like that figure that I showed you, uh, I'll send out press releases to even more people that aren't, aren't non-consumers like to bloggers and writers and stuff, um, informing them that I'm going to be selling the item. So I really try to hit, um, all of the, uh, notes when I'm, uh, promoting a new item. Uh, and you know, that's how I ensure that every possible person that could possibly be interested in that product knows that I'm getting it. Um, and I, I try to eliminate some of the risks by doing that. [00:50:14] Speaker 1: That's, that's pretty interesting. Um, I'm going to touch on the mewling aspect that you just said a few minutes ago, I've got contacts, as I said, with Disney folks too. And, you know, I didn't know that's what it was called, but in many cases, I'll have people pick up things for me. I've talked about it in some of my videos too. You can almost count that as a RA of some, some source for those who don't know retail arbitrage. I do that. I do that with toys very exclusively in some types of the year. So, you know, this is something that I have played with. I have had people pick up stuff at a show, um, even like the Disney conventions and things like that. Um, one example is a print that they were selling, um, of the actual cat. Cinderella's castle that was selling at Disney for a hundred bucks. It was selling on the street for $1,200. So a lot of these, the toy conventions have exclusives that they release for like Dragon Con or Comic Con. And, you know, people want those exclusives. And I, the next thing you'll see is the very next day, you'll see them up on the eBay for top dollar. Um, that's just one aspect of it. What's, what's your take since we're just going into this topic here, Benny, on, on the resellers doing stuff like that. I, I, as a person who likes toys and who would love to make my own toys in mass quantity, not mass quantity, I guess, but in a quantity enough where enough people could own it. What, what is your take on, on the resellers doing stuff like that, flipping them for a big profit? I mean, is that a plus for your business when you're doing something like this as a, like a toy company? [00:51:41] Speaker 2: That's actually, that's actually a really, that's a pain point of the designer toy industry. Um, and I'll explain why. And, and when I explain why I don't want you to take offense, this is just people coming from a different, a different angle. [00:51:55] Speaker 1: So that's exactly what I want. I wanted a different approach to this because I look at it. I don't always look at it from a money side. Personally, I look at it as a personal endeavor. Um, because, um, you know, I do create stuff, not just, you know, resins or stuff, but I do a lot of stuff. So I, I want to hear your take on it as a toy salesman or a toy business owner, I should say, not a salesman per se. [00:52:16] Speaker 2: Um, okay. So typically what happens is I'm, I'm servicing the collectors. Um, and so the collectors are people who are following a specific artist. And let's say for instance, I'm getting a new toy and there's only a hundred of them made and it's a shop exclusive for me by this artist. So there's more than a hundred people who want to add this item to their collection. Um, that's where the, that we call them flippers. Uh, that's where the flippers can learn that they can make money. If they can buy that toy before the collector, they can actually go around and sell it for more money on eBay, turn a profit and the end, sell it to the collector. So that is a huge pain point for the fans and collectors of certain artists, because instead of buying the toy at 75, they have to buy it at 300. Um, if they've missed out now, now one thing that you're not doing the problem mostly is with bots, so when the bots find out, when the people who run these bot farms find out that you're releasing a toy, they can unleash their bots on your site. And as I understand it, they're like coordinated efforts. Um, buy out all the toys and then they go and flip them on eBay. So, so you could understand that if I have a hundred of a certain toy and they're a hundred of them are, are purchased by flippers, my customers who just want to buy an item at 75 bucks and add it to their collection, get screwed out of that. Um, and they're now very unhappy because they're normal people. And now they have to pay flipper prices instead of 75, they have to pay 300 to get that item. Um, and that's extremely frustrating for them. Um, and there's endless, endless hatred and frustration and sadness associated with that, this, that secondary market. Um, now, you know, some people buy it to resell and some people buy it to hold. And there's even a whole other section of people, which is the gray area, which is the people who say they're collectors and fans and just buy it to hold onto it, never take it out of the box. And they know they're going to resell it in a year when the price is way up. So who are, what are they? Are they legit collectors or are they flippers or are they business people? We, you know, it's hard to categorize those people, but I do know that a lot of collectors of certain types of toys, like, like hot toys or course toys, or even like 1000 toys or 3A, um, some of those people will buy these items, never take them out of the boxes and just keep them. And then they'll just sell them later