Aaron Muderick and Cheyanne Huke

00:04 My name is Cheyenne huge. I am 38 years old. Today's date is February 22nd 2020 and we are here in New York City and I'm interviewing my boss co-worker Aaron unirac world. Thank you. I am are in utero con 43 years old. It is February 22nd 2020 here in New York City at the toy fair and I am sitting here with Cheyenne who has been my coworker for 10 years.

00:36 Yes, which I this day is a very important day for me cuz we're here at the New York Toy Fair where I had my very first day we Crazy Aaron's was your first day on the job first day on the job never even been to the office for an interview and p.m. Right here to New York Toy Fair interviewing with you and we are very different people with very different upbringing. Yes, and I was interviewing with you and you were showing me this potty and getting my feedback and it was so interesting and so different and

01:18 I wasn't sure how the interview was going because again, we're very different and you talk a little bit more scientific than I do. And so as the interview was going on. I was like this is not going. Well. This one really am I'm not getting stopped and then at the very end you said why I think this one great and I was like and then here we are 10 years later with significant growth and quite a road 10 years ago. It was a much smaller company was still like a small family business. We didn't really know what we were doing or where we were going and now I was sort of a mid-sized company in the toy industry and Crazy Aaron still me. Can I still come up with all kinds of crazy things for kids to play with? I would love to know more. I mean, we we do work right closer together. Sometimes I don't ask you these questions that I should know, but you came here how

02:18 How did you even get the boys are so that's good. I I mean I've been making Putty for probably 12 years at that point and UniFirst it was just for fun and then it became a side the puzzle and then it became a business but Toy Fair always seems like this big thing where real companies go and I just never felt like that was us even when we were selling considerable volumes all around the world of just the stuff we had on our website and know that we made and then out of the blue. I got a phone call from this guy Jeff Kenneth whose company was enchanted moments and I was very suspicious because it sounded to me like some kind of figurine or model like doll company, but he said listen I've seen your product. I think that it could be successful at the New York toy fair and I have space in a booth for you, but you have to say yes right now because it's in two weeks.

03:15 And I was thinking and thinking and then I just said yes and he said great send me a check. And so then we were in and I spent the next few weeks up almost twenty-four hours a day cutting with an exacto knife by hand to create retail packaging for a product that didn't have any because it was just always sold online. If so, the people that knew what they were getting and now it needed to have barcodes and packaging that could work on a store shelf and but we went and people were skeptical they were skeptical at the idea that you could take sort of what had become dollar store, you know putty in an egg and turn it into something that was a lot more value and but once they saw it once they touched it once they felt it they believed that share how

04:15 Package the party and how that's all started. How did you even get involved in putty and the background of How It's packaged short sew-in 2003 my wife Elizabeth was pregnant with our first child, but we also our business was really growing. We actually in the United Kingdom had a customer who basically would buy anything we could sell them as long as we can make it and we just spent nights and weekends. I had just then quit my job my full-time job. So we were both full time doing this 16 18 hours a day packing up the putty making the putty

04:52 And

04:55 It was just overwhelming. We heard a couple neighborhood kids and I just reached a point where it's like it's not worth it. Like I haven't slept in days. I just don't want to do this anymore and then coincidentally a neighbor said hello, you know, my sister is intellectually disabled and she works at this facility and they help companies make stuff with their Workforce and they would be interested in talking to you and in high school. I had worked at a dog tag Factory like where they would sell you get a slip of paper. It said Muffy, you know 501 Homewood Avenue and you would punch it onto a metal tag and you would send it in the mail back to the person before those automated machines were built at the pet stores and

05:37 There were a lot of people that work. There was a very successful business. I was in high school. I was sort of passing through but I noticed I remembered in that moment when she suggested her sister and her sister's work center. There were some individuals with disabilities who worked at this pet tag Factory and they were the happiest employees there.

05:58 And I was wanted to make putty I wanted to be in my lab. I want to be doing design. I didn't want to so to become a manager of people and have to spend a lot of my time doing that and so it seems like a natural fit and so we got in touch with them and they said great. Of course. We love the work we have to you know, tested and try it and price it out for you and I sent them a whole bunch of products and in my naivete. I was like great I got this I kind of disorder ship to the United Kingdom next week because I'm going to be getting it back from my new work center and it came back and it was completely completely unusable on the labels were off center. If they were not upside down the weights were wrong. There was debris in the product.

