Jasmine: Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Make the Connection Podcast. My name is Jasmine and I'm in the marketing department at Plus Plus USA. I am joined today by my very special guest, my friend, my colleague, my boss, Ryan Hamilton, the CEO of Plus Plus USA. But rather than me but butcher your introduction, I would like to let your s you introduce yourself. That's the words I'm looking for. I'd like to let you introduce yourself, Ryan. So who are you and why are we talking to you?
Ryan Hamilton: Sure, yeah. Thanks much for having me, Jasmine. So my name is Ryan Hamilton. I'm the CEO of Plus Plus USA and I also lead our product development team for Plus Plus Denmark or Plus Plus Global. So all of our the lion's share of our products are created, ideated, graphic design, everything done here in Greenville, South Carolina. So I've been in the toy business for almost 25 years. I started off on the sales side as a sales rep calling on mass market accounts. Back in the day it was Kmart and other stores like that. And then my wife and I started a toy store in 2003, right after we had our first child and we wanted to bring these kind of imagination powered European style toys to our little corner of Ohio at the time and then work my way into product distribution, importing toys from Europe. And bringing them to the US. And somewhere along the way, I was also a toy buyer at Barnes and Noble in New York. So I've been in the toy business for a long time, been in a lot of different sides of the of the desk in the toy industry. And I love toys. I'm a product guy. I'm a product snob, I like to say. I love I love really good toys. And I love creative, creative play. And I just I'm a tinkerer by heart. So my workshop behind me here, I'm always in there tinkering away, figuring out what else we can do with plus plus. So great to be with you here today.
Jasmine: Fantastic. So you started a toy store in two thousand three. Do you still have that
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah.
Jasmine: toy store? Is it still in existence?
Ryan Hamilton: We do not. it was called Kids on Third Street. And you can actually, if you use the Wayback Machine, which is a really cool web tool you can use to look at old websites, you can see some archived versions of our Toy Store website from the early 2000s. I actually built my first e-commerce website in 2004, I think. We were very early e-com sellers. We had a summer seasonal store in it's a little town called Lakeside, Ohio on Lake Erie. And Then we also started a year round online sales business, very early days and So that store closed around 2009. We've been we moved away from that area. And but yeah, we also had a home goods store next door called Home on Third Street. And now actually we just opened last summer, my family and I, another store in the same town called Docky's Mercantile. And we've had a lot of people come back that remember those stores fondly and are excited to see that we're back back in retail. Although this store is not a toy store or a home goods store. It's kind of a a mercantile. It's got a little bit of everything. So So I love retail too, but back then, one of the reasons we closed the store too was that I was really getting into the distribution side. And I remember getting to the end of the year around 2008 and looking at my pile of paper from my store, all the receipts and purchase orders and everything, and my pile of paper from my distribution company. And they were doing about the same business, but the pile of paper was much smaller on the distribution side. So it was It just seemed much more scalable to do it that way.
Jasmine: Right, gotcha. Okay, so from your early days owning a store to being in sales to n being CEO of Plus Plus USA. So a couple of things of clarity come to mind. You're the CEO of Plus Plus USA as a distributor of Plus Plus. You're not like the CEO of like Plus Plus Global.
Ryan Hamilton: No. The well the the the quick version of the process is that we I found Plus Plus in 2012. And at that time, so I went to the the Nuremberg Spielwardenmesser. It's the big international toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany. Happens every January. We go every year. And back then I was looking for new products. We had seven or eight different product lines that we were importing and distributing. We had stuffed animals, we had some of these products you see behind me on the shelves here. That that I created it myself and was making in Ohio, have it having manufactured. So we were selling to a lot of the same stores we sell to now, but selling a lot of different product lines. And when I found Plus Plus, it had never been sold outside of Scandinavia and had never really been shown commercially. It had been sold to schools. And so I immediately fell in love with it. I was able to get the distribution rights for the USA. We brought it here in the summer of 2012. But then for those next few years, we We had it as one of our lines for distribution alongside stuffed animals and puzzles and whatever else. But then after a couple of years, we just we just thought Brett and I, my business partner and I thought, you know, this has more potential. We think we can scale this, but the packaging was very limiting. It was only a few, it was nothing like you see then the plus plus product line now. We just had some cubes and some triangles and very simple three colorways. I think a total of 12 or 16 SKUs. And We said to the Danish team, hey, we think we can blow this up, but we need control over price point, packaging, marketing, everything. And it's all one shape. So it really is just about how you package it and and and merchandise it and sell it. So they agreed, kind of crazily, in the fall of 2020 or 2015. And then in January of 2016, we formed Plus Plus USA. So I'm it's co-owned by myself and Brett and Plus Plus Denmark. So So we're kind of business partners in this entity. And then all the pieces are made by Plus Plus Denmark, of course. So we buy from them and then sell in the US. But over the years, over the past 10 plus years, we've grown into this role where we also do the product development as well. So so it's a great relationship. We love working with our Danish colleagues. They're really great at making the the pieces and getting all the packaging together. All the packaging is made over in Europe too. and get e everything assembled and then we get it out to all the stores across the world. So
Jasmine: fantastic. That's very riveting. I mean, I have heard that story before, but I think that that's really neat. That's very interesting to think of that. what did so you said still all one shape. When you're changing packaging or changing a product, you're not changing plus plus at its core at all.