on. And, and I don't even know what that means. Now, me personally, I'm not judging anyone. I know you have a business. You're trying to run a business. You got kids. You're trying to feed the family. You're not some nefarious, you're not a bot. So I'm talking to you right now. That's not your intention. You're, you're seeing opportunities and taking advantage of them. And we live in a free market. We live in, uh, you know, it's, it's a free market. It's a, it's a, it's capitalism. And that's how it goes. Um, you know, so I'm, I'm riding me and the other shop owners are riding this fine line where we all want to sell out of our product when I get a hundred of an item, if I can sell it in three minutes, that's yeah. And then I can move on to the next thing. I, you know, pay some taxes, put some money in the bank, pay my bills. Um, and that's awesome. The struggle for us, for me is that I interact with the collectors. I, the collector's best interests are my best interests when they're happy. I'm happy. So I really don't want resellers to be buying the stuff that I'm selling because that if, if, if, if Joe, the bot or, or, or, you know, you know, QWERTY, the, the, the, the bot reseller buys the thing and, and my customer, um, Jill doesn't get to buy that thing. You know, it's sad. You, you see it on the internet, like, there'll be like a release. Oh, we're releasing this thing. And then you'll see the comment thread underneath it. Well, I missed out. It's sold out in 30 seconds. And, oh, there's already 53 up on eBay. And then all the little angry emojis and the sad emojis and all the people I personally know sad because they missed out on the thing. And now they know that they're going to have to go on the bay and they're going to have to pay more money. And they're normal people. Why do they have to pay $300 for this item? That's really only a $75 item, you know? So it's like, it's a tough, it's a really, there, it's a tough situation. There's, there's, there's a lot that all of us have to do. First of all, one of the, one of the really good things is if someone has checked out in our shop in like 15 seconds, it's a bot, you know, if they've never placed an order with us before and they checked out in 15 seconds, that's not a, that's not a reasonable length of time for a new customer to, to, to check out in our shop. It would take a little bit more. So there's ways to figure out who's a bot and who's not. One of the things, and we talk about this all the time, we have, we are literally, all of us in this community are talking about this issue literally right now. There's a lot of different ways to eliminate bots. Now, someone like yourself, you're buying to make a profit. So if I saw your order, there's, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be eliminated. I wouldn't be deleting it. You're, you're a person, a human being with a real address, with a real email address. You know, maybe you've bought something from us before. There's no way I would cancel your order or, or think anything else of it, but it could go up on eBay. You could have an eBay account that I don't know about. It could go up on eBay right afterwards. I wouldn't know. All we can do is do the best we can to try to ensure that as many people as possible who want this item can get it knowing full well that some of them will end up on eBay. There's nothing to do. It's just, it is what it is. You know? [00:58:51] Speaker 1: That's, again, I'm learning something new here. I had no clue on bots for buying the toys. That's just kind of dumbfounded to me. I thought you're going to like a denial of service or something so they could block your site and get them off from another site or something like that. That's really interesting that people would do that. When I do stuff like this, it's, I can't get mass quantity. I buy wholesale too, so I can buy wholesale toys, obviously. And we do do that. I've got a few lines that I have permission to sell on Amazon, like Migos and things like that. So, you know, I know that aspect. The bots, really, I'm really surprised on that. So, I've talked about other people on the channel here that you learn something new every day. He's, I never knew what mewling was for this aspect. Obviously, the drug trade's a different story. I think we've all heard the stories on the news. But I had no clue that that was what it was called. I do that type of thing on some aspects. And I just had a video on stuff, having people pick stuff up for me. I would never do the bot round, though. I think that's a little bit pushing it. Is there like technology? Obviously, you know your business from what I see. And again, let me sidetrack for one second. He knows his business, folks. He knows all aspects of it. And that's what I say why I'm successful in what we do. And I can do it in many different items because I tried to study. I've done this since eBay was called eBay, the very first year. So, I spent all my time doing this. This is all I do is online selling. So, I know my customers. I know the same ones who come back over and over again. Just like he can tell when a bot's buying something. I can kind of tell by feedback. I can look at what somebody else has ordered in the past, you know, and things like that. There's enough information on any platform you're doing to do this. But if you don't know your customer, you