06:40 But

06:42 I was so jazzed about this being away to do business that I went back to them that I walked them through how to do it how I wanted it done and they didn't give him any specifications. I didn't know that that out a real company might do those things, but

07:00 We worked with them. I found myself sort of on-site a lot of developing relationships with individuals helping to organize it get it to wait the way we wanted it and then I'm going to get worse and it works really well. It just needed that like a front investment and probably will call you every day to tell you what his blood pressure was. He would his blood pressure and his blood sugar for breakfast. He wanted me to know that he did not eat a donut this morning, you know that he had whatever yogurt or whatever he was supposed to have Brian and Ralph are there was sort of a Cadre of like maybe half a dozen or really deeply involved for many years and some of them still work on the project. This is probably coming up with 16 years. Later.

08:00 Have to manage that was more involved in the work center isn't at that point. I really didn't know what I was doing whatsoever. None of us did and I had asked for the work centers to make I think it might have been like 54 boxes of one of our magnetic but he's way too many at that point and we got the shipment back you remember that and the in the boxes came in and I was like, oh my God, we are never going to sell this many tens of potty and now this that's how much we sell in five minutes and the growth and the story and our house was next to your right is just next to your desk and you pack up a couple boxes. Now that kind of the day you're always out always still a ways out, but I just always remember when Mikey would call you and we'll be waiting for you to come into a meeting or something and Sligo irons on the phone with my keys still or you were always going to be

09:00 Fidelity is very involved. I very much enjoyed those relationships. Like I said go back to the the pet tags people who want to do the job really can brighten your day want to be there then we still do obviously it's growing there's a lot more people involved. It's harder to have like those close relationships when there's hundreds of people involved versus maybe just half a dozen but but I still think we have that connection or if it's not with me personally. It's with someone else that crazy Aaron's who goes and visits so we in the office we get mail sent to us regularly for you and we started a binder. What does that make you feel like when you read some of these letters the binder binder I will look everybody likes getting mail. You got some great round and it's nice that you know, sometimes you'll get letters. We are clearly with

10:00 Class project to write to a company and it's a great honor that that class decided that they wanted to break the Crazy Aaron. I think that kids are more willing to accept the Crazy. Aaron is a real person than grown-ups. I think grown-ups sort of assumed. It's just this created in our marketing department or an ad to park art Department the kids. They think they believed and crazy on his real cuz he's me so they send the letter and I'll write them back. I think they're often surprised to get a reply enough that we all can get another letter coming back. Thank thank you for writing. So some of them are just I am I supposed to write to a business. So I chose to write and find those are nice then you get letters I say that the most uplifting will not most uplifting but the ones that put the quick smile on my face is when the kids make their own art, so they might draw like this is what I think crazy iron looks like when he's surfing or are you should make this color because I went to the zoo and I saw this animal and it gave me an idea and here's a picture.

11:00 What the label should look like and they colored in and they dry and that's adorable the most touching letters of the ones where people really have hardship and their life and for whatever reason I think we're very lucky at Crazy Aaron's. I'm lucky that our product bring some comfort or Joy or peace to those individuals have his kids with really see no severe terminal illnesses. I've had a couple of relationships over the years with kids. Where were FaceTiming from the hospital bed. And you know, then you get that moment where you're not going to get a FaceTime anymore because they they passed on and but to give them that connection, you know, if that's really special for a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old. Those are the letters that are meaningful. You know, the world's got a lot of problems if Thinking Putty even as it seems like a trivial toy and Novelty can help people help make the world a little better.

11:56 That makes it worth coming into work. Why don't you tell us what to tell me?

12:13 What's the weirdest thing you've found in your Facebook Messenger other box?

12:23 I don't really check my Facebook Messenger.

12:29 My other box

12:32 Yeah, I don't know someone left the prompted you with this question how to say is there a specific person family or customer that has really stuck out with you over the years?

