Read the Mom and Dad Kiwi Inventors' Story and the Trials & Tribulations of Trying to Take their Lego Storage Invention Global from New Zealand.
Kiwi Inventors of BOX4BLOX
Hello,
We are Moira and Peter Botherway, parents of four kids and the Kiwi inventors of the BOX4BLOX. We live in Warkworth, in New Zealand, where we operate our company, Simplastix Innovations Ltd, primarily as a sales and marketing company, selling the BOX4BLOX. We initially invented the BOX4BLOX back in the early 1990s, when with four young children, we always had an awful lot of Lego in our house, with it no doubt being by far the kids' most popular and favorite toy. But let's face it from a parent's perspective those pesky little plastic bricks, with their penchant for ending up spread all over the floor, were always a real pain in the butt (and feet)!
In fact, like most inventions, the BOX4BLOX evolved from one of those classic "light bulb" moments. I had just spent over an hour sorting all the kids' Lego into an expensive new fishing tackle box I had bought at a Tupperware party, only to hear minutes later that dreaded sound of it all being upended on to the floor. It was at this moment, I mentioned, in my frustration, to my husband Peter, "Someone should invent something to sort Legos like those things they use in the bank to sort coins" I really should have known better than to say things like that in front of him, as his brain just started spinning and he was cutting holes in the bottom of my good Tupperware cake containers and the seed for the BOX4BLOX was born!
Next thing you know we were getting injections molds designed and manufactured, then inventory made and up to our eyeballs in debt, with the house mortgaged to the hilt, back in the day when interest rates were north of 15 percent. We initially launched the BOX4BLOX using a direct mailing campaign and investing in ads in a few of the women's magazines in New Zealand. This was back in the pre-Internet days where customers had to fill in a coupon and post it with their credit card details.
The good news was, we quickly confirmed that the product was as popular as our rather crude market research indicated it would be. Inquiries from retail stores followed, which lead to us then concentrating on growing sales just through retail which, as word of the BOX4BLOX got amongst the toy and plasticware retailers, especially as we started to receive inquiries from larger New Zealand retailers and Australian retail buyers, including the mass merchandiser BIG W and even received an order for a container load from a toy distributor in Germany.
So, needless to say, things were humming along quite nicely. We also received interest from a US toy company, based in Houston, TX that made specialty tables with Lego bases set in the top, who we ended up signing a license agreement with for the North American market. This involved us sending our injection molds to the US to enable them to manufacture inventory, while they were arranging the manufacture of their own molds.
Unfortunately, just when we thought we were starting to crack it, things started to hit the fan with the recession in the late 1990s. Our largest retail customer in New Zealand went into receivership, straight after Christmas, owing us tens of thousands of dollars. This was soon followed by our licensee in the United States going into Chapter 11, which frustratingly left our molds in the United States, which led to a legal tussle, getting them back from their company receivers, and getting them sent back to New Zealand, at our expense. This, of course, led to our bank coming knocking and next thing we were selling our family home, and our injection molds were put into storage and Peter getting back on the tools with his electrical business.
However, this was also the time that the Internet and eCommerce were coming into vogue, which of course immediately piqued Peter's entrepreneurial spirit. Next thing you know he was getting a crude website design done and www.box4blox.com was born! We started off targeting our customers in New Zealand and Australia, but of course, being the Internet, we were getting most of our inquiries from other countries, especially the United States. Unfortunately, the cost of shipping the BOX4BLOX to these countries, from little old New Zealand at the other end of the world, was far too expensive. So, next thing you know, we were shipping our injection molds back to the United States, to a small injection molding company in Los Angeles, and things started to get really exciting again.
This company offered a turnkey operation, whereby they manufactured, assembled, packaged, warehoused and arranged order fulfillment to our US online customers, which worked incredibly well for 18 months until local US sales got too much for our manufacturer to manage the fulfillment process. It was at this stage that the Amazon company contacted us about selling the BOX4BLOX on their platform and using their "Fulfillment by Amazon" service, which enabled us to streamline our distribution. This lead to a very strong sales period with the BOX4BLOX, which also included shipping inventory to the UK for distribution through Amazon UK.
Unfortunately, due to increasing costs for manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics charges, the retail price of the BOX4BLOX had to be continually increased, and when in 2018 we were informed by our US manufacturer that our injection molds had reached their past use-by date we decided to take the opportunity to redesign the product and develop the BOX4BLOX 2.0.
Click one of the links above to see the design changes we have made with the BOX4BLOX 2.0. While we have incorporated a simple tray locking mechanism and a lid and handle into our prototype, the major change is designing the trays with a very small taper, which enables them to reverse-nest when packaged, reducing the packaged size to 30% of its assembled size.
In effect, apart from an insignificant taper, when assembled the BOX4BLOX 2.0 will look the same, have exactly the same functionality, and be made of the same colorful quality ABS plastic. However through huge savings in warehousing and logistics, in conjunction with moving manufacturing to Asia, the BOX4BLOX 2.0 will be able to sell for over 40% of the original BOX4BLOX design.
Over the last two years, the BOX4BLOX has not been available, but we are pleased to announce that the new BOX4BLOX 2.0 will be launched online in early 2021.
If you subscribe to online chat rooms or discussion groups you may wish to mention the BOX4BLOX and our web site, or maybe write to a magazine – anything that may help us get the word out. So, many thanks for visiting our web site and we look forward to hearing from you soon when you place your first order for BOX4BLOX. Kind Regards, Peter & Moira Botherway Simplastix Innovations, LTD Warkworth, New Zealand