An entrepreneur’s story of experience.
The history of the KNOP KNOP brand created by Rodions Zenevičs, a Latvian designer and lecturer at the Art Academy of Latvia, includes a wide spectrum of searches, emotions, creative flights and painful landings. Listening to Rodion's passionate story about the path from idea to business, it seems that he could not only give lectures on product design, but also conduct an innovative business course, in which the view on art, business and relationship with partners from different countries over the world would be revealed through stories based on practical experience.
The idea of a building kit for children, which combines the softness and plasticity of felt with numerous variations of traditional solid and angular construction toys, came to Rodion when he was a student. “I had bought my first iPhone, and a friend of mine presented me with a felt case for it. I took it in my hands... Oh, what a cool material! So soft and flexible that you can try and shape something from it. At home, I had a pile of iron snap buttons left over from another design project. I started connecting together pieces of felt, and the longer it took me, the more fascinated I got by discovering the amazing plasticity of the material."
Ideas need to be tested
As a child, I used to build LEGO sets with great enthusiasm and I believe that toys that engage hands and imagination are more useful for children than virtual reality games. Of course, traditional construction kits arouse interest, develop skills, but they are hard and have sharp corners. Otherwise, felt is a plastic material, just like clay - it can be bended, folded and twisted, creating all kinds of shapes. It provides dynamic transformations. For example, a giraffe can walk, sit, lie, fly or can be reshaped into a different character, and this keeps the child's interest in this toy for a long time. And another important advantage of felt toys is that children can safely take them to bed."
Rodions presented his first prototypes of the felt construction kit during the Milan Design Week at the SaloneSatellite, an international exhibition and competition event. The press attention and positive reviews from industry professionals gave me the confidence that it was really worth all the effort to turn the original idea into an industrial product.
"Ideas need to be tested. You may think that you have created something extraordinary, cool, but to be sure that it will "get ahead", you need to see people’s reactions to it. The positive assessment at the exhibition gave me the confidence that it was worth going on."
The thorny road of felt
Original ideas require patience, because their implementation is more like breaking through primordial shrubs than walking briskly on well-trodden paths. And there was no lack of challenges for the pioneer in the field of felt building toys. The first one was to find a manufacturer. It might seem that it is easy to work with felt – you just cut out the shape, sew, rivet, and that’s it. But no.
"There are many nuances, and all of them must be taken into account if you want to produce an attractive and qualitative product. If the felt is too dense and thick, it breaks instead of bending. If it is too thin, the parts will not hold together. Also, snap fasteners should be neither too tight to be easy for the child to work with, nor too loose. Pleasant, stable colours, washing options – there are a hundred and one details that form a harmonious ensemble. It's like cooking - you can have the best ingredients, a great recipe, but oversalt a bit and...," Rodions pauses expressively and then continues, "We first looked for manufacturers in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany, but processing and sewing of felt needs special equipment and handwork. The cost calculation turned our felt toy into a golden one. The hopelessness of the prolonged searching was suddenly interrupted by a phone call.
An American businessman working in China, who had seen the presentation of KNOP KNOP at the Milan exhibition, got in touch with us and, without a long introduction, made an offer - the idea is cool, I want to sell your toys in America! Sorry, I say, but we don't have anything to sell yet, and we can't find a manufacturer in Europe. Eventually, he found a company in China that started manufacturing our building toy in good quality and at an affordable price.”
However, the joy of getting the things going was short-lived. When the first batch of KNOP KNOP sets had arrived in Riga, the Covid-19 pandemic broke out with all the accompanying restrictions. It is hard to imagine a worse scenario for the introduction of a new product in the saturated toy market. Due to the pandemic, the industry's largest toy exhibition in the German city of Nuremberg was cancelled, and it would have been the place for distributors from all over the world to see, touch, “snap” and otherwise test the potential of our felt construction kit in the segment of developmental toys. In addition, with the increase in shipment volumes, the transportation costs increased dramatically during the pandemic. Having realized that transporting each goods container from China to Europe would cut an irreparable hole in the startup’s budget, Rodions began to study the toy markets of countries near China.