don't know how the whole process is working. If he didn't know that, you know, a bot could order in 15 seconds, he may have not caught that issue. And not to downgrade anything on that side, this is a whole other side of collectibles that everybody doesn't know about. I have been one of those guys that had to have a certain toy. I've been cut out of toys years back. We've also had our fair share of good deals. When Nightmare Before Christmas came out, since I did actually get to meet Tim Burton in the whole works, we actually worked on the premiere at the studios when it came out, I wanted the toys. We got shut out of the toys when they first came out. They weren't mass produced. Luckily, later on, we did find them in clearance. But the point is, I got cut out of those toys. I didn't want them at that point to resell. I wanted them because I loved The Nightmare Before Christmas. I got to hold the maquettes, I got to hold the masks, the faces, play with the sets. So for me, I really wanted those figures. And they were gone before I could get to the store to get them. Same day they were released, they were gone. And back then, it was a whole different market to try and figure out what's coming out when. You know, there just wasn't as much information. The net was still fairly new. There wasn't as many blogs as there are nowadays. So it was a whole different atmosphere. So everybody watching, take that from a different point of view, how you would feel if something was bombed out like that. I would never do a bot. I would never do something. That's almost a deceptive purchasing plan in my book. And I don't do that. I'm very wholesome on all that aspect. I am a family man, as Benny is now, too. So you got to take this from different angles of your business. You can't just sit there and everything isn't about money. I turn down stuff that I can make money on very often. Not every day, obviously. But, you know, a couple times a week, I turn something down because it didn't sit right with me inside. And, you know, I have morals. There's a reseller moral that I don't cross, and I don't cross other people's toes. Just like he said before, you don't burn your bridges with people if you're botting somebody or something like that. I can honestly see that that would bother me immensely if that was my company or my business. And as we're branching out into other stuff like this, there may come a time where somebody could bot something that I have. So I completely get where he's coming from with that. So, you know, hopefully you see that from a different side. Hopefully that's a new eye-opener for all of you who do toys and, you know, get shut out or they're all gone or you're doing RA and somebody else bought all the RA items before you got there. It's the same principle. Again, you've got to play it by ear. You've got to have a line where it's personable, where it's not, where it's business, and where it's just being, you know, obnoxiously overcompensating for trying to get these items, I guess you could say. Talking about some of these experiences here, how's your experience selling your items on, say, eBay and Amazon versus your own platform? Could you kind of... I don't want any financial numbers or anything. I'm not going to ask you on stuff like that, but what's your best platform to sell on and your take on, you know, branching out as well, not just being on one specific spite? [01:03:38] Speaker 2: Well, I can, I mean, things I can tell you is, you know, even though this changes from month to month, we're doing about half of our sales on our website and maybe like a quarter on eBay and a quarter on Amazon, basically. I mean, those numbers shift around from month to month, but, you know, that's basically it. And that has changed throughout the years, depending on what I'm using or the situation, my business. But, you know, Amazon and eBay are crucial to, you know, my sales numbers. I mean, I would still make sales if I was only selling on my website because I spent so long building up the customer base and building up a rapport with the collectors in the industry. I'm recognized outside of eBay. This might actually be very interesting to you, but eBay is not looked at favorably in designer toys. I could see that. Amazon is neutral. Everyone orders home goods on Amazon. So everyone's sort of familiar with it. But eBay has this like little twinge of like people hate eBay, you know, mostly because of the reasons I just told you about, because it's, it's, it's a great sales platform for people that are not, not performing arbitrage, like what you're talking about, but just out to make a buck off of like the collector's backs, which is this, it's subtle, but that's like kind of a very different thing. Arbitrage is identifying like a hole in the, in the market. And you're like, I can fill that hole with this product and I can get it at this amount and sell it at this amount. And that's fine. That's usually a product, which is available actually in very high quantity, because if it's a designer toy and there's only a hundred made, there's no arbitrage of designer toys. They're already sold out already. You don't get them. You can't even arbitrage them. There's no hole in the market. You can't identify it because they're, they're already sold. Um, but, um, so, so eBay is crucial. eBay and Amazon are, are marketplaces, which