12:56 Sure, you know we had we tend to have super fans right families that that really buy all the product and which is sort of a note to spile putty that they send in the pictures are so proud that they have it all you have symptoms large families with lots of kids. I remember a family where they were home-schooled and they

13:19 Took it, as one of their home school projects to create the seven wonders of the toy World in potty and they did it as a stop motion animation. And so they would just one party and do a stop-motion clip of the slinky and they would do another of Lincoln Logs and on and on and on and of course then at the very end, what was their favorite toy? The number one was the Crazy Aaron's putty itself that video was adorable and it just the creativity that this whole family mother father for kid put into it. I mean, they must have spent weeks preparing that learning how to do stop motion. I mean these our children these weren't professional videographers. That was really that was special and we emailed back and forth like and what they want a prize, you know, and and we had a relationship and of course they didn't want money. They just wanted more potty. They wanted unreleased putty so that it would be fun and exciting for them. That was a good one.

14:19 Holes in your career. Where do you think you'll end up? Well, I think I'm excited after spending 22 years sort of really just focused on potty and always being able to pull some crazy new thing out of the hat and if it was our liquid glass or the do ghostwriters where you draw on them and they change color with the light, that's great. But I had this whole long list of ideas that aren't potty they're harder because I don't know exactly how to make them. I know a lot of people in this industry, they work with a lot of different factories, but the way we ended up organizing maybe cuz I was a control freak or maybe I just like to get my hands dirty and being the details as we built our own Factory, right and we make everything ourselves, but I'd like to learn how to make other things how to make different kinds of things and then apply some of those ideas of just classic play, you know, the child from 800 years ago is not really different than a child today a child anywhere on this Earth.

15:19 No different than a child in North America or a child in Europe for a child in Asia. They all have the same sense of wonder and Discovery and I think we can create product that really speak across those boundaries to bring bring them together. Maybe give him some common experiences when you're always innovating in your lab. How do you how do you keep yourself creative? You always coming up with something new all the time, but everybody has their ups and downs, you know in business especially sometimes you get great news close a great new customer things are going well for her to get bad news you deal with it, but there's a separate track of sort of ideas and creativity. I try to be mindful of what the the

16:06 Demands are on my time because in my experience the more demanding the time pressure is the less creative. You're going to be out to tell you we'll store owners will come in and say iron. Can you come to my store Absolutely? I'll be there at one of you just name it and the next thing you know that you're booked for the next year and we're like you don't have the time to do that. You would give away your company. If you could your we have to scale you back sometime. I do like to go to the stores. I like to be there like doing that kind of Carnival show demo, like standing in front of a table the kids come in. There's a pitter patter. There's a there's a bit of a game to getting their attention getting them interested and then and then you just see that light bulb to offer them and they're like, I want this that's very rewarding. It's fun.

17:05 But yeah, you're right. I mean I would I overbooked myself because I get excited in the moment and I like and I like to say yes, I'd like that. You know, what the more you say? Yes, the more opportunities will keep coming your way. Right? So I'd like to I like to be on that Finance GIF like crazed versus insane.

17:25 So

17:28 My favorite toy growing up.

17:31 I love construction toys had construx which is long discontinued. But I just left the way those plastic parts click together. It was also an interesting toy cuz you could sort of disassemble it even Beyond like some of the parts were like multiple plastic pieces together. You could take them apart and it really work anymore when you took it apart, but I just enjoyed taking things apart. I enjoyed connecting toys. So like in weird ways like so I was a garage sale kid. Every Saturday will get in the car my extended family and a big, you know Cadillac or something like an old daddy the car seat like 10 people and we would drive around the garage sales on Philadelphia's main line and my grandfather called it the cream of the crap.

18:18 And if it was a quarter or less I can have anything I wanted and I would reach into his pocket and he had change and I will get the change and then I would go and get the so a lot of the toys I got would be like in complete or like half opened but I really love but putting the pieces together. I love Electronics wires lights. And so I would I would set things up. Like I had a record player and I would queue up a record and a but I would connect this on switch of the record player to like a light sensor. So that like some other toy I had this color dripper that like the Lena the the the water drips down in the colors change, but when it hit all fall into the bottom enough of light would go through from the flashlight. It would turn on the lights Alan the record player would start and it would start moving other little cars and things around like the kind of creepy scenes or like he's almost like systems.

19:10 I didn't really have sort of like a single brand of action figure or something. I always like kind of hacking it together and I think I think I met my brother crazy because he was different he like you he man, are you like Transformers and I was taking apart the Transformer to take the arm and attach it to something else. I did not but you know, it's funny. I had my experience where I would see a commercial for a toy.

