The San Diego Union-Tribune – February 2, 2000

By Bruce V. Bigelow

Free-spirited gadgeteer plays with toys for fun, profit

As longtime toy designer and veteran inventor, Mark Rappaport has loads of advice for all the other backyard tinkerers who dream that their widget will become the next popular sensation.
" The best think I can tell them is ‘Don’t quit your day job,’ " says Rappaport, who gets calls from toy maker wannabes "all the time" at his 3-year-old California Chariot Co.
The company sells a sporty scooter, designed by Rappaport, that combines a tricycle, two skateboards and the thrill he experienced as an 8-year-old riding a stripped-down shopping cart in the streets of Los Angeles.
Sales of Rappaport’s chariot totaled $2 million last year –-a four fold increase over 1998. He estimates sales will hit $6 million to $8 million this year.
" Last year, the chariots were right about 10 percent of my business," says John Naisbitt of Thinker Things Toy Store in Del Mar. " That’s awesome."
With that kind of momentum, it would be easy to think that chariot business has been a breeze, but the company’s brief course has included plenty of potholes.
After introducing the California Chariot in 1997, Rappaport’s contract manufacturer in Taiwan experienced a chromoly shortage that delayed shipping. Then UPS went on strike in August, imperiling deliveries from toy and sports equipment manufacturers that depend on Christmas sales.
In 1998, company controller Bill Rubenfeld (who is also Rappaport’s father-in-law) had a heart attack at the peak of the Christmas shopping season. Last year, the Taiwan earthquake jangled production at Rappaport’s principal Taiwanese supplier.
None of those problems proved insurmountable.
Still, Rappaport, who has been inventing toys for 18 years, says, " I would never start a business trying to live hand-to-mouth."
One reason, Rappaport says, is "you can’t generate income from an invention, realistically, for two years."
Another is that it’s crucial to invent products that are immediately marketable. Lots of aspiring inventors might have a great idea, but would people be willing to buy it?
In other words, Rappaport says, it might be great to invent the next sky-writing pencil. But do you want to spend 60 years and four zillion dollars trying to get it to market?
Of course Rappaport doesn’t necessarily follows his own advice.
For one thing, he quit his regular job just over a decade ago after spending several years at Parker Bros. In Massachusetts, designing a variety of outdoor activity toys.

Shooty, throwy things

After spending several years making what he described as "shooty things, throwy things and hitty things," Rappaport decided in 1989 to start his own toy design business, called, What if? Toys. He invented toys to his own specifications, working at home in his garage.
After developing a product, Rappaport usually licensed the design to an established toymaker, gradually creating what he calls a "royalty base" that provided a steady source of income.
While he broke his own rules, Rappaport says starting out on his own was actually more of a calculated risk.
" By that time, I was a professional designer/inventor," he says. " I had already proved that I could put a $100 million product on the table."
Among Rappaport’s successful products at that time were Nerf Bow and Arrow and a whistling football called the Turbo Screamer.
Unlike many other toy designers who try to do it alone, Rappaport says he also had "a serious bankroll and a two-year burn rate."
A big part of Rappaport’s bankroll came from the sale of his first business, a novelty candy firm called the "Sweet Rapper Candy Co.," which he started as a sideline while working for Mattel in El Segundo. He was hired by Mattel after graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
Rappaport says an equally important factor in starting his own business was understanding that inventing a great product was possibly the least important factor.
" It is 99 percent relationships and 1 percent product, " Rappaport says. " I had worked at Mattel. I had worked at Parker Bros. I had invented products. I knew people in the business."
As a free-lance gadgeteer, Rappaport says he focused on identifying gaps in the product catalogs of various toy companies. He is particularly proud of the "Vortex Power Bat," an oversized plastic bat he invented by pumping air into a 2-liter plastic soda bottle and attaching it to the handle of a plastic bat.
It cost him $1.25 to build.
Rappaport decided to move his family to San Diego from Los Angeles in 1991 because housing was affordable at the time. He continued to tinker, and his idea for the chariot struck him when he was riding a neighbor’s trike into their Carmel Valley garage.
He built his own version within days, and says kids soon began knocking on the door to ask if they could ride "the chariot." He never thought of calling it anything else.
The inventor sold his first chariot in early 1997 to Dan Hamel, who owns Hamel’s Action Sports Center, a skateboard and bike shop by the roller coaster in Mission Beach.
Instead of making a hard-sell pitch to Hamel, Rappaport decided to take a more tantalizing approach by shooting footage for a promotional video on the Mission Beach boardwalk.
" We started shooting video in front of his store, knowing he was the bait and we were the fish, " Rappaport says. " So he ‘discovered’ us and we appreciate him discovering us."
Hamel confirmed the tale, adding that he’s intrigued by new innovations because his store "is where the trends begin."
Yet in building a full-blown company around his invention, Rappaport concedes that he broke another of his rules.
Rappaport hired a contract manufacturer in Taiwan to make the scooters to his specifications, exclusively for the California Chariot Co.
Rappaport says the reason he didn’t want to license his design was because the product became special to him, and he wanted to be sure that chariot would remain a quality product.
" I didn’t want some toy company to come in and make it for $50, so it would only last a year," Rappaport says.

Relatively expensive

On the other hand, his insistence on high-quality material and manufacturing has made the chariot relatively expensive. The company now sells four different models, with the most popular version selling at retail for almost $200.
When Rappaport approached Naisbitt at Thinker Things in Del Mar, the toy store owner doubted whether he could sell such a pricey product.
"If he had told me that I could sell 50 in a year, I just would’ve laughed," Naisbitt says. "But I sold that many in the first five or six weeks."
Rappaport says California Chariot now supplies its products to 1,000 independent sports and specialty toy stores in 46 states.
Maintaining a close relationship with independent retailers is the key aspect of their business, says Rubenfeld, who returned as the company’s controller after he recovered from his heart attack.

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