means that people aren't looking for tenacious toys. Mostly they're looking for this item. And then my shop might come up as a place where they can get it. Um, and then they can, on eBay, they can look at my feedback on Amazon. They can, they can actually, they can see my history on Amazon to my feedback and they can be like, okay, a hundred percent feedback, a hundred percent feedback. Like, all right, I'll, I'll go with this guy. You know, I mean, I don't know how other people shop on eBay and Amazon, but you know, if you see a shop that has like their feedbacks at like 80% indicating that there's a bunch of buyers with a bunch of problems, or you see my feedback inside a hundred percent, Hey man, I'll even pay $5 more and shop with the, uh, with the shop with a hundred percent feedback. I know the experience is going to be a positive experience. You know, you can pay a little, a couple of bucks more and get that positive experience. So, um, I do rely on, I do rely heavily on those two marketplaces to open my shop up to new customers. That's always been the intention ever since I got a regular website up after I started selling on eBay, I was always trying to have my buyers on eBay, have a super awesome experience, understand who I am, that I'm a person and I'm running a business and that's one element of my business. And then maybe they come to my shop and they buy something right directly from my shop without going through eBay. Um, that it does, it does happen. That, that is the intention there to have them have such a positive experience that they want to come back and they want to explore all the other things that I'm doing. And maybe they see some of these toys, like some of the toys don't make it to eBay and Amazon. Um, and that is the preferred, you know, eBay and Amazon charge me a fee. It does, I don't get that fee when I sell through my website. So I make, I make 10 to 15% more when I sell on my website. Um, so if I sell out, if I do a new release of a hot product on my website, there's no reason for me to send that specific product to eBay or Amazon. And, and, and, and I wouldn't like, if it's a really hot toy and it sells out right away in that, in that day or in, in the first week, it, it'll never make it to, to Amazon and eBay. [01:08:05] Speaker 1: That's just, that's just cause there's no point, you know, that's, that's some really interesting topics. And again, these are things that I've talked about. So, you know, feedback, he's shouting you out the same thing. I mean, you can look at his feedback. It's awesome. And you can talk to other people as I brought up thrift shop hustler, Evilos, Chris, which I've been on his show as well too. You know, there, I haven't heard a bad word about Benny and I'm not trying to, you know, blow his horn because he's on the channel. This is honestly, anybody who watches my show knows I darn well research everything I do. I don't get involved with people or businesses that aren't up on up and don't feel like I do about how important customer services. And that's kind of what drew me to, to Benny here as well, too. Family guy, as you guys all know, that's specifically, it's a, we own a family business. My wife and both my kids work for me as well as their friends. So, you know, you've got to take this all into consideration. And he gave you out another really important fact of how he's successful too. He's branched out. He just, just his statement, half of his business is from his own site where he's not paying the extra 10 or 15%. So for everybody who's just sticking to eBay. And again, you know, I love eBay been on it since day one. eBay is not the know all to break all for everything. I do list certain things just on one spot. I don't list everything on eBay. And I've talked about the same thing. I sell 78 records, believe it or not, higher and more frequently on Amazon than I do on eBay. And so some items I don't even list on eBay, some items I don't list on Amazon. It just depends on what you're selling. Again, it goes right back to knowing your market. So he's got a 50% sales from his own store. And we'll just say, even if it's different than this 25% from eBay and another 25% from Amazon. So if you're only doing one specific site, one single site, like just Amazon, you're missing out that other 75% chance on selling those items. And again, he doesn't list every item across every site. You got to know your stuff. I research everything. And I'm anal about that. A lot of people get aggravated if they're here. And I got to look this up before I tell them an answer. I want to know what the answer is on these topics before I get into them here. So, you know, just like getting Benny in here. And, you know, I know somebody who knows him. So, you know, and I've had some rapport with Benny. We've went back and forth in emails and some Instagram and chat. So he's an honestly a good, sincere, friendly person. So, you know, that's the kind of rapport that you need when you're doing this. All those people who won't budge for a buyer who wants something or those who demand payment right now. I know it might be different on a toy or something like that. It depends on what you're selling. But I don't push for sales immediately. If they buy it, they can't pay for a week. I'm fine with that. If they want some other program or want something else, I'm fine