19:40 And I would want it so bad when we all did write commercials work for toy and I would get it and it was just so different than what I had seen in the commercial that I was look deeply disappointed me crying. I'd be upset, you know sort of Dreams crushed and then when I got into toys I just I always wanted to make sure that whatever they think they're getting is actually what they're getting and then when they play with it, like there's that honesty and trueness to it that that's why they'll come back and get something else because they know that you you were honest with them and that he's promised them a dream you deliver it and then you've seen you don't even existing products we've had for years how many sort of subtle secret improvements we've done is it the field is at the color or is it that the way it opens all these little things so that is just as continuous Improvement to make it is as good as it could ever be

20:34 Yeah, that's good.

20:37 Say hear my last of things that I want to get out of here today.

20:46 Let me ask you a question. Your first day on the job was Toy Fair never worked in toys before.

20:54 You hired in a job where it was a crazy guy who you thought you had bombed the interview. You never told me that I mean what was going through your mind that first day it was interesting when I got here and I walked around the show and I didn't know anything about this industry and I remember seeing that guns had a booth and so I went in and they're like an appointment. I was like no, but I have a gun at my house. I just want to see if you guys have me like it beat it. So actual Industries, it's not just fun and games with toys. That's right children does a real industry and there's a lot to learn.

21:46 Going back to the booth. I mean, I didn't know anything about potty at all.

21:55 It was interesting lot of stores came to our booth and were asking what this was when I learned so much from you just from that day and how passionate you are about this product, but it makes me and made me excited by my fears of not knowing how it was me. How is a package why I had no idea. I was like, I don't even know how much it costs to work the next couple days ready to go. So it's it's been it's been a ride and then you will have been

22:28 A great influence on me and very patient with me from from the beginning not not having any experience. You kind of took a chance based on an interview that I began thought was vomiting and have really provided me space to grow on my own and real guidance and I think that as a president of a very successful company today, you don't hear about that often and I really do appreciate you and I think you should be proud of what you've accomplished and I'm not alone. That's very nice of you the same sound, but that was my first my first day here.

23:14 You know when I was a kid.

23:18 I didn't understand that. This was an industry.

23:21 Like I didn't even right. It's just product on the shelf and

23:28 I remember someone table who's your biggest influence and I think for a lot of people in this industry, you know, they they started very young. They worked with people in the industry that people mentored them like you were saying right you started here.

23:41 And maybe one of the reasons I felt like Toy Fair or the industry in general was so inaccessible was because I was really coming to it from the outside because to me, you know, there were sort of two places would like other cartoon heads, you know that Uncle Milton Brady made the ant farm so cool and he was his face was right there on the box and and you know, it was just like it was sort of inspiration to be like wow, like you could create that kind of Wonder for kids to

24:11 But also, you know

24:16 The Pennsylvania cable network

24:19 Which was on did you had cable in the 90s in Pennsylvania? You had this channel that nobody watched.

24:27 And they would do the series where they would you factory tours of, Pennsylvania.

24:32 And

24:35 I watch this show a lot and they would visit the Silly Putty Factory and they would visit the slinky Factory and they would visit around the door and they go to visit connects and then Pennsylvania have the number of toy businesses. And I remember watching these factory tours. It was just a guy with a camera and you just walk through the factory while it's an operation and they would go to each station. This is the part where they connect the eighth of the bee and this is the part where they put it in the box and now we're in shipping bye-bye during the big wave to the camera. It's all one take 45 minutes long.

25:09 I was to watch their shows again and again and again and it was just sort of like almost through the TV that I was I want to be in toys and I want to be able to be in a toy factory. I want to be upside down under that machine. I want to make that machine be able to do something that no one else has ever made it through so I can make some toy that does something no one else has ever done before it was anyway, I mean that was sort of what I did in like the late 90s sitting on the couch with my fiance before we were married watching the show she would fall asleep cuz they I looked beyond has been. Riveting but they were they were very riveting to me and then when it came time to actually build a factory to say hell, yeah. I saw a machine like that, right? I kind of recognize what it did. I saw the most this before YouTube when you can go and taking anything and see a video about anything right you were very limited in how you could learn thing still being an outsider.

