Toy Business Unboxed

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Jennifer Nolley, the artist, mom of three, and founder behind Tiny Easel. Jennifer started with a single art kit made in her dining room during COVID, and today her kits sell in toy stores, gift shops, and major museum stores, including custom exhibit kits for the Art Institute of Chicago. She shares why customers keep asking for smaller kits, how a fulf...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Max Gelbert, co-creator of Spellio, the fast-paced word card game that started as a stack of handwritten note cards in a family living room. Max shares how the first 500 decks were printed at Staples and cut by hand, how overnight shifts in a friend's t-shirt shop sped up production, and how walking into stores with a 30-second demo landed real retail ac...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Marlene Sharp, an entertainment and toy industry veteran whose career includes Sonic the Hedgehog and Power Rangers, and Judi Uttal, founder of Autism in Entertainment and president of Autism Society Orange County. Together they explain why so many people on the autism spectrum are the super fans who already know every character, every color, and every b...

In this episode, Toy Launch CEO and founder Jason Hsieh walks toy and game sellers through a complete game plan for the 2026 holiday season. Jason shares why 70% of the toy industry's yearly sales land in Q4, and why the brands that win start planning months before the first holiday shopper shows up. He breaks down Amazon ad budgets from October through December, the discount mistakes that can wip...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Seth Hiatt, the CEO of Mayday Games and Sleeve Kings, a CPA with an MBA who calls himself a business guy first and a board game guy second. Seth shares how an eBay fee change wiped out his reselling business overnight and pushed him to build his own brand, and why he moved his family to China to get closer to manufacturing. He also opens up about running...

In this episode, Annmarie Percic, founder and CEO of Tomgrrrl Toys, shares how a playroom conversation about unicorns and dinosaurs sparked Wyldshyres, a line of pocket-sized vinyl toys built around big emotions. Coming from a logistics background, Annmarie walks through breaking into the toy & game industry as a newcomer, building the brand with her husband Frank and brother Anthony, and lear...

In this episode, Nadav Maoz, CEO of Nova Toys, joins Jason Hsieh to share how more than a decade at global toy companies like Yookidoo and Edushape led him to start his on business. Nadav explains why Nova Toys began as the exclusive US distributor of Kipod, and how he then built DazziL, an in-house arts and crafts line packed with oversized coloring books and mix-and-match designs. He talks about...

In this episode, Jennifer Oz, CEO and owner of Oz Creations, joins Jason Hsieh to talk about building Olympia Doll and Story Collection after three decades as a corporate executive. Jennifer shares how a bedtime story about the goddess Artemis, told to her own daughter, became the spark for a line of 12-inch dolls rooted in mythology and modern storytelling. She talks about finding the right team...

In this episode, Jason sits down with Shelly Sinha, founder of Bluencore Games in India, to talk about how a simple mother-son project turned into a board game brand selling in more than 28 countries. Shelly shares how she left two decades of corporate marketing at companies like Hindustan Unilever to build games rooted in real conservation stories, including her flagship title Biomes of Nilgiris,...

In this episode, Jason sits down with Matteo Sarnari, Business Development lead for the Americas at Clementoni, an Italian toy and game company that has been designing puzzles, board games, and educational toys since 1963. Matteo pulls back the curtain on why a company with 700 employees and more than 8,000 SKUs waited six decades to make a serious push into the US, and how that timing collided he...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Danny Song, president of Goffa International and the plush brand Giffa, who grew up literally surrounded by boxes of toys in his family's first warehouse, their living room in Queens. Danny opens up about resisting the family business before finally stepping in, learning the ropes from the ground up, and building a 98 percent order fulfillment rate that...

In this webinar episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Eric Chen, founder of Moco Logistics and Moco Games, for a special webinar deep dive into the supply chain math every toy and game brand needs to understand. Eric has spent years running a 3PL warehouse and building his own board game brand from Kickstarter to Target shelves, so he knows exactly where sellers bleed money without realizing it. Tog...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Cedric Littardi, founder of Don't Panic Games, whose 35 year career runs from a teenage anime fanzine in France all the way to the company that became Crunchyroll Europe. Cedric explains why he eventually turned to board games, what most licensed games get wrong about the source material they are built on, and how Don't Panic Games earned the trust to pu...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Roger Hunziker and Tom Gerber, co-founders of Keebox, a Swiss puzzle box company that started as a garage hobby in 2018 and grew into a full-time, fully bootstrapped business. Roger and Tom share how a love for making things turned into handcrafted sequential discovery puzzle boxes, why they chose to keep production local in Switzerland, and how their in...

