Turns out you can play ball in the house.
An Orange County innovator took top honors in the rookie category at the Toy Association’s 19th Annual Toy of the Year awards—the “Oscars” of the industry—at the Ziegfield Ballroom in New York City. The show draws exhibits of 7,000 new toys; the awards element overall included 550 nominees from 200 companies.
Joe Burke bested the best with OllyBall, a balloon-like ball kids can hit as hard as they like—inside the house.
Burke has spent much of his marketing career driving sales for retailers like Disney Stores and Wet Seal. Now, the 51-year-old can sell his own product, too.
“Marketing my own product has been no different from marketing others,” he said. “Be obsessed with the customer, learn their values and desires, and tell a simple and honest story.”
He and his wife, Ellen, who handles customer experience, formed Irvine-based Victury Sports to sell OllyBall and a soccer ball counterpart. They sold a few after trying out the 2018 toy show and have sold nearly 20,000 units since the February win.
The Burkes, who have three children, plan a full line of “full-force indoor play” including a volleyball, and a football “you can kick as hard as you want, it’ll only go 10 feet.”
Winner Winner
The win for the “ultimate indoor play ball” attracted the attention of toymakers, who have offered partnerships or to buy him out. ABC’s “Shark Tank” came calling but Joe Burke declined, telling the Business Journal he’s heard unfavorable comments from prior participants and he doesn’t need the money.
Burke and two others—Bradford Hall, managing director of Irvine accountancy Hall & Co., and David Belcher, an American Airlines pilot—have invested about $150,000 in the effort. They don’t aim for more equity investors but may consider an SBA loan to build-up inventory.
His distributor projects sales in the next 12 months of 900,000 units—two-thirds for the original product; a third for the soccer ball—at $14.99 retail. Burke declined to discuss costs but said he has “a really good margin.”
Spaghetti Idea
The idea came to Burke when his daughter, Judith, then an 8-year-old, knocked a plate of spaghetti onto the family’s new couch while practicing soccer inside their home.
Burke, a lifelong tinkerer, began pondering how kids could practice sports indoors when the great outdoors—too hot, too cold—wasn’t available. A chat with his brother, John Burke, a two-time coach of the year for the National Soccer Coaches Association of America, confirmed there weren’t any good options for indoor practice.
The soccer ball spawned the second, general product targeting year-round horseplay, since a child could, in theory only of course, throw an OllyBall at a sibling with no damage to property or person. A ball maker later told him year-round products would be great as ball sales are seasonal: people buy according to the current range of sports being played.
Burke went to work.
He “never meant to make money; it was originally just something I wanted my daughter to play with.”
Obsession set in.
China Mess
His prototype in 2014 was a balloon covered in painter’s tape; more sophisticated iterations followed until Burke finally landed on a design combining Mylar and a DuPont material used to make high-end kites. He’s invented in the past but OllyBall is the first product he’s patented.
Victury Sports got holiday orders last year from Pennsylvania-based retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods—something he’d been told was virtually unheard of, given the timeframe and newness of the product. It worked with a China-based maker to produce 30,000 of each ball.
Burke said the manufacturer used the wrong material and products began to rip after only minutes of play. Negative reviews poured in on Amazon.com. To save his reputation, he cancelled the shipment to Dick’s and ate the cost.
He now has the manufacturing issue resolved.
London Bound
Burke said the question of equity and investors generated the best advice he got as a startup. OC entrepreneur Tom Bengard told him, “You’re going to want to take money because it’s going to feel like a shortcut but don’t.”
The China issue generated a second insight.
“You’ve got to stay in control and know all” parts of the work, Burke said. “The second you think someone else is going to take it over for you, that’s a mistake.”
The company will exhibit at international toy distributor trade show Distoy in London next month and is in talks with large U.S. retailers to carry its products.
Burke hasn’t quit his day job as a contracted chief marketing manager for Irvine-based First Team Real Estate, managing, among other things, the company’s annual $1.5 million advertising budget.
True to his background, he designed all the packaging for Victury. He runs his own agency, The Anatomy of Yes, and has a book of the same name coming out next month.