26:04 You know, I didn't have any experience in manufacturing. I was in computers. I didn't have experience in toys. I really I came out upside down. All right about you started with The Blob of silly putty at your desk. I did that sort of doesn't get old to me. It's just so like that's how you got involved. So it's funny cuz last night I was seated at the toy of the Year Awards with for the guy the gentleman who is currently the head of Silly Putty for Crayola and so pleasantries. Nice to meet you and he said but I got to ask you like, how did you get?

26:40 Into this and I told him I said believe that you are product, right and he wasn't there then write a young guy, but I said I had this egg of silly putty and I was writing code and call it programming back then and I just needed something to fidget with something to play with and then I realized that that egg was enough so I bought more eggs and I put them all together to make a Big Blob and that was enough that I was happy, but I thought I'd like to be nice. It was a different color or maybe I could glow in the dark or could have some kind of effect if you could be magnetic. I had all these ideas, but I had no idea how to get it there.

27:21 Then I noticed my peace kept getting smaller.

27:23 And I couldn't figure out is it evaporating and envy why I'm telling Industries shaking his head. He's like, it doesn't evaporate. I'm like, I know that but if it was anybody but you you might consider that as an option cuz he's a buddy Eric Burdon. Imma call you as it now is my co-workers were actually stealing it when I wasn't looking and they all wanted some and so we called and we convince someone to send us a hundred pound blob of silly putty and we distributed in the office and it just change the whole office culture. This was a computer consultant. See there are a hundred people working there. It was dripping off of monitors. It was everywhere and it changed it a meeting culture of people getting at the client's helping with brainstorming and that's when I was like, I'm going to get into this. Like I said go to the arts and crafts store and just start buying materials and try and figure out how to make this read patents the government had just at that time put the patent database online. So you didn't have to go to the reading room in Washington DC to read patents. You could pull them up online had to learn how to read patentees which is a few.

28:23 We English but it's not English lawyer English and sort of reverse engineered it and then realized there were reasons that it was the way it was there were reasons I could be better and that why people didn't do that. I may be because it was a hobby. I was less focused on that. It might cost a lot more money to do those fancy things, but I just did them just cuz I wanted to see if it could be done and then people for like, you know, they started responding the best thing that happened with that company went bankrupt because everybody lost their job all at once they packed up all their stuff in a box and they took it with them to whatever new job they found and when they unpacked that box and they had this giant blob of putty on their desk that they have bought from me their co-workers their new co-workers said to them, where'd you get that stuff?

29:14 And they told him about this guy that they had names Crazy Aaron and I started getting phone calls and emails and I would drive to different office parks at lunch and open my trunk and sell it in plastic bags with a little scale weigh out a half pound here quarter pound there for you than for me and you know, that's when it started to accelerate into actually becoming a real business to becoming a product but it wasn't just my friends right then it was people I didn't even know through friends and relatives. That's a good thing you made that rest. I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I wasn't a plan it was just always following will that next step seems exciting. Let's try that. I mean even now I mean, we can't we sit around at the office. We try to have strategic plans and everything, but this is the business for and it changes so quickly. It's an illusion if you think you have a lot of control

30:14 You know, the best thing you can do is try and just go from your gut try to be true and honest and transparent and

30:21 You know you throw it out there and see what sticks and if it doesn't you just move on to the next thing not a lot of time to lick your wounds.

30:38 Please do.

30:41 Can you talk about what your wife thought when you told her that you wanted to go into a Bloody Business. So when you come home with his party how and you told your wife Elizabeth? This is what I want to do it. How did she react to this was in college? I remember cuz she lived in a suite with with four women and I came I was so proud of myself. This was the moment where he went gone from party at the desk to have figured out how to finally make it and I figured out how to color it. And at the time these colors, you know just did not exist. But there was no where on Earth you could get something that look quite like this and felt quite like that. I was really excited. So I drove out the Lancaster county is about an hour and a half drive and I came to her sweet and I just plopped down on the table in the common room. All these bags of puppy eyes, like look I did it.

31:41 And wish for 20 year old women looked at me like what are you and why are you here including my fiance Elizabeth?

31:55 And I think they had a little secret Powell about like maybe this guy's got a screw you at the screw and you're you're going to put your future on like he's so, you know seem great when he had this computer job, and he was working for these Fortune 500 companies, but maybe he's going off into Uncharted Territory and he's going off at light speed.

