Bill Nichols makes squishy, cheap and collectible animal toys which are available in different sorts of plastic bubbles. This is just what you will find in a vending machine. Nichols is up to something as his Squinkies toys have been sold out in the Wal-Mart store for the last week. The other stores are putting a cap on how many of them a person is able to buy as a result of the overwhelming demand if the reports of The New York Times are to be believed. You can collect hundreds of these critters and the best thing is that they are dirt cheap.
You can buy a pack of Squinkies toys only for an amount of $10 for 16 toys. With a single purchase, a kid will become an instant collector. This is what the Squinkies toys maker Nichols has to say. Well, if you are to learn how Nichols is producing the latest kid craze, he is doing it along with a team of 16 people in Minnesota where mommy bloggers have been enlisted to assist with promotion. Before the launch of Squinkies toys in the stores last august, Nichols approached 300 bloggers and offered them free samples. This was done in the hope that the bloggers will write reviews.
That came out true with the bloggers beginning their gab. There was one other smart move made by Nichols, which was with Nichols landing a meeting with the mega store Wal-Mart. He owned his toy company, Blip Toys, for about 8 years and there have been enough of success stories in the past which big stores like Target will mention to him. Wal-Mart believed that there was a success with vending machine toys in Japan and after doing some research, Nichols understood that billions of dollars could be made from the vending machine trinkets each year.
This led him to package his Squishy friends in neat clear bubbles. Nichils has not yet released his sales numbers, although with the persistence of the demand, Squinkies may be in, ousting Silly Bandz. |
