It's odd how businesses eventually find themselves. Some are simple and do the same thing year in and year out. Others start in one thing and migrate to something completely different. Nokia, for instance, once made furniture.
Put Berkley-based Zen Design Group in the latter category. The company started in 1990 as a commercial design firm but eventually evolved into the innovative toy maker it is today. And the weird part is the transition appears completely logical.
After starting as a commercial design firm Zen took on more advertising work then display work before moving into product design. By the late 1990s it had moved to packaging design and ended up designing products for major battery manufacturers.
Sun Yu, the company's president became frustrated by what he saw as an over-reliance on batteries, especially children's toys, so his firm started designing electrical toys that didn't need them. And that's what it does now – designs and manufactures environmentally friendly toys that don't need batteries. The kind that kids can crank to charge up and play with.
"I came to dislike disposable batteries," Yu says. "So I used different types of technology and created toys that didn't need them."
And they have been hit so far. One of Zen's products was a finalist for most innovative toy of the year. It lost to a toy made by a major toy manufacturer. However, while problems with toys from China led to one of the worst years in the toy industry, Zen Design Group's inexpensive and environmentally friendly products have helped it weather the storm.
Now the company is regrouping, but expects to begin adding to its staff of 12 people when the market starts to pick up again. In the meantime, Yu and his group are still trying to keep its toy creation out of the box.
"We'll continue to push the envelope," Yu says.
Source: Sun Yu, president of Zen Design Group
Writer: Jon Zemke
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