Learning Expressions

Blog: Learning Express Vendors Donate Toys at Annual Convention

Every year Learning Express holds a company convention where all our franchisees (the local store owners you know and love) can meet with the top toy manufacturers and place their orders for the fourth quarter. It’s an event that shapes the holiday season for us, and this year we came together in sunny Jacksonville, Florida.

At the end of the vendor expo portion of the convention, many manufacturers prefer not to ship their product back to their warehouse. So each year, we select a small, local charity to be the recipient of the product. This year, that organization was called Daniel.

There are many, many things that make me proud to be part of the Learning Express family, but watching so many of our vendors pile up their product at the close of our convention last week was something really special.

Established in 1884, Daniel has spent more than a hundred years meeting the physical and emotional needs of children. It is considered Florida’s oldest child-serving agency. Originally founded as an orphanage (pictured right), and later named after James Jaquelin Daniel, Daniel has evolved into a multi-service agency that assists troubled youth and their families with a variety of innovative and nationally recognized programs.

These efforts include providing therapeutic foster homes for abused children, independent living services for homeless adolescents, intervention services for adolescents on the path of juvenile delinquency, and much more. To find out more, you can visit www.danielkids.org.

Here are some photos of the Learning Express home office staff boxing up the donated product for Daniel. We’d like to send out a HUGE thank you to all our vendors who donated their toys for the cause. We’re so thankful to have the opportunity to make a difference.

 

 

Dan from the home office beginning the big pile of toys!

 

Boxing up the donations.

 

The pile gets a little bigger...

 

and bigger...

 

Tah-dah! All the home office staff who helped gather the vendor donations pose in front of the completed pile.

 

Toy Fair 2011 Recap

Why read about it when you can see it for yourself?! Watch the Learning Express video from behind the scenes at Toy Fair 2011! It's going to be a wonderful year in the world of toys.

 

 

Blog: A Day in the Life at TOY FAIR

A week from Sunday (Feb 13) the biggest toy industry event of the year will begin. TOY FAIR in New York City is an amazing experience, and, as a Learning Express store owner, it is an incredibly exciting opportunity to gather as a company and discover the new toys of 2011. For this week’s blog, we thought you might like to know what it’s like to attend. Here’s what a typical day is like at Toy Fair!

7:45am Arrive at the Javits Center
Javits is a giant complex, specifically designed for expos like Toy Fair. There are over 675,000 square feet of exhibit space. We make our way down to the Learning Express hospitality room to meet up with over 150 other Learning Express owners (many of which are husband-and-wife teams) and members of our corporate office, based in Devens, Mass. (Note: Most people who attend Toy Fair don’t have a hospitality room. It makes a huge difference!

8am Vendor Sponsored Breakfast
Free food! Plus a great presentation from one of our key vendors about their latest and greatest product for the coming year. We’ll still visit their booth, but this early preview let’s us skip right to what we’re most interested in.

9am Show Opens
Let the games begin! At each of the vendor booths we can stop and get the tour and “spiel” about their new product. We’ll try to get through an aisle or two, stopping at the most interesting vendors along the way, before our first morning appointment.

10am LEGO appointment
Some vendors have closed booths that you can only access by appointment. LEGO is one of them, and we can’t miss out seeing the new lines they’re coming out with. We power walk over there to make sure we’re not late meeting our sales rep.

11am Back to the Main Floor
Time for several more aisles before we break at midday. Feet are starting to ache from all the walking!

12pm Vendor Sponsored Lunch
Time to refuel back in the hospitality room. Plus another presentation from the folks that make some of our bestsellers.

1pm Return to the Show
Time to venture to the lower level. We spent yesterday afternoon here too. This is where we search for brand new vendors with great ideas that might just be the next best thing. We ask to borrow samples of anything that catches our eye.

4:30pm Share the Fair
One of the best parts of being part of a franchise is that we can share ideas and information. We return to the hospitality room for a “Share the Fair” session with the other owners. This is where those samples really come in handy. Last year someone brought down the Pumponator, which was a HUGE bestseller for us.

6pm Show Closes
Time for a quick dash back to the hotel to change out of our walking shoes before taking a cab to tonight’s restaurant.

7pm Region Dinners
Time for a little relaxation and socializing. Beyond the big banquet with the whole company on opening day, we also have a dinner with our region, which gives us the chance to talk to other storeowners in our area and discuss the trends we’re seeing locally.

10pm Return to Hotel
We’re exhausted and need some shut eye so we can wake up and do it all again tomorrow!

 

Look for live updates from NYC on the blog next week. We can’t wait to stock up on all the wonderful new toys we see this year!

Blog: New Year’s Resolutions for Kids

With 2011 right around the corner, I thought I’d share a quick little article courtesy of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) this week on the blog. It is a simple list of Healthy New Year’s Resolutions for Kids, organized by age. I hope you enjoy reading these and finding your own special way to mark the New Year as a family!

Preschoolers

• I will clean up my toys and put them where they belong.

• I will brush my teeth twice a day, and wash my hands after going to the bathroom and before eating.

•I won’t tease dogs or other pets—even friendly ones. I will avoid being bitten by keeping my fingers and face away from their mouths.

Kids, 5- to 12-years-old

• I will drink 2% milk and water three times each day, and limit soda and fruit drinks to once each day.

• I will apply sunscreen before I go outdoors on bright sunny days. I will try to stay in the shade whenever possible and wear a hat and sunglasses, especially when I’m playing sports.

