Kamhi World Makes Fortunes

“You have lots of energy when something is your purpose.” — Jay Kamhi, Kamhi World

America is famous for its rags-to-riches success stories, but Jay Kamhi of Kamhi World (ToyShow) started out with just a blanket. How did he go from selling toys on the streets to running a multimillion dollar company? In this issue of TDmonthly Magazine, Kamhi shares his personal story of a “family guy” who paid attention, learned from his mistakes and is making a fortune.

I was a street vendor in New York City for 15 years. My day consisted of putting down a blanket on the street and hoping I made enough money before the cops came and closed me down.

It was a unique approach to marketing: I just had enough time to do what would get the customer's attention, get them over to my stand and buy as soon as possible.

I felt like I wasn't qualified to do anything else. Every time I worked in a regular office, I'd get tired and want to fall asleep. But I needed money, so I thought I'd sell something.

All of a sudden the energy was created; you have lots of energy when something is your purpose.

Then, in 1999, the Beanie Baby craze hit. Some were going for $10,000.

I found out that Ty Warner had just opened a market in Germany. I got a friend to translate a postcard for me, offering to buy Beanie Babies for $50 a piece. We worked on it for two months, to target it to the conservative German market.

I sent it to an acquaintance in Germany, and asked him to send out 10,000 postcards via Bertelsmann AG, the publishing and marketing company, to the stores who were just getting Beanie Babies.

We sent it out, and we're waiting for the phone to ring and nothing happened! I thought, “Wow, this can't be happening!”

I called Bertelsmann and they assured me they’d sent out the postcards. But I kept calling, and sure enough they discovered that they hadn’t sent them out; they were all sitting in the corner of an office.

They sent out the mailing and two days later my German acquaintance e-mailed me, “Omigod! The phone has not stopped ringing all day!”

I started bringing Beanie Babies in for $50, and selling them for $300 on the Home Shopping Network. We literally made millions of dollars.

Everything I’d saved from Beanie Babies, I used to make a set of dolls called Trash Talkers. They said funny but R-rated things when you hit their heads. The dolls sold everywhere.

One day, Ivy, my youngest daughter, said to me, “Daddy, I don't like your dolls. They're not nice. I can't play them for people at school.”

I decided not to make them anymore and instead made the Spice Mice. We sold over 1 million. Kids could take them to school, they were on Regis & Kelly three times and in Family Circle … but the price margin was so low (because of details like real leather jackets), that I went broke.

That was my lesson about profit margins: I could sell tons of a product and make no money.

At that point, I said, “What can I do that already has built-in publicity?” That’s how I came up with licensed products.

My kids can bring these to school, and they have a better profit margin. We’ve done millions and millions of dollars worth of business.

Our Family Guy line's going great. We’re in major retailers across the country and our distributors are doing fantastic with it. And we just licensed “Nacho Libre,” starring Jack Black.

It doesn’t matter where you start. Name your goal, want it and then get it.

See Jay show off some Kamhi products at this year's Toy Fair: Watch Video

What follows is more information on Kamhi products.