Forbes estimates that Beanie Baby creator Ty Warner’ net worth is $2.7 Billion. This is an amazing achievement considering a bulk of it was earned during a 3-year time frame selling a $5 per unit stuffed animal.
The fact that Ty Warner’s Beanie Babies were able, without the benefit of a single ad, to outpace the combined annual profits of the largest toymakers in the world for even a few years is unprecedented.
To illustrate how quickly the bubble grew - In 1995, Ty Warner’s company Ty Inc had sales of roughly $28 million. In 1996 sales were $280 million with $90 million in pre-tax income. By 1998, Ty Inc sales reached $1.34 billion with pre-tax income of $700 million.
In Ebay’s 1998 Annual Report it disclosed Beanie Babies as material. “At times, approximately 7% of our listings involved Beanie Babies”. Furthermore, it was said that 10% of Ebay sales at the time were derived from Beanie Babies.
In a deal with Major League Baseball, teams could give away 10,000 Beanie Babies at a game of their choosing. During these giveaway games, attendance rose 37.4%. The giveaways did more for ticket sales then any promotion in MLB history.
In a McDonald’s promotion, McDonald’s gave away 100 million Beanie Babies in happy meals in 3 days. Adults were going through the drive-thrus ordering 100 happy meals at a time, throwing out the food or telling the attendant to keep the food, and reselling the Beanie Babies.
So how did he do it?

He bucked the trend of the toy industry which said a $5 toy could never become a collectable. Warner would retire (discontinue) certain animals to create demand in primary and secondary markets.
He refused to sell to big box retailers. He didn’t want to see his Beanie Babies sold in crates. He only worked with small independent stores and gift shops in airports because it would produce a secondary effect of having them flown around the world to help spread his brand.
His lack of normal distribution seemed to spur on demand even more by exacerbating supply shortages.

He was obsessive about quality and would design almost every animal himself and spend months each year in China picking out fabrics.
The fad only lasted a few years and Warner was smart as he reinvested profits into real estate and buying hotels.

He bought the Four Seasons in New York, Biltmore Santa Barbara and Coral Casino Beach and Cabana Club, Sandpiper Golf Course, Kona Village Resort, and others.

More from Ian Cassel

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Best books I read in 2020

1. Atomic Habits by @JamesClear

“If you show up at the gym 5 days in a row—even for 2 minutes—you're casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. Youre focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts”


Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

https://t.co/KZDqte19nG

2. “social anxiety is overwhelmingly common. Natural selection shaped us to care enormously what other people think..We constantly monitor how much others value us..Low self-esteem is a signal to try harder to please others”


The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

https://t.co/uZT4kdhzvZ

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents...Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a believe in a devil.”


Grandstanding

https://t.co/4Of58AZUj8

"if politics becomes a morality pageant, then the contestants have an incentive to keep problems intact...politics becomes a forum to show off moral qualities...people will be dedicated to activism for its own sake, as a vehicle to preen"


Warriors and Worriers by Joyce Benenson

https://t.co/yLC4eGHEd4

“Across diverse cultures, a man who lives in the house with another man’s children is about 60 times more likely than the biological father to kill those children.”
मुंबईतील प्रसिद्ध किताबखाना ला लागलेली आग आपल्या सर्वांच्या मनाला चटका लावणारी होती. त्या आगीत सुमारे 95 लाख किमतीच्या 45,000 पुस्तकांचं नुकसान झालं. एकूण नुकसान दोन कोटींच्या घरात गेलं. तरीही किताबखाना पुन्हा सुरू करण्याचं स्वप्न आहे समीर आणि अमृता सोमैया यांचं.
#Thread

त्यांनीच दहा वर्षांपूर्वी मुंबईत ही सुंदर स्पेस तयार केली.त्यांच्या जगप्रवासात विविध पुस्तकांनी त्यांना वेड लावलं.अशी एक कम्युनिटी स्पेस मुंबईतही करायची,या ध्येयाने त्यांनी किताबखानाची निर्मिती केली.अमृताचे वडील प्रसिद्ध आर्किटेक्ट जगदीश मिस्त्री यांनी किताबखाना डिझाईन केला होता.

