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Association.Within that structure, we had been
working with a couple of different companies
that did direct mail catalogues. One had gone
bankrupt and another that tried to do it decided
that it didn’t want to proceed. So, they came to
a few of us who they knew and said, ‘If you want
to take this on, we will give you all the infor-
mation which is in all our systems for making
catalogues for toy stores.
A group of about twenty or so of us met and
decided if all these other people could do it,
we could certainly do it, ourselves.We formed a
company, which is an LLC, so that all the mem-
bers are owners, and elected a temporary Board
of Directors, of whom I was one, and started to
see if this was, indeed, a possibility.We start-
ed out with about 45 members who all put in
a very small capital contribution to fund the
beginning of the company; we hired one of our
members, who had just sold her store to her
daughter, to be our Executive Director, and the
rest of us were volunteers.
Our first catalogue was published in 2000,
and we have been in business ever since.We
now have a staff and I am still the President
and Chairperson, and still running the company.
We have about 75 members across the country
with about 130 store locations – specialty toy
stores, not only in small towns, but in big cities,
as well.We’re basically a brick and mortar com-
pany, owned by our members, and we do mar-
keting–print and digital.
BVM:
Your catalogue is your major product.
How does it get put together?
The Good Toy Group
AT A GLANCE
the good toy
group
WHAT:
A member-owned,
specialty toy marketing com-
pany
WHERE:
South Kingstown,
Rhode Island
WEBSITE: www.goodtoy group.com