Ryan Hamilton: No, and we've had, you know, over the years a lot of people ask us when we're gonna come out with another shape, something that that rounds off the edges or something that finishes the edges or a plus plus plus. Or we still get people asking, I did a few years ago when I when I was the one doing our social media, I did an April Fool's post that was just a it was a a yellow rectangular prism. And I said, hey we're gonna come out with minus minus next year. And it was an April April Fool's joke, but people thought it was serious. But I had deep in the hashtags, I said hashtag it's actually a stick of butter because it was yellow and it looked like a stick of butter. but we will never make a mina minus minus. We have committed to one shape. We do have some accessories. We've developed the base plate, which we developed right here in Greenville, the wheels, which also can be eyes and all kinds of other things. So those accessories do support the sort of ecosystem, but it's all about that one shape. I remember When we first decided to do this and go all in on Plus Plus, you know, we kind of joke, we were pushing all of our chips onto the table and saying, All right, we're head to we're placing all of our bets on this this brand. I had some friends that questioned that for sure. One friend in particular, Steve Starabinsky, he's pretty active on social media and the in the toy world, does a lot with pudgy penguins these days. he he said, Ryan, you're crazy. Like you guys are gonna go up against Lego, which was that's a common perception, is that that's our biggest competitor, which we can talk about that. More if you'd like. I don't think that's really true, but I said, Yeah, we we
Jasmine: Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: think we can do it, and then also I've got a good friend who's over he's in product development over at Crazy Erands, and he keeps every you know, every couple of years, when are you guys gonna come out with your minifigure? You know, and I'm like, No, it's not we're not doing a minifigure, we're not doing you know, skinny ones, long ones, ones with three pluses. That's just not in our DNA. So we're focused on that one shape, and that one shape really forces kids and adults to create. Create in a in a different way. If you think about design, the constraint forces creativity. So having just one thing forces you to think in a different way than if you had one that looks like a fender of a car, or one that looks like a steering wheel, or one that looks like an actual person. So it it you use color more representatively. Is that a word? Represents in a more representative way to
Jasmine: Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: show things. And kids can really dream up and imagine their own. Their own vision of what they're creating. You know, I love it when a little kid will build something, they'll put three or four pieces together and hold it up to you and say, Look, I made the Millennium Falcon, or I made a unicorn. It looks nothing like a unicorn to us, but of course they see it very clearly. So that that creativity, that open-endedness, and it also gives, I think, makes it more accessible to lots of people that they can kind of sit down and just start playing with it. We I often say that Plus Plus is more like crayon. or Play Doh than it is like Lego or another construction toy. It's like a creative medium in that way. So
Jasmine: Yeah, I really love how you said that the the the constraint, the the the only you can it's only this shape, but that box, I guess, gives you a better like the challenge is almost what gives you the creativity. That's right. Yeah. I think you can think in more
Ryan Hamilton: That's right. Yeah. Forces you to think in more creative ways.
Jasmine: creative ways. Yeah, I love that. And I feel like that's something that we don't present with kids, in at least in my opinion, very often much anymore. a lot of their toys or playtime is kind of structured or it has a rule or you do it like this and that's the way that you do it. but with Plus Plus, it's it's definitely not like that.
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah. And there's varying levels of constraint, right? So you think about magnetiles, they I mean they've started making some figures now too, but generally that, you know, there's squares, triangles, rectangles. It's a pretty limited palette. Or unit blocks, one of my favorite toys ever. Like I think every Every parent should go out and buy a really nice set of unit blocks. And those are just those wooden blocks. I have some on my shelf here somewhere, but you know, where it's they're all based off units of measurement. So you have a rectangle, then you have two squares that make a rectangle, you have two triangles that make a square. And so they're really there's a system based on golden ratios and all kinds of things, but it it forces kids again to think a little differently because there's a certain kind of constraint there too where it's it's a limited number of things, it's not an endless supply of things and new shapes every year or whatever. It's a it's a classic, you know, really Montessori like sort of pattern.
Jasmine: Yeah, I think Clixo too, we're we're friends with the people at Clixo and that that's the same sort of building in that constraint. I don't know, five or six or eight
Ryan Hamilton: Mm. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. They've got, I don't know, five or six or eight shapes of whatever they have, and then they use color and other accessories to, you know, encourage different kinds of creativity.
Jasmine: That's fantastic. So that kind of leads me to a couple other questions. But what do you, as a CEO of a toy company, you're you're the boss, the guy, the head honto, what do you want moms to know about play? We can talk about what you want moms to know about plus plus, but what do you think moms need to know about play?
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah, I think don't be don't assume that your kids need a lot of direction to be creative or they don't need a product that does the work for them, right? Something where a a child presses a button and causes something to light up or move electronically. It doesn't teach them much. It doesn't help them to grow their perception of the world and how cause and effect works and all those things. I think the the biggest thing that for me when it comes to play that I think a lot of parents may not know is that playing with physical objects in three-dimensional space literally builds gray matter. I mean that is how kids learn. It starts off just interacting with the world, interacting with you, you know, the the what the you know knowing that an object they call it object permanence, right? That when when mom leaves the room she still exists and then she comes back, right? That kids learn that first. And then later on, they they need to see how their physical world impacts them and interacts with them. And so by interacting with physical objects versus a screen, they're really building that gray matter and their brain is developing as they play, as they interact. So I think that's super important for play and and even more so if it's that kind of creative play where they're having to problem solve or, you know, take something apart, put something together, a shape sorter, those kind of things, right? Where they're figuring out how the world works. so I think that's super important. And you know, we say a lot here at Plus Plus, we're we're not anti-screen. I mean I'm I'm a pretty Luddite guy as a parent or was when my kids were younger. But We're we're not naive, we know that screens exist and kids are going to look at screens, but there's there really need that balance and and a lot more physical play than just mashing buttons on a screen or just mashing a screen for that matter, which doesn't really help kids develop in that same way.
Jasmine: What are some of your all time favorite toys?
Ryan Hamilton: Wow. well, if I if I go back into my classic toy box, I've got a shelf over here full of my favorites. I was really into sort of figures when I was a kid, also cars, of course. So I've still got a collection of of a lot of those kinds of things. Fisher Price, Little People, Playmobil, those kinds of things that really encourage sort of storytelling and and role play. I think it when it comes to toys now. My favorites are just the really open ended things. So back when we had our toy store, kids on Third Street, the our best selling toy was this thing called the Billabo. let me grab mine real quick if I can do that.