The exam in oriental business negotiations
“South Korea offers a support programme for entrepreneurs from other countries who wish to work in their market. There is a tough competition to qualify for it. I ventured to apply, although I had little hope that we would be noticed among several thousand applicants. However, after some time, I received a kind e-mail - we are waiting for you in Seoul! So, I spent half a year in this metropolis and got to know oriental business rituals. It was a valuable experience. For example, at a business dinner with possible cooperation partners, it was not entirely the company that I was asked about. There were a lot of quite personal questions, because a potential partner’s status in society, the family or the range of interests is as important for them as your business plan. I believe that it is justified, since my experience has taught me that it is impossible to create a successful business without an adventurous team, such as KNOP KNOP, and the involvement and support of a family.
Having one meeting, we started cooperation with a Korean company that is engaged in the production and distribution of developmental toys, also for kindergartens," says Rodions, pleased with the successful passing of an exam in the unhurried Korean business conversation, and continues with a rather surprising statement, "Being a child is not easy in South Korea. There is a high cost of living and very low birth rate. In Seoul, you can more often see baby carriages with dressed up dogs than those with babies. Therefore, a child’s arrival in the family is an event in which not only parents and grandparents are involved, but also aunts, uncles and other relatives. There are great concerns and expectations around the little person and his/her stages of growth, so the demand for developmental toys is very high," explains Rodions Zenevičs with an orientally inscrutable smile.
Toys that stimulate children's imagination and develop practical skills are also appreciated in Japan. KNOP KNOP received Japan Good Toy Award 2022 there, which also increased our brand’s recognition. This is how it has happened that the KNOP KNOP building toy created by the Latvian designer and produced in China is most demanded in South Korea and Japan. Among the European countries, there is a greater demand in Poland, where KNOP KNOP was awarded the Poland Parents Award 2022. The developmental toys market is also active in Germany, Georgia and Romania. However, in general, superheroes from animated films and computer games set the tone for the wide range of games for children, and it is difficult to strengthen the position of developmental toys on the market without significant investments in marketing.
Intellectual property as the most valuable asset of a new company
Although the sales territories of KNOP KNOP kits are wide, no attempts of counterfeiting or imitating the company's products have been observed up to now. Possibly, the products are so original and labour-intensive that that they prove to be a hard nut to crack for masters of forgery. However, Rodions applied for and was granted an international patent registration soon after the establishment of the company. He also holds a unitary European patent. The intellectual property portfolio of KNOP KNOP includes a Latvian trademark and an international trademark registration with effect in the European Union countries, China, the USA, as well as five European Union registered designs. "Intellectual property is the most valuable asset of our company," explains Rodions and continues, "We have no industrial buildings, and all our equipment is just the idea and its technical, visual solution. The successful development of an idea requires investments, but first of all, the investor wants to be sure that the investments will be protected. New companies operating in international markets should carefully assess their intellectual property protection strategy. It is relatively simple to carry out a patent or trademark registration, you can also get funding for it from support programs. But you should keep in mind that there are also maintenance fees that can be challenging for a small company's budget. In my opinion, a support programme for the maintenance of granted patents, trademarks or designs would be very important for start-ups. It would certainly motivate them to make more far-sighted decisions regarding the protection of their intellectual property rights.
According to my business experience, creating something new and unprecedented, developing and manufacturing it is not even half way. The main thing is to sell the product well. You talk to serious distributors, tell stories and show your great product with your eyes shining, listen to compliments about your creative approach, blushing lightly, and are ready for a super offer... But as soon as it comes to costs, the pink cloud fades away, because the rules of the game are not in the least playful in the toy market. They require stable production, serious volumes, resources for marketing, and if you can't fit into certain price ranges, then you are left alone with your great idea and the faded dream of turning it into reality," Rodion poetically concludes the conversation, emphasizing once again the importance of intellectual property to a new business for attracting investors. It should only be noted that for inventions applied for patent registration in Latvia, the Latvian Patent Office, in cooperation with the European Patent Office, provides the opportunity to conduct a patent search free of charge.