with that. No one in my store ever has to pay immediately. Does it run into some issues? The biggest issue is I may have to, you know, open a case against them and then relist the item. No big deal. I don't worry about that. [01:11:00] Speaker ?: It's not personal. [01:11:00] Speaker 1: And as he's telling you here, you know, eBay is a company and it's hard to differentiate yourself from eBay as a person or a business on your own without having a secondary platform of your own. Like his Shopify, like Tenacious Toys in general. Obviously, you know, he can sell items on eBay, but, you know, to get the most bang for your buck, the most return on your investment, you've got to branch out. And that's what we're doing here. So I fully agree with everything he said today. I get it from both aspects and both sides of it. Hopefully we're doing okay on time here, Ben. You got a couple more minutes? Yeah, sure. Yeah, totally. I'll just shoot out one more here. Just on this one here, because I've got some other people asking the same question here on this. Any advice for those who are into toys just so much that are collectors that maybe want to do something similar to you? Is there still a chance to break it into the market as a new company or even as a new toy person who wants to do toys? I mean, how hard is it from? Give you two questions here. We'll end it after this one. How hard is it to say to be a toy seller as a marketing toy guy like you versus, you know, how hard is it to get into it as a toy creator? Those are the last two questions I'll hit you up with. [01:12:14] Speaker 2: Oh, those are those are those are long answers. But yeah, let me let me launch it. Well, so I mean, anytime you start a retail, but like it's just not easy. A retail business is not easy. It takes a lot of time, a lot of legwork in for a long time. It's entirely possible that you could be, you know, working at below minimum wage. Basically, when you figure it all in and your profit and all the time you're spending and all that. It's it's not that easy. So you have to make. Okay. My best piece of advice when you're starting out is don't quit your day job as you're doing this. You have to make sure you have another source of income as you're building up the business. Um, think very, very clearly and carefully about abandoning your day job and your your other sources of income. Uh, when that business gets to that point where you're like, wow, the the toy business is taking up a lot of my time and I should really just do this. Um, you know, don't forget when you make that decision, a giant chunk of your income goes away and you have to be super confident that you're making the amount of money you need to make each year. With just the toy business bearing in mind that nothing's guaranteed and your business could tank, um, for a long period of time. Like we maintained our business and kept it open during the recession, which was, which was not easy. Um, so it's, it's really, really hard. Um, another thing I want to say is there's two things. Focus on a niche that you're really into that you can super get into and get super deep. Like I'm into the designer toys, like understand everything about this niche, whether it's like little electronic games, like Tamagotchi or whether it's, you know, like, um, you know, board games or like paper goods or, or trading cards or comics or whatever you're getting into. Um, make sure that you're like ready to be fully like mentally, um, um, dedicated to that specific niche, um, about niches. It's, it's much easier to sell within a niche. Like you establish your shop. You're like, I am a seller of X, um, or, or it could be several different niches, but as long as you can say that you're focused on these things and someone can come to your shop and find many different things in that, in, in that little sub genre. That's a much easier way to market yourself. Um, so that you build up these customers that are coming back because they know they can come to your shop and find these things that they're also interested in. The other side of that coin is if you're focused on a niche because you really like it, this is actually the first thing we talked about. It becomes less of a hobby and you being interested in these things. And you look at these things more like data points and things that can make you money. And psychologically it's a very big change. So what you're doing is you're taking, for me, I went from taking the art toys as a thing that I really enjoyed the concept of. And now I look at them like products, how much, how much money can I make off that thing? And maybe other people can deal with that emotionally better, but that's actually sad for me because I don't want to think about these objects like money-making objects. I like them. They, they bring me joy. You know, it's like the Marie Kondo, like, like this, this brings me joy. You know, but at the same time, it's like, this is a thing which I bought for X and I'm selling for Y and you have to look at it like a product and you have to look at your data and you have to set up Google analytics and look at your, you know, your e-com conversion rate and all this stuff. And it's like, it's kind of sad, but if you can get over that concept, just be aware that that is going to happen because at some point you need to get really serious about these