In this episode, Jason talks with Nazareno Properzi, game designer and key member of Little Rocket Games, an independent board game publisher based in Italy. Nazareno shares how a chance meeting in a game shop turned into a catalog of more than 30 games, and why the Italian market plays by very different rules than the US. He breaks down Little Rocket Games' Kickstarter strategy, including their s...

In this episode, Jason talks with Marc Fetscherin, owner and CEO of Bones Is Back and a marketing professor at Rollins College, about turning a bedtime question from his daughters into an award-winning toy brand. Marc walks through how he designed Mr. Bones to fix everything he says does not work about Elf on the Shelf, from product research to a ten month development timeline with Gembah. He shar...

In this episode, Jason sits down with Angelina Castro, executive director of Women in Toys, Licensing and Entertainment (WiT), to talk about building community across the toy, entertainment, and licensing industries. Angelina shares how her career, from airline marketing to global franchises like Pokemon, Marvel, and Care Bears, prepared her to lead a nonprofit with over 7,000 members worldwide. S...

In this episode, Amaury Timmermans, owner of Egmont Toys, joins Jason to talk about buying a 32-year-old European toy brand and turning it into a digital-first lifestyle brand. Amaury shares how his background at Procter & Gamble and running his own growth marketing agency shaped his approach, from cutting the catalog from 750 SKUs down to 450 to repositioning Egmont Toys around its illustrati...

In this episode, we sit down with Veronica Gregory, coordinator of outreach for the Center for Learning through Games and Simulations at Central Michigan University. Veronica helps run Central Michigan University Press, the only academic press in the country that publishes peer reviewed tabletop games. We talk about how games move through a rigorous, multi step review process, why designers keep f...

In this episode, Daniel Lopez, co-founder of Kawaii Lab Games, joins Jason to talk about turning a family hobby into six card games in under six months. Daniel shares how his dad's artwork and his own six years of Amazon experience helped Kawaii Lab Games launch fast, why every game is priced at $9.99, and why he shrunk Carrot Boom's box down to a fraction of its original size. He also opens up ab...

In this episode, we sit down with Keith Matejka, founder of Thunderworks Games and the mind behind hit titles like Cartographers and Roll Player. Keith spent over 15 years in the video game industry before trading a steady paycheck for a Kickstarter campaign run out of his basement. Today his company has published 14 original games and sold over 800,000 copies worldwide. We talk about what actuall...

In this episode, we sit down with Chris Savino, founder of Jopat Games, the Chicago based company behind the spinning crossword game Cross Spin. Chris left a career in healthcare software and targeted advertising to chase an idea he had been carrying since college, a puzzle that changes shape while you play it. He walks us through the year and a half it took to go from homemade prototypes to a rea...

In this episode, Jason Hsieh talks with Mike Trias, the founder of Koalatie Games, a publisher built around one simple line: we create board gamers. Mike started the company in 2017 as a side income and turned it into a mission to make tabletop games for people of color, LGBTQ+ players, and families who have never been invited into the hobby. He walks through launching Upstaged right before COVID,...

In this episode, we sit down with Steve Porcaro, founder of Dizzy Hill Games, to talk about how a board game his daughters drew on scratch paper turned into a real toy company. Steve shares how his career in branding and advertising quietly prepared him to solve problems as a first time game designer, and why he waited nine months before believing the game was more than a family keepsake. He walks...

In this episode, Brad Zander, founder of Resurrection Games, joins us to talk about building a licensed tabletop game company from the ground up. Brad shares how a conversation at Gen Con with his brother turned into a full-fledged publishing company, and how they landed a licensing deal with Warner Brothers for DC Comics characters, a process that took over a year from first pitch to signed contr...