Jasmine: that yeah please do absolutely you'd have to see a bill of it's awesome it's one of my favorite things too
Ryan Hamilton: So
Jasmine: I just imagine you're digging through a toy box like in your toy wonder. Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: I'm it's my shelf of wonders over here. So so I've got two sizes. This is the mini Billabo. And actually they just came out with a a MIDI size. That's the mini one. This is the original one. And a lot of so it literally looks like a helmet, or you can sit in it
Jasmine: Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: and spin. It can become a doll cradle. You can put blocks in it and rattle them around and see how that affects things. You can fill it with water, it'll float on the water. You can make it a train tunnel, you can stand on it. So this was designed by a good friend of mine, Alex Hochstrasser, and he is a Swiss toy designer. He designed this 25 years ago, it's celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, I think. And he'd studied the play patterns of children. He's an architect by training, but studied the play patterns of children and wanted to come up with something that fit all kinds of play patterns, but not but not with one specific purpose. So when we would have this in our store. And there's red and yellow and all kinds of fun colors. And parents would say, Well, what's it what's it do? And we would say, Well, it's doing it. the kids do it do, right? The kids bring it to life. So you know, really it's a it's a really well-designed, durable cardboard box, right? I mean, a few years ago they inducted the cardboard box into the Hall of Fame, the toy hall of fame. because it is oftentimes better than the toy, right? The toy, the kid may get bored with a light up, blinky, flashy light toy in a few days. But the cardboard box they'll use forever. And then this the this whole toy line too. It's called Moloch is the whole toy line. And then he also has other things that interact with his other toys. So this one is this is called Oogie, and you can you know stick Oogie on the side of a billibo, or you know, you can stick it on your head like that, if you're bald like me. so it's just totally open-ended, and then you can, you know, you can have you can
Jasmine: No, no.
Ryan Hamilton: take your little mini billibo here, and I can take Oogie. Let's see. And put him on here like that. So you can just do
Jasmine: Cut.
Ryan Hamilton: all kinds of crazy things. It's a really like a whole ecosystem of creative play. So those kinds of toys for me are just the ultimate. And sort of like Plus Plus, anybody can interact with it, right? It's not, it is probably explicitly for a toddler, so to speak, but I mean I I clearly have fun with it. I mean, anybody can sort of have fun with it. Those kinds of toys I think are are really you know, they're they're sustainable in the sense that they are are they're made sustainably, but also they last for a long time and have a l a lot of play value. And I think that's one thing that sort of saddens me right now about the the I'm encouraged by how analog some of the toy trends are now, right? Like hacky sacks this year, neito, squishy things, that kind of thing. It's great that kids are interacting with real things, but at the same time it's it's kinda all gonna become landfill, right? It's like It's just it's kind of junk and and you walk down the t toy aisle of most big box stores and there's a lot of there's a lot of junk, right? And that's fine. I mean, that's how the world turns and we as adults buy a lot of junk too. But my hope is that parents will have a balance of, you know, you want your fun bluey action figure because everybody loves bluey, but also some more open-ended things that are gonna encourage kids in that creative way. And Think the open-ended toys kids are going to return to again and again. And so the value for your money, your play value, the sort of, you know, PPD, the play per dollar of the time you're gonna get out of that is so much better than, you know, you picture a a young child is gonna fall in love with whatever character of the the moment, Elmo, Bluey, whatever it is, but they're gonna get tired of that. They're gonna turn away from it to something else. Whereas an something like a wooden block or something they're gonna return to over the years. Same with plus plus. We hear that from parents all the time. Not only my kid plays with this for hours and they won't play with anything else for that long, but also just that my kid returns to this this year and next year and the year after. They don't outgrow this toy. And I think that's that's the magic of plus plus, but it's the magic of open-ended play. So that's that's I think my my favorite toys have that sort of common thread. And I I love to collect old toys. I think there's there's a lot to be learned from older toys and designs that we've kind of lost over the years and I like to be inspired by those things too. So
Jasmine: Yeah, I really love 80s. I'm a classic toy collector. Now that I'm like, all those toys that I had when I was a kid that I could never get, you know, or the ones
Ryan Hamilton: Right.
Jasmine: I didn't get for Christmas when I was six years old. Like that's that's what I want.
Ryan Hamilton: Absolutely.
Jasmine: so we talked about your favorite toys and then trends. So we talked about how squishies are trendy right now. Do you see that? continuing? Do you feel like that's just a fad? Or let's fast forward to maybe 2027. What are some of the things that you think might become trends if you have any insight into that?
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah, I mean it's obviously so hard to say, right? A year ago, I mean Nido's been around for almost a decade, maybe over a decade now. and it it's always been a cool product, fun, very tactile, but it's only in the past, you know, twelve months or nine months that it's really blown up. So obviously we don't expect that to last. We think i all these things ebb and flow, right? Licenses. When I say licenses, I mean things like Transformers or Or G.I. Joe or Barbie or whatever those come and go. You know, Barbie had a big moment a few years ago. So they will, it will ebb and flow. and we do expect that to go away. You know, it'll be interesting this holiday season to see as as families and parents are looking for more giftable things. Usually that's a higher price point thing, not like an impulse-priced sort of squishy toy. so we think that'll kind of tamper down tamp down the demand a little bit. Also, I was talking to a good friend that owns a toy store last week. And, you know, they're having a lot of problems with unruly parents who come in to buy these things, or maybe not even parents, just collectors, adult collectors of squishy things. And they're causing problems. They're fighting over the things when they have their neato drops. And it's it's crazy that people are being that immature. But I think that is also sort of diminishing some of the enthusiasm around it. These toy stores are like, hey, we don't want to deal with this. Craziness, so maybe we just we'll just stop ordering it. So I think that will that will pass. It does seem though like analog is is having a moment. So I think the the lifelines line that Melissa Bernstein from Melissa and Doug came out with. We sold that in our store this summer. Great seller, fun, just sort of mindful artwork where you're doing sort of dots with markers. And so those kinds of things seem to really be having a moment. I think I think that as AI gets bigger and bigger and as as yeah, we try to react against those kinds of things, that people are
Jasmine: Mm-hmm.