32:17 She actually came on board for an odd reason and that was she loves to mail things. She loves the post office. She loves packaging packages left mailing them. She has pen pals all over the world. That is Day writing letters and back and forth. And so when the business got to a point quickly where I needed to start shipping boxes of putty then she was like sweet something. I like the way you do the potty. I'll do the packing and then we work together. We do Crazy Ants for 17 years and of those 17, she finished college, she worked at a pastry shop and pastry arts for a little while, maybe a year or so and then that's when crazy Anjali took off in 2003 when I quit my job. She quit her job and we work together in a home office, which was a small living room, maybe 12 x 12. We work there every day for seven and a half years until we got an office and started expanding and then you came on maybe two years to years.

33:17 Never look back never look back never look back. No, I do not miss my I love computers, but I don't miss sort of word. I was done. I was it was time. It was when I did them. I was in it a hundred and 10% and once that serve party bug caught my eye and I was into something else. I was into that 110% and you saw in the past 6 months when this opportunity for a new product line this do this sort of all natural sustainable do for small kids to play with but you saw one sister caught my eye. I think I even came over to your desk. And I said do you think this is something we should do and you said yes and it just sort of all clicked and then I mean you sing the last 6 months, I mean

34:04 Awake or asleep. I'm thinking about do and all the different technical challenges and how can we make it and how come we make it beautiful soul in a lab Play We like to mix with like to do a lot of I called sanity checks, you know, you find somewhere in the world where it exists even if it's like the poop of a strange African Beetle, like if that's what it is, but you can prove that that Beetle can make that thing then we can make it to and then I keep calling companies until they finally won't take no for an answer until they finally give up and they just say, yes, we will provide you with ingredient X or I sometimes has happened calling everybody that you can find online through a hundred different ways. But really there's only going to one person behind the scenes that actually makes everyone else is a distributor there a salesperson. They're all fronting but finally that core person real.

35:04 There's a lot of people asking about this but what they don't realize is that it's all crazy at her and we're just the ones asking and then they say yes, and then something magical comes out. I'm here where we land of do. That's right.

35:20 Give another question.

35:22 Well, I'm just

35:32 No, actually, so my wife and I have been together for a very long time we started dating when I was 15 and she was 12 years old. We met in Hebrew school in the suburbs of Philadelphia and we have been together ever since 28 years coming up on 29 years together.

35:53 So we were around even in college and such. You know, we were we've been together for a pretty long time.

36:02 Can crazy

36:05 And you said

36:08 When you are starting out with his buddy, and I like experimenting make it home, but she was pregnant at the beginning. She was just finishing College when the business starting off and we were sort of producing at home but running out of steam like we just couldn't make enough she was yeah. She was like 7 8 9 months pregnant, but once they were born and they grew up, I mean when they were babies the swing was in that 12 x 12 office we had it was to computer stations a baby swing a large office printer that I using my computer skills. I had program to be able to print the labels and packaging for a product rather than using looking outside printer because we stand up the volume to be able to you know, Place big orders and we just all set in that room in the swing with swaying or she would breastfeed on the phone with a customer. I mean that went on for years then we have my second child.

37:10 And it was it was tight with tight quarters. We are used to mix. So there's like a secret sauce of mixing some of the color so that they don't actually come off on your hands when you use the product and given the tight quarters. I could only do it outside and I could only do it when the Sun was shining. So if a customer ordered in the winter time, and maybe the weather was at had to give up freezing and so we sort of remember watching the weather report against the order list and wondering like can I sneak out 2 hours out back to be able to mix that stuff so I can make it work or do I have to tell the customer? They might have to wait another week or two because I can't make more product right now. We were we were in yeah, we were we were definitely bootstrapped from the very beginning my one daughter tells her her friends. She tells her friends that her father is a dentist.

38:07 She's not interested in a sort of your dad's. Crazy Aaron. My other daughter is that is definitely a secret super fan. I bring product home for her. I asked her opinion after what two things and she gives me good feedback. She's artistically minded and and you know make suggestions about how it might be better or what it connects to that. She might see on YouTube or Instagram. Oh, did you eat this reminds me of so we have a nice relationship there. But so the other one, I'm just a dentist.

38:44 Alright. Well, thank you Cheyenne for doing this with me.