products and really look at them like things that are going to make you money. And it's a little bit sad. Um, if you want to get into making your own toys, it's very expensive. It's super expensive. So, um, you know, let me see if I have an example. Um, if you have a resin toy, oh boy, where's the resin toys that are on my desk. Resin can be made in low quantities because the mold costs, uh, resin, resin sculptures are cast in, uh, silicone molds. They're very cheap and that can be done in the USA and you can pay someone to do it and they can make you like 50 units or 20 units or whatever. If you're talking about a vinyl or a PVC toy, this is stamped out of a steel mold. The steel molds are super, super expensive. Sometimes 10 or $20,000 just for the molds before you even started producing them. By definition, that means you now need to make higher quantities in order to make this a financially viable piece of plastic. And what that means is, is you need to set up like distribution channels. You can't, you might not be able to sell them all on your own. If you're making your own toys and you're expecting to sell them all on your own, you better have a huge following of dedicated buyers. And that means you might be an artist. And if you're not an artist, like, uh, like Johnny Rodriguez over there, who has a following, making your own toys and selling them on your own is going to be super difficult. Um, it's, I, I know a lot of companies who have spent the better part of a decade building up that, um, system of making things in quantity and then selling it through. Um, uh, and, and struggling with whether they're going to go through a distributor or sell it all on their own or some combination of that. Um, it's, it's, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. So until you're ready to drop 50 to a hundred thousand dollars, you're not manufacturing your own vinyl or PVC toys. Um, if you are ready to do that and you have a hundred thousand dollars, I don't know, you know, maybe you and I should be best friends. [01:18:19] Speaker 1: That's a good one. That's a good one. Well, we're going to let it go on this year. We've been on for a little while here again. I've got links to his page down below in several spots. You can't miss it. It's in the description. It's in the comment section. It's in the feed. So I, I beg you to check it out. See what a real good site looks like. He touched on a, a many good issues here. Many that come back to the things that I've talked about knowing your area, knowing what you've got into it. There are always ways to get in to a, to a market. Like we do do some of our own toys for us. I've got the technology and the skills to at least do the basics of it. We can produce our own things and I've got employees now for the most, most part, if you're just a single person, you're not going to have all those benefits. As, as he said, it's, it's a lot of work. It could take you 10 years. I've been doing eBay for, you know. 20 plus years. So it's taken us that long to get here where I don't have to worry about bills anymore. And I'm not, not bragging at all. What any shape or form, just as he said, you could live under minimum wage by what you're making when you first start out. And again, that's the reason I can share a lot of information because 90, 95% of everybody out there who's watching these types of videos can't cut it. They'll, they'll just give up. They'll, they'll just give up. It'll just be too hard to do. So for me or for Benny or for people like us, I've got the drive and it sounds like he's got the drive. He loves the toys just like I do. So we'll let Benny say goodbye. And we're going to cut it off at here again tonight. I am with Dominic. We are actually live on his channel tonight. I've got links. I've got links. I've got another video on that as well, too. So you will see me tonight on his channel, the primetime treasure hunter as well. So look out for it here. We'll let Benny say goodbye and we will call it quits. [01:20:01] Speaker 2: All right, guys. Well, this is Benny Klein from Tenacious Toys. You can go check out my website, TenaciousToys.com. There's links to my eBay and Amazon down in the footer. And if you want to send me any messages, you got any follow up questions about anything I've talked about, feel free to email me. I actually have a phone number in the foot of my website as well. Just give me a chance to get back to you via email because I'm very busy. I'm running a lot of things. So if I don't get back to you right away, just give me a chance. And I promise I'll try to help you through whatever question you might have. Thank you so much. This has been super awesome. Thanks for having me here. [01:20:39] Speaker 1: Well, thank you as well for coming. It was a great pleasure to have Benny on today. I admire people like this. For those in my Patreon group, you know I post things for people that aren't me. And some videos and stuff. And this is a perfect example of where you can go with your own thing on your own without any other interference from a side company or anything else. So we will call it quits. I'm glad everybody was on today. If you haven't hit the like button, please hit that like button for us. And we will see you this evening as well too. Thanks guys. [01:21:07] Speaker 2: Thanks guys. [01:21:08] Speaker ?: Thank you. Thanks guys.