Shawn Smith, owner of Chicago-based designer toy company Shawnimals, turned his childhood penchant for doodling into a thriving business designing and making character-driven toys, video games, and lifestyle accessories.
>For most students, doodling in class can result in a stern reprimand from the teacher. For Shawn Smith, it was the inspiration for a business.
Smith is the founder of Shawnimals, a Chicago-based company that designs and makes character driven toys, video games, and lifestyle accessories. As a youngster, Smith, 37, says he was always drawing odd little characters in notebooks. “Yes, I was the kid that was doodling in the book when the teacher was talking,” he says with a laugh. “Back then, I just drew when an idea came to me.”
It was in 2001, while a reviewer for a gaming magazine, that Smith says he decided to return to college and his first love—art. He liked writing about video games, but he really loved art and design; and he went on to pursue a bachelor of fine arts in painting at Illinois State University.
The focus on art once again prompted Smith to gather all his sketches into a binder. “I wasn’t sure of the purpose of doing that other than I just wanted to have them in one place,” he says. “I felt like they should have some sort of home.”
Not long after cataloguing his designs, Smith came across some imported toys from Japan. “They weren’t bears or bunnies—the usual plush toys—just these cool, kind of strange characters,” he says. That’s when Smith admits he had his “aha” moment. “I had all these characters in my binder that I didn’t know what to do with and here are these strange plush toys from Japan,” he explains. “I thought, maybe I can make plush toys from all the characters I’ve created.”
With the designer toy trend just getting underway, Smith’s timing couldn’t have been better. Friends saw the little creatures he was sewing out of his college apartment and began to place orders. “When I made $500, I’d buy more supplies and put the rest of the money aside,” he says. Over the years, word of mouth helped build the company, which now included Smith’s wife Jen, who he had met in college.
But it wasn’t until 2008 that Shawnimals really rocketed ahead. That was the year that a Nintendo DS game based on the company’s Ninjatown line of characters hit the market, followed by IPhone and IPad versions a few years later. “Once the games came out, they completely validated the brand and helped us increase our sales,” Smith says.
Today, Shawnimals toys are sold on the company’s website as well as designer toy stores and museum shops across the country. In the meantime, that creative kid who followed his passion for art is looking for his company’s next wave of growth. “We’ve always enjoyed the natural evolution of this business, but that doesn’t mean we always want to be reactive,” Smith says. “As a business owner you need to be aware of what might be down the road a few steps. That’s why taking the time to talk to your customers is so important. We’ve done that and it’s really helped us understand the business and where we want to take it.”