Ryan Hamilton: looking for more of those tangible, really physical things that they can do. So, you know, crafts, those kind of things, I think are having a moment right now. The wobbles, right? The the little knitted crocheted animals those are still really having
Jasmine: Mm-hmm.
Ryan Hamilton: a moment. You see those everywhere now. So nobody can predict what's gonna come down the pipe next in terms of the the toy fads, oftentimes it does also depend on movie releases and things like that. But but it does seem like creative play and and analog play is having a moment.
Jasmine: Let's I I kind of want to ask you, we have a few minutes left in our session today. I was gonna ask you what your favorite plus plus product that we currently have or line is your favorite. But then I looked over at my desk and I have Hexel sitting right here. So I'd really like to talk about the Hexel a little bit. This, yeah, you have one too. so what is a Hexel? I know what it is, but let's tell
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah.
Jasmine: everybody else what it is. and that you invented this. Can you give
Ryan Hamilton: Mm-hmm.
Jasmine: me a little bit of that information, a little bit of that background?
Ryan Hamilton: Sure. Yeah, so the Hexel is a fidget toy. we launched this product two and a half years ago, I believe. Yeah. in 2024. And the my inspiration for this was really a few different things, some classic toys that are that have this sort of form factor. So if you'll ha hang on one second, I'll grab another show.
Jasmine: Yeah, yeah, sure. Grab another thing out of your toy box. Ryan's
Ryan Hamilton: No.
Jasmine: Ryan's box of surprises we've got going on today.
Ryan Hamilton: That's right. So I've always loved this guy. This is by an artist called David Weeks. It's Cubot. And it it it's really it itself is a play on a classic toy that you know, where it has elastic going through here. And so it was kind of inspired by that. And people had often said that plus plus seemed like a fidget toy, but it was a little too open-ended to be a fidget toy. So I started playing around. I literally got some plus plus big, which is what these size this size is, the the big pieces by themselves. Are safe for all ages. It's two and a half times larger than our regular size plus plus. And I just started messing around. I put it on my table saw, I cut some notches in it, I drilled, I ran some thread through it. I tried three unit ones and 12 unit ones and just kind of messed around until I found a form factor that I liked. And yeah, and it we brought it to market. It's my first patented product. So the patent with my name on it, which is super fun. And then we won Toy of the Year in 2025 for specialty toy, which was Amazing, super exciting, huge honor, especially because specialty toy of the year is voted on by retailers. And so that was a special honor for me because I'm a lot of friends with a lot of retailers and and that's such an important part of our business. But it's just a fidget toy. So you can roll it up into a cube like this. You can, you know, stack it. You can connect them together. It can be a a holder for your phone on your desk. We have a bunch of different colorways now, including Van Gogh and Monet and different things. but it's really just again open-ended, but with a little bit of constraint, right? So it's got these six pieces connected by this elastic cord. A lot of teachers tell us they love it because it's a quiet fidget, and a lot of fidgets are really clickety and clackety in the classroom. Yeah. So it's
Jasmine: yeah, I've been playing with it this whole time and yeah, my mic hasn't even picked it up.
Ryan Hamilton: not, you know, a lot of teachers get kind of bothered by that. but for kids with you know, sensory issues and also. We have some some elder care places using these two for older individuals who need a little just manual dexterity practice. So it's yeah, it's an open-ended fidget. It's hexel because it's six pieces. so put together the hex meaning six. And yeah, it's it's been a great product for us. It's it's different. It it looks different than most plus plus. And that has been a bit of a challenge at first, especially globally, especially in in Scandinavia, where Plus Plus has been around for a long time. People have had it in schools. Even before it was sold publicly, and before I found it, it was sold to schools. And so a lot of people had in their minds what it is. So we've had to overcome a little bit of preconceived notions about what Plus Plus is and can do. But but we still really love it. It's a it's a great fidget toy. We also have a two-unit version called the Hexel Duo, which is a keychain, which is very fun. So that's that's definitely you know, i if not my favorite plus plus product is certainly the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart because it literally came from that workshop back there to production in Denmark to winning toy of the year. So really, really honored by that.
Jasmine: Wonderful. That's lovely. I think that's just fantastic. Like I don't know that I've ever met anybody who invented a toy and it's been sold worldwide and it's around. So that's fantastic. Well thank you, Ryan, for joining me today. did you have anything that maybe I didn't ask you that you would like our audience to know?
Ryan Hamilton: I don't think so. I think we are just you know, even after ten years of of after bringing plus plus to the US, it's still so exciting to hear from parents, to hear from teachers and educators, grandparents about how much their kids and grandkids and students use plus plus and love plus plus. You know, as a I would say as a as a CEO of a toy company, my biggest challenge still is mark market and brand awareness, right? That US is a huge market, 350 million people. It's the biggest toy market in the world. And it is a noisy market. I think something like forty plus percent of toys sold in the US are licensed, meaning they have Star Wars or Bluey or something on them. And so it might even be more than that, probably more than half. But we so we're in that non-licensed category, so we don't have that sort of going for us. We have a couple licensed products like peanuts, but they're they're pretty niche for us. and so That's our biggest challenge, is is awareness. And so I would say if you love Plus Plus, if your kids love Plus Plus, tell a friend, right? Share it with a friend. because it's I we've had people tell us that they're so thankful that they learned about Plus Plus either from their kids' classroom or from a friend, from a teacher, because it really is a game changer for a lot of parents and a lot of families that not a few for a few different reasons. One is kids love it, they return to it, we know it's a great product, and it's it's stimulating them to be more creative. Also, though, as a parent of four children, most of whom are gone from the house by now, but that are have aged out of plus plus from the original line. But it's it's a product that kids return to over and over and that parents like to play with with them, right? It's it's not intimidating for a parent to sit down with a kid and just fiddle with plus plus in the same way that it would be with trying to color with crayons or whatever. So I would say To parents, to grandparents, grab some plus plus, sit down with a child, see what you can imagine. Because as we say, it's one shape with endless creativity guaranteed.