• I will try to find a sport (like basketball or soccer) or an activity (like playing tag, jumping rope, dancing or riding my bike) that I like and do it at least three times a week!

  • I will always wear a helmet when bicycling.

• I will wear my seat belt every time I get in a car. I’ll sit in the back seat and use a booster seat until I am tall enough to use a lap/shoulder seat belt.

• I’ll be nice to other kids. I’ll be friendly to kids who need friends—like someone who is shy, or is new to my school.

• I’ll never give out personal information such as my name, home address, school name, or telephone number on the Internet. Also, I’ll never send a picture of myself to someone I chat with on the computer without my parent’s permission.

Kids, 13-years-old and up

• I will eat at least one fruit and one vegetable every day, and I will limit the amount of soda I drink to one glass daily.

• I will take care of my body through physical activity and nutrition.

• I will choose non-violent television shows and video games, and I will spend only one to two hours each day—at the most—on these activities.

• I will help out in my community—through volunteering, working with community groups or by joining a group that helps people in need.

• When I feel angry or stressed out, I will take a break and find constructive ways to deal with the stress, such as exercising, reading, writing in a journal or discussing my problem with a parent or friend.

• When faced with a difficult decision, I will talk about my choices with an adult whom I can trust.

• When I notice my friends are struggling or engaging in risky behaviors, I will talk with a trusted adult and attempt to find a way that I can help them.

• I will be careful about whom I choose to date, and always treat the other person with respect and without coercion or violence. I will expect the same good behavior in return.

• I will resist peer pressure to try drugs and alcohol.

• I agree not to use a cell phone or text message while driving and to always use a seat belt.

Here’s wishing you a very Happy New Year from Learning Express!

 

Blog: Kids in the Toy Business - Part I Maddie Bradshaw

This month on the blog we’re going to do something a little unusual. A whole series of posts on ONE topic. “And what topic could possibly be so interesting?” you may ask. Good question. This idea was something that a number of Learning Express storeowners suggested, and it wasn’t long before I got really excited about the idea. Thanks in advance to the wonderful manufacturers who went through the trouble to answer my questions and track down photos! Here goes…

KIDS IN THE TOY BUSINESS

Part 1: Maddie Bradshaw

If someone mentions kid-inventors in the toy industry these days, chances are they’re talking about Maddie Bradshaw. In 2006, ten-year-old Maddie was just your average tween going into the fifth grade in Dallas, Texas. Today, she is the President of a multi-million dollar company.

Like most of her classmates, Maddie wanted to decorate her locker with something unique—something that would make a small statement on the two feet of real estate she would call her own for the year. When she didn’t find anything she liked, she decided to create something herself using the bottle caps from her uncle’s old-fashioned coke machine. She sketched a black and white abstract portrait of Albert Einstein (one of her inspirations) inside the cap and attached a magnet.

It wasn’t long before her friends caught on and started requesting their own custom designs, which inspired Maddie to take it a step further. She created a lanyard necklace with a metal pendant to attract the bottle cap magnet. SNAP CAPS®, the original interchangeable bottle cap jewelry, was born.

The part I find most remarkable about this story actually has nothing to do with Maddie’s innovation, which, as I think anyone would agree, is a force to be reckoned with. Instead, it’s her ambition that I find truly impressive. The idea that a ten-year-old kid had the gumption to walk into the Learning Express toy store in Dallas and ask if she could sell her jewelry there is a bit mind-boggling, but that’s exactly what happened. She boldly went where no kid had gone before.

Maddie approached Kathryn Cook (see photo, right), one of our contributors here on the blog who owns the Learning Express store in Dallas. She agreed to put SNAP CAPS® on consignment. Within two hours, all fifty necklaces were sold out. The news spread across the Learning Express franchise like wildfire. The product was golden, a bestseller from day one, but it was the story behind it that was really compelling.

SNAP CAPS® are now sold in over 2,500 stores across the country, including all Learning Express locations. Maddie still creates all the original artwork and although, for obvious reasons, she can no longer completely manufacture the SNAP CAPS® by herself, the product is still handmade in the USA with help from over thirty employees. In the past couple years Maddie’s jewelry has been featured on national television and at the Teen Choice Awards.

At the helm of the company, M3 Girl Designs, is Mom (Diane) the CEO/COO; younger sister Margot, the Vice President and Assistant Designer; and, of course, Maddie herself, President and Head Designer of more than 400 bottle cap styles and counting.

So what happens when a kid “makes it” in the toy biz? Maddie says she’s just trying to be a “normal” teenager at this point, keeping up with school, competing on the lacrosse and swim teams, etc. But when she’s not doing all those normal things, she’s drawing new artwork for SNAP CAPS®, finishing up her first book about starting a business (Maddie Bradshaw’s You Can Start a Business, Too! available this November), and making promotional appearances across the country. (We were thrilled to see her last month at our Learning Express Convention. At last year’s event she was awarded Most Innovative New Toy and Best New Product for Girls 5+ as voted by the Learning Express storeowners.)

Learning Express has been so honored to be with Maddie from the very beginning, and we can’t wait to see what she does next.

More photos and videos, see below. Feeling inspired? Stay tuned for next week’s installment in our KIDS IN THE TOY BUSINESS series!

Maddie, Mom (Diane), and Margot

Maddie and Margot with Fans

Maddie and Margot at the Teen Choice Awards with Actress Jennifer Stone (Wizards of Waverly Place) and actress Debby Ryan (The Suite Life on Deck)

Tween Tycoons (NBC)

The View