The founder and managing director of WOW Toys invites Director into the company's fun-filled HQ
WOW Toys was started in 1997, with £500,000 I saved up from a previous business. We're an entrepreneurial company and our brand remit is 'toys that don't break their promises' – we make the best toys possible by engineering them so they don't break. There's a 10-year guarantee on them – if they break within that time, you can have a free replacement. We probably get about four back a year, which shows how well made the stuff is. They also don't operate with batteries – all of our toys are mechanical.
Today our products are sold in 55 countries from Kazakhstan to Iran to Australia to Croatia. We employ 20 people here in Hammersmith [west London] and 320 people in our modern factory in China. Our turnover is £7m, so it's a small but profitable business and we grow by around 20 per cent a year. On a daily basis I work with seven key managers, who are specialists in their departments – and I'm also out and about, connecting with people we could work with, from other businesses to government departments.
It's a pretty laid-back place – the important thing is that people are happy and have a decent environment to work in. We're flexible with the working hours – as long as the work gets done, it doesn't matter how we do it. We have music on all day, and my dog Buddy is always walking around being tickled and greeting our visitors.
Our toys are everywhere as well, of course – being a maker of things, there's a pride in having the objects you've created around you. It's good to have things that can be grabbed at any moment to use in work discussions.
I sit out on the floor with the team, deliberately in the middle with my back to a wall so that I'm not showing my back to anyone else. People tend to be able to sense if I'm concentrating and not available for a little while, but on the whole anyone can walk up at any time. I think that leads to a situation where there's a better balance and less tension because things can be resolved quickly. Decisions are made quickly too, which means we can grab opportunities fast.
We want to take the brand into other areas. There's no reason why WOW, in three years' time, couldn't be running a holiday business for stressed-out parents with toddlers. We enjoy living our lives in this business, creating not only wealth but products that make people and their children happy.