Jasmine: Guaranteed. That's right. All right. Thank you so much, Ryan. I really appreciate having you on. I would love to pick your brain about some new topics maybe in the future. but thank you so much everyone for listening or watching. And we'll see you next time on Make the Connection with Plus Plus USA.
Ryan Hamilton: Sure, yeah. Thanks much for having me, Jasmine. So my name is Ryan Hamilton. I'm the CEO of Plus Plus USA and I also lead our product development team for Plus Plus Denmark or Plus Plus Global. So all of our the lion's share of our products are created, ideated, graphic design, everything done here in Greenville, South Carolina. So I've been in the toy business for almost 25 years. I started off on the sales side as a sales rep calling on mass market accounts. Back in the day it was Kmart and other stores like that. And then my wife and I started a toy store in 2003, right after we had our first child and we wanted to bring these kind of imagination powered European style toys to our little corner of Ohio at the time and then work my way into product distribution, importing toys from Europe. And bringing them to the US. And somewhere along the way, I was also a toy buyer at Barnes and Noble in New York. So I've been in the toy business for a long time, been in a lot of different sides of the of the desk in the toy industry. And I love toys. I'm a product guy. I'm a product snob, I like to say. I love I love really good toys. And I love creative, creative play. And I just I'm a tinkerer by heart. So my workshop behind me here, I'm always in there tinkering away, figuring out what else we can do with plus plus. So great to be with you here today.
Jasmine: Fantastic. So you started a toy store in two thousand three. Do you still have that
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah.
Jasmine: toy store? Is it still in existence?
Ryan Hamilton: We do not. it was called Kids on Third Street. And you can actually, if you use the Wayback Machine, which is a really cool web tool you can use to look at old websites, you can see some archived versions of our Toy Store website from the early 2000s. I actually built my first e-commerce website in 2004, I think. We were very early e-com sellers. We had a summer seasonal store in it's a little town called Lakeside, Ohio on Lake Erie. And Then we also started a year round online sales business, very early days and So that store closed around 2009. We've been we moved away from that area. And but yeah, we also had a home goods store next door called Home on Third Street. And now actually we just opened last summer, my family and I, another store in the same town called Docky's Mercantile. And we've had a lot of people come back that remember those stores fondly and are excited to see that we're back back in retail. Although this store is not a toy store or a home goods store. It's kind of a a mercantile. It's got a little bit of everything. So So I love retail too, but back then, one of the reasons we closed the store too was that I was really getting into the distribution side. And I remember getting to the end of the year around 2008 and looking at my pile of paper from my store, all the receipts and purchase orders and everything, and my pile of paper from my distribution company. And they were doing about the same business, but the pile of paper was much smaller on the distribution side. So it was It just seemed much more scalable to do it that way.
Jasmine: Right, gotcha. Okay, so from your early days owning a store to being in sales to n being CEO of Plus Plus USA. So a couple of things of clarity come to mind. You're the CEO of Plus Plus USA as a distributor of Plus Plus. You're not like the CEO of like Plus Plus Global.
Ryan Hamilton: No. The well the the the quick version of the process is that we I found Plus Plus in 2012. And at that time, so I went to the the Nuremberg Spielwardenmesser. It's the big international toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany. Happens every January. We go every year. And back then I was looking for new products. We had seven or eight different product lines that we were importing and distributing. We had stuffed animals, we had some of these products you see behind me on the shelves here. That that I created it myself and was making in Ohio, have it having manufactured. So we were selling to a lot of the same stores we sell to now, but selling a lot of different product lines. And when I found Plus Plus, it had never been sold outside of Scandinavia and had never really been shown commercially. It had been sold to schools. And so I immediately fell in love with it. I was able to get the distribution rights for the USA. We brought it here in the summer of 2012. But then for those next few years, we We had it as one of our lines for distribution alongside stuffed animals and puzzles and whatever else. But then after a couple of years, we just we just thought Brett and I, my business partner and I thought, you know, this has more potential. We think we can scale this, but the packaging was very limiting. It was only a few, it was nothing like you see then the plus plus product line now. We just had some cubes and some triangles and very simple three colorways. I think a total of 12 or 16 SKUs. And We said to the Danish team, hey, we think we can blow this up, but we need control over price point, packaging, marketing, everything. And it's all one shape. So it really is just about how you package it and and and merchandise it and sell it. So they agreed, kind of crazily, in the fall of 2020 or 2015. And then in January of 2016, we formed Plus Plus USA. So I'm it's co-owned by myself and Brett and Plus Plus Denmark. So So we're kind of business partners in this entity. And then all the pieces are made by Plus Plus Denmark, of course. So we buy from them and then sell in the US. But over the years, over the past 10 plus years, we've grown into this role where we also do the product development as well. So so it's a great relationship. We love working with our Danish colleagues. They're really great at making the the pieces and getting all the packaging together. All the packaging is made over in Europe too. and get e everything assembled and then we get it out to all the stores across the world. So
Jasmine: fantastic. That's very riveting. I mean, I have heard that story before, but I think that that's really neat. That's very interesting to think of that. what did so you said still all one shape. When you're changing packaging or changing a product, you're not changing plus plus at its core at all.