लाईव इवेंट्स, पुस्तक वाचन, काला घोडा फेस्ट्वलचे कार्यक्रम, उत्तमोत्तम पुस्तकं, लहान मुलांसाठीचा पुस्तकांचा स्वतंत्र विभाग ही किताबखानाची सर्व खासियत कायम राहणार आहे.
सध्या तिथे रिस्टोरेशनचं काम सुरू आहे. समीर आणि अमृता यांची मी घेतलेली मुलाखत आणि बातमी शेअर करत आहे.

दोन मार्चला किताबखाना वाचकांसाठी पुन्हा सुरू करायचा समीर आणि अमृता सोमैया यांचा प्रयत्न आहे. किताबखाना कॅफे आता इनहाऊस चालवला जाईल. @JairajSinghR @KitabKhanaBooks @UpadhyayaP12

Mumbai's iconic @KitabKhanaBooks is getting ready to reopen after gutted in fire and hit by the #Lockdown
My story via @timesofindia
Read what Samir and Amrita Somaiya have to say, who created this beautiful community space in #SoBo #Mumbai #Bookstore

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THIS.

Russia hasn't been a willing partner in this treaty for almost 3 decades. We should have ended the pretense long ago.

Naturally, Rand Paul is telling anyone who will listen to him that Trump is making a HUGE MISTAKE here.


Rand is just like his dad, Ron. 100% isolationist.

They've never grasped that 100% isolationist is not 'America First' when you examine it. It really means 'America Alone'.

The consistent grousing of pursuing military alliances with allies - like Trump is doing now with Saudi Arabia.

So of course Rand has also spent the last 2 days loudly calling for Trump to kill the arms deal with Saudi Arabia and end our alliance with them.

What Obama was engineering with his foreign policy was de facto isolationism: pull all the troops out of the ME, abandon the region to Iranian control as a client state of Russia.

Obama wasn't building an alliance with Iran; he was facilitating abandoning the ME to Iran.

Obama wouldn't even leave behind a token security force, so of course what happened was the rise of ISIS. He also pumped billions of dollars into the Iranian coffers, which the Mullah's used to fund destabilizing activity [wars/terrorism] & criminal enterprises all over the globe
A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.
राम-रावण युद्ध समाप्त हो चुका था। जगत को त्रास देने वाला रावण अपने कुटुम्ब सहित नष्ट हो चुका था।श्रीराम का राज्याभिषेक हुआ और अयोध्या नरेश श्री राम के नेतृत्व में चारों दिशाओं में शन्ति थी।
अंगद को विदा करते समय राम रो पड़े थे ।हनुमान को विदा करने की शक्ति तो राम में थी ही नहीं ।


माता सीता भी हनुमान को पुत्रवत मानती थी। अत: हनुमान अयोध्या में ही रह गए ।राम दिनभर दरबार में, शासन व्यवस्था में व्यस्त रहते थे। संध्या को जब शासकीय कार्यों में छूट मिलती तो गुरु और माताओं का कुशल-मंगल पूछ अपने कक्ष में जाते थे। परंतु हनुमान जी हमेशा उनके पीछे-पीछे ही रहते थे ।


उनकी उपस्थिति में ही सारा परिवार बहुत देर तक जी भर बातें करता ।फिर भरत को ध्यान आया कि भैया-भाभी को भी एकांत मिलना चाहिए ।उर्मिला को देख भी उनके मन में हूक उठती थी कि इस पतिव्रता को भी अपने पति का सानिध्य चाहिए ।

एक दिन भरत ने हनुमान जी से कहा,"हे पवनपुत्र! सीता भाभी को राम भैया के साथ एकांत में रहने का भी अधिकार प्राप्त है ।क्या आपको उनके माथे पर सिन्दूर नहीं दिखता?इसलिए संध्या पश्चात आप राम भैया को कृप्या अकेला छोड़ दिया करें "।
ये सुनकर हनुमान आश्चर्यचकित रह गए और सीता माता के पास गए ।


माता से हनुमान ने पूछा,"माता आप अपने माथे पर सिन्दूर क्यों लगाती हैं।" यह सुनकर सीता माता बोलीं,"स्त्री अपने माथे पर सिन्दूर लगाती है तो उसके पति की आयु में वृद्धि होती है और वह स्वस्थ रहते हैं "। फिर हनुमान जी प्रभु राम के पास गए ।