Ryan Hamilton: No, and we've had, you know, over the years a lot of people ask us when we're gonna come out with another shape, something that that rounds off the edges or something that finishes the edges or a plus plus plus. Or we still get people asking, I did a few years ago when I when I was the one doing our social media, I did an April Fool's post that was just a it was a a yellow rectangular prism. And I said, hey we're gonna come out with minus minus next year. And it was an April April Fool's joke, but people thought it was serious. But I had deep in the hashtags, I said hashtag it's actually a stick of butter because it was yellow and it looked like a stick of butter. but we will never make a mina minus minus. We have committed to one shape. We do have some accessories. We've developed the base plate, which we developed right here in Greenville, the wheels, which also can be eyes and all kinds of other things. So those accessories do support the sort of ecosystem, but it's all about that one shape. I remember When we first decided to do this and go all in on Plus Plus, you know, we kind of joke, we were pushing all of our chips onto the table and saying, All right, we're head to we're placing all of our bets on this this brand. I had some friends that questioned that for sure. One friend in particular, Steve Starabinsky, he's pretty active on social media and the in the toy world, does a lot with pudgy penguins these days. he he said, Ryan, you're crazy. Like you guys are gonna go up against Lego, which was that's a common perception, is that that's our biggest competitor, which we can talk about that. More if you'd like. I don't think that's really true, but I said, Yeah, we we
Jasmine: Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: think we can do it, and then also I've got a good friend who's over he's in product development over at Crazy Erands, and he keeps every you know, every couple of years, when are you guys gonna come out with your minifigure? You know, and I'm like, No, it's not we're not doing a minifigure, we're not doing you know, skinny ones, long ones, ones with three pluses. That's just not in our DNA. So we're focused on that one shape, and that one shape really forces kids and adults to create. Create in a in a different way. If you think about design, the constraint forces creativity. So having just one thing forces you to think in a different way than if you had one that looks like a fender of a car, or one that looks like a steering wheel, or one that looks like an actual person. So it it you use color more representatively. Is that a word? Represents in a more representative way to
Jasmine: Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: show things. And kids can really dream up and imagine their own. Their own vision of what they're creating. You know, I love it when a little kid will build something, they'll put three or four pieces together and hold it up to you and say, Look, I made the Millennium Falcon, or I made a unicorn. It looks nothing like a unicorn to us, but of course they see it very clearly. So that that creativity, that open-endedness, and it also gives, I think, makes it more accessible to lots of people that they can kind of sit down and just start playing with it. We I often say that Plus Plus is more like crayon. or Play Doh than it is like Lego or another construction toy. It's like a creative medium in that way. So
Jasmine: Yeah, I really love how you said that the the the constraint, the the the only you can it's only this shape, but that box, I guess, gives you a better like the challenge is almost what gives you the creativity. That's right. Yeah. I think you can think in more
Ryan Hamilton: That's right. Yeah. Forces you to think in more creative ways.
Jasmine: creative ways. Yeah, I love that. And I feel like that's something that we don't present with kids, in at least in my opinion, very often much anymore. a lot of their toys or playtime is kind of structured or it has a rule or you do it like this and that's the way that you do it. but with Plus Plus, it's it's definitely not like that.
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah. And there's varying levels of constraint, right? So you think about magnetiles, they I mean they've started making some figures now too, but generally that, you know, there's squares, triangles, rectangles. It's a pretty limited palette. Or unit blocks, one of my favorite toys ever. Like I think every Every parent should go out and buy a really nice set of unit blocks. And those are just those wooden blocks. I have some on my shelf here somewhere, but you know, where it's they're all based off units of measurement. So you have a rectangle, then you have two squares that make a rectangle, you have two triangles that make a square. And so they're really there's a system based on golden ratios and all kinds of things, but it it forces kids again to think a little differently because there's a certain kind of constraint there too where it's it's a limited number of things, it's not an endless supply of things and new shapes every year or whatever. It's a it's a classic, you know, really Montessori like sort of pattern.
Jasmine: Yeah, I think Clixo too, we're we're friends with the people at Clixo and that that's the same sort of building in that constraint. I don't know, five or six or eight
Ryan Hamilton: Mm. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. They've got, I don't know, five or six or eight shapes of whatever they have, and then they use color and other accessories to, you know, encourage different kinds of creativity.
Jasmine: That's fantastic. So that kind of leads me to a couple other questions. But what do you, as a CEO of a toy company, you're you're the boss, the guy, the head honto, what do you want moms to know about play? We can talk about what you want moms to know about plus plus, but what do you think moms need to know about play?
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah, I think don't be don't assume that your kids need a lot of direction to be creative or they don't need a product that does the work for them, right? Something where a a child presses a button and causes something to light up or move electronically. It doesn't teach them much. It doesn't help them to grow their perception of the world and how cause and effect works and all those things. I think the the biggest thing that for me when it comes to play that I think a lot of parents may not know is that playing with physical objects in three-dimensional space literally builds gray matter. I mean that is how kids learn. It starts off just interacting with the world, interacting with you, you know, the the what the you know knowing that an object they call it object permanence, right? That when when mom leaves the room she still exists and then she comes back, right? That kids learn that first. And then later on, they they need to see how their physical world impacts them and interacts with them. And so by interacting with physical objects versus a screen, they're really building that gray matter and their brain is developing as they play, as they interact. So I think that's super important for play and and even more so if it's that kind of creative play where they're having to problem solve or, you know, take something apart, put something together, a shape sorter, those kind of things, right? Where they're figuring out how the world works. so I think that's super important. And you know, we say a lot here at Plus Plus, we're we're not anti-screen. I mean I'm I'm a pretty Luddite guy as a parent or was when my kids were younger. But We're we're not naive, we know that screens exist and kids are going to look at screens, but there's there really need that balance and and a lot more physical play than just mashing buttons on a screen or just mashing a screen for that matter, which doesn't really help kids develop in that same way.
Jasmine: What are some of your all time favorite toys?
Ryan Hamilton: Wow. well, if I if I go back into my classic toy box, I've got a shelf over here full of my favorites. I was really into sort of figures when I was a kid, also cars, of course. So I've still got a collection of of a lot of those kinds of things. Fisher Price, Little People, Playmobil, those kinds of things that really encourage sort of storytelling and and role play. I think it when it comes to toys now. My favorites are just the really open ended things. So back when we had our toy store, kids on Third Street, the our best selling toy was this thing called the Billabo. let me grab mine real quick if I can do that.
Jasmine: that yeah please do absolutely you'd have to see a bill of it's awesome it's one of my favorite things too
Ryan Hamilton: So
Jasmine: I just imagine you're digging through a toy box like in your toy wonder. Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: I'm it's my shelf of wonders over here. So so I've got two sizes. This is the mini Billabo. And actually they just came out with a a MIDI size. That's the mini one. This is the original one. And a lot of so it literally looks like a helmet, or you can sit in it
Jasmine: Yeah.
Ryan Hamilton: and spin. It can become a doll cradle. You can put blocks in it and rattle them around and see how that affects things. You can fill it with water, it'll float on the water. You can make it a train tunnel, you can stand on it. So this was designed by a good friend of mine, Alex Hochstrasser, and he is a Swiss toy designer. He designed this 25 years ago, it's celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, I think. And he'd studied the play patterns of children. He's an architect by training, but studied the play patterns of children and wanted to come up with something that fit all kinds of play patterns, but not but not with one specific purpose. So when we would have this in our store. And there's red and yellow and all kinds of fun colors. And parents would say, Well, what's it what's it do? And we would say, Well, it's doing it. the kids do it do, right? The kids bring it to life. So you know, really it's a it's a really well-designed, durable cardboard box, right? I mean, a few years ago they inducted the cardboard box into the Hall of Fame, the toy hall of fame. because it is oftentimes better than the toy, right? The toy, the kid may get bored with a light up, blinky, flashy light toy in a few days. But the cardboard box they'll use forever. And then this the this whole toy line too. It's called Moloch is the whole toy line. And then he also has other things that interact with his other toys. So this one is this is called Oogie, and you can you know stick Oogie on the side of a billibo, or you know, you can stick it on your head like that, if you're bald like me. so it's just totally open-ended, and then you can, you know, you can have you can
Jasmine: No, no.
Ryan Hamilton: take your little mini billibo here, and I can take Oogie. Let's see. And put him on here like that. So you can just do
Jasmine: Cut.
Ryan Hamilton: all kinds of crazy things. It's a really like a whole ecosystem of creative play. So those kinds of toys for me are just the ultimate. And sort of like Plus Plus, anybody can interact with it, right? It's not, it is probably explicitly for a toddler, so to speak, but I mean I I clearly have fun with it. I mean, anybody can sort of have fun with it. Those kinds of toys I think are are really you know, they're they're sustainable in the sense that they are are they're made sustainably, but also they last for a long time and have a l a lot of play value. And I think that's one thing that sort of saddens me right now about the the I'm encouraged by how analog some of the toy trends are now, right? Like hacky sacks this year, neito, squishy things, that kind of thing. It's great that kids are interacting with real things, but at the same time it's it's kinda all gonna become landfill, right? It's like It's just it's kind of junk and and you walk down the t toy aisle of most big box stores and there's a lot of there's a lot of junk, right? And that's fine. I mean, that's how the world turns and we as adults buy a lot of junk too. But my hope is that parents will have a balance of, you know, you want your fun bluey action figure because everybody loves bluey, but also some more open-ended things that are gonna encourage kids in that creative way. And Think the open-ended toys kids are going to return to again and again. And so the value for your money, your play value, the sort of, you know, PPD, the play per dollar of the time you're gonna get out of that is so much better than, you know, you picture a a young child is gonna fall in love with whatever character of the the moment, Elmo, Bluey, whatever it is, but they're gonna get tired of that. They're gonna turn away from it to something else. Whereas an something like a wooden block or something they're gonna return to over the years. Same with plus plus. We hear that from parents all the time. Not only my kid plays with this for hours and they won't play with anything else for that long, but also just that my kid returns to this this year and next year and the year after. They don't outgrow this toy. And I think that's that's the magic of plus plus, but it's the magic of open-ended play. So that's that's I think my my favorite toys have that sort of common thread. And I I love to collect old toys. I think there's there's a lot to be learned from older toys and designs that we've kind of lost over the years and I like to be inspired by those things too. So
Jasmine: Yeah, I really love 80s. I'm a classic toy collector. Now that I'm like, all those toys that I had when I was a kid that I could never get, you know, or the ones
Ryan Hamilton: Right.
Jasmine: I didn't get for Christmas when I was six years old. Like that's that's what I want.
Ryan Hamilton: Absolutely.
Jasmine: so we talked about your favorite toys and then trends. So we talked about how squishies are trendy right now. Do you see that? continuing? Do you feel like that's just a fad? Or let's fast forward to maybe 2027. What are some of the things that you think might become trends if you have any insight into that?
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah, I mean it's obviously so hard to say, right? A year ago, I mean Nido's been around for almost a decade, maybe over a decade now. and it it's always been a cool product, fun, very tactile, but it's only in the past, you know, twelve months or nine months that it's really blown up. So obviously we don't expect that to last. We think i all these things ebb and flow, right? Licenses. When I say licenses, I mean things like Transformers or Or G.I. Joe or Barbie or whatever those come and go. You know, Barbie had a big moment a few years ago. So they will, it will ebb and flow. and we do expect that to go away. You know, it'll be interesting this holiday season to see as as families and parents are looking for more giftable things. Usually that's a higher price point thing, not like an impulse-priced sort of squishy toy. so we think that'll kind of tamper down tamp down the demand a little bit. Also, I was talking to a good friend that owns a toy store last week. And, you know, they're having a lot of problems with unruly parents who come in to buy these things, or maybe not even parents, just collectors, adult collectors of squishy things. And they're causing problems. They're fighting over the things when they have their neato drops. And it's it's crazy that people are being that immature. But I think that is also sort of diminishing some of the enthusiasm around it. These toy stores are like, hey, we don't want to deal with this. Craziness, so maybe we just we'll just stop ordering it. So I think that will that will pass. It does seem though like analog is is having a moment. So I think the the lifelines line that Melissa Bernstein from Melissa and Doug came out with. We sold that in our store this summer. Great seller, fun, just sort of mindful artwork where you're doing sort of dots with markers. And so those kinds of things seem to really be having a moment. I think I think that as AI gets bigger and bigger and as as yeah, we try to react against those kinds of things, that people are
Jasmine: Mm-hmm.
Ryan Hamilton: looking for more of those tangible, really physical things that they can do. So, you know, crafts, those kind of things, I think are having a moment right now. The wobbles, right? The the little knitted crocheted animals those are still really having
Jasmine: Mm-hmm.
Ryan Hamilton: a moment. You see those everywhere now. So nobody can predict what's gonna come down the pipe next in terms of the the toy fads, oftentimes it does also depend on movie releases and things like that. But but it does seem like creative play and and analog play is having a moment.
Jasmine: Let's I I kind of want to ask you, we have a few minutes left in our session today. I was gonna ask you what your favorite plus plus product that we currently have or line is your favorite. But then I looked over at my desk and I have Hexel sitting right here. So I'd really like to talk about the Hexel a little bit. This, yeah, you have one too. so what is a Hexel? I know what it is, but let's tell
Ryan Hamilton: Yeah.
Jasmine: everybody else what it is. and that you invented this. Can you give
Ryan Hamilton: Mm-hmm.
Jasmine: me a little bit of that information, a little bit of that background?
Ryan Hamilton: Sure. Yeah, so the Hexel is a fidget toy. we launched this product two and a half years ago, I believe. Yeah. in 2024. And the my inspiration for this was really a few different things, some classic toys that are that have this sort of form factor. So if you'll ha hang on one second, I'll grab another show.
Jasmine: Yeah, yeah, sure. Grab another thing out of your toy box. Ryan's
Ryan Hamilton: No.
Jasmine: Ryan's box of surprises we've got going on today.
Ryan Hamilton: That's right. So I've always loved this guy. This is by an artist called David Weeks. It's Cubot. And it it it's really it itself is a play on a classic toy that you know, where it has elastic going through here. And so it was kind of inspired by that. And people had often said that plus plus seemed like a fidget toy, but it was a little too open-ended to be a fidget toy. So I started playing around. I literally got some plus plus big, which is what these size this size is, the the big pieces by themselves. Are safe for all ages. It's two and a half times larger than our regular size plus plus. And I just started messing around. I put it on my table saw, I cut some notches in it, I drilled, I ran some thread through it. I tried three unit ones and 12 unit ones and just kind of messed around until I found a form factor that I liked. And yeah, and it we brought it to market. It's my first patented product. So the patent with my name on it, which is super fun. And then we won Toy of the Year in 2025 for specialty toy, which was Amazing, super exciting, huge honor, especially because specialty toy of the year is voted on by retailers. And so that was a special honor for me because I'm a lot of friends with a lot of retailers and and that's such an important part of our business. But it's just a fidget toy. So you can roll it up into a cube like this. You can, you know, stack it. You can connect them together. It can be a a holder for your phone on your desk. We have a bunch of different colorways now, including Van Gogh and Monet and different things. but it's really just again open-ended, but with a little bit of constraint, right? So it's got these six pieces connected by this elastic cord. A lot of teachers tell us they love it because it's a quiet fidget, and a lot of fidgets are really clickety and clackety in the classroom. Yeah. So it's
Jasmine: yeah, I've been playing with it this whole time and yeah, my mic hasn't even picked it up.
Ryan Hamilton: not, you know, a lot of teachers get kind of bothered by that. but for kids with you know, sensory issues and also. We have some some elder care places using these two for older individuals who need a little just manual dexterity practice. So it's yeah, it's an open-ended fidget. It's hexel because it's six pieces. so put together the hex meaning six. And yeah, it's it's been a great product for us. It's it's different. It it looks different than most plus plus. And that has been a bit of a challenge at first, especially globally, especially in in Scandinavia, where Plus Plus has been around for a long time. People have had it in schools. Even before it was sold publicly, and before I found it, it was sold to schools. And so a lot of people had in their minds what it is. So we've had to overcome a little bit of preconceived notions about what Plus Plus is and can do. But but we still really love it. It's a it's a great fidget toy. We also have a two-unit version called the Hexel Duo, which is a keychain, which is very fun. So that's that's definitely you know, i if not my favorite plus plus product is certainly the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart because it literally came from that workshop back there to production in Denmark to winning toy of the year. So really, really honored by that.
Jasmine: Wonderful. That's lovely. I think that's just fantastic. Like I don't know that I've ever met anybody who invented a toy and it's been sold worldwide and it's around. So that's fantastic. Well thank you, Ryan, for joining me today. did you have anything that maybe I didn't ask you that you would like our audience to know?
Ryan Hamilton: I don't think so. I think we are just you know, even after ten years of of after bringing plus plus to the US, it's still so exciting to hear from parents, to hear from teachers and educators, grandparents about how much their kids and grandkids and students use plus plus and love plus plus. You know, as a I would say as a as a CEO of a toy company, my biggest challenge still is mark market and brand awareness, right? That US is a huge market, 350 million people. It's the biggest toy market in the world. And it is a noisy market. I think something like forty plus percent of toys sold in the US are licensed, meaning they have Star Wars or Bluey or something on them. And so it might even be more than that, probably more than half. But we so we're in that non-licensed category, so we don't have that sort of going for us. We have a couple licensed products like peanuts, but they're they're pretty niche for us. and so That's our biggest challenge, is is awareness. And so I would say if you love Plus Plus, if your kids love Plus Plus, tell a friend, right? Share it with a friend. because it's I we've had people tell us that they're so thankful that they learned about Plus Plus either from their kids' classroom or from a friend, from a teacher, because it really is a game changer for a lot of parents and a lot of families that not a few for a few different reasons. One is kids love it, they return to it, we know it's a great product, and it's it's stimulating them to be more creative. Also, though, as a parent of four children, most of whom are gone from the house by now, but that are have aged out of plus plus from the original line. But it's it's a product that kids return to over and over and that parents like to play with with them, right? It's it's not intimidating for a parent to sit down with a kid and just fiddle with plus plus in the same way that it would be with trying to color with crayons or whatever. So I would say To parents, to grandparents, grab some plus plus, sit down with a child, see what you can imagine. Because as we say, it's one shape with endless creativity guaranteed.
Jasmine: Guaranteed. That's right. All right. Thank you so much, Ryan. I really appreciate having you on. I would love to pick your brain about some new topics maybe in the future. but thank you so much everyone for listening or watching. And we'll see you next time on Make the Connection with Plus Plus USA.
