I'd like to thank all of you who have written to me about the Ball of Whacks. I appreciate your very nice comments. I'm glad you're having fun using it to stimulate your creativity!
I thought I'd take a few moments and let you know how the product is doing. As readers of this blog know, I spent about a year-and-a-half developing it (designing it, prototyping it, engineering it, going to China to manufacture it, etc.)
Finally in late September, 2006 my first run arrived in the United States. I got good word of mouth on the Blogosphere starting in October and that pushed sales. Plus, my partner Stuart Kaplan was able to get it into a number of stores including FAO Schwarz and many museum and other retail stores. It also did well in the online arena, for example ThinkGeek.com and our own e-commerce store CreativeWhack.com (you can see a fun 1 minute BOW video there).
We sold out the initial run in early December (sigh! just before Christmas). Toward the end of October, I doubled my second order from my Chinese manufacturer. And these are just arriving now.
The Ball of Whacks is really a product for 2007. Our first big marketing show is "Toy Fair" in New York the second week of February. We hope to generate a lot of interest and . . . sales! (Wish us luck!)
I've thanked many of the bloggers who wrote about it (here and here). But one person I haven't acknowledged yet in this blog is Glenn Reynolds who gave it several mentions (here and here) in his Instapundit blog. Thanks for the "Instalanche, Glenn!"
Holy cow, roger! That's awesome! It sounds like they're flying off the shelves. Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Paul McEnany | 25 January 2007 at 07:25 PM
Roger, I have been an ardent reader of your blog and your books. I ordered the Ball of Whacks in November through Amazon hoping to get it in time for my Christmas break, when I could use it. But as you mentioned, the product was not available. I just got to know that it has been shipped to me, cant wait to use it!
Posted by: Reshama Deshmukh | 26 January 2007 at 12:32 PM
Paul: Thanks for the kind words.
Reshama: Sorry you had to wait so long for it. I think most authors (and a lot of publishers) will tell you that Amazon can sometimes be — how can I say this? — challenging to work with. It is extremely difficult to talk to a live human being there. When we saw that the product was starting to take off in late October, we kept asking them if they wanted to order more for the Christmas rush. But nothing happened. Then we started getting some huge orders from retailers (600-800 units a pop). And then our inventory got low. I felt badly (and a bit frustrated) when the sign went up at Amazon saying "Product availability: 4-6 weeks." It wasn't for lack of trying at our end. Hopefully all of those issues are behind us.
Let me say that we were able to fulfill in a timely fashion all the orders that came directly to our e-commerce site (www.creativewhack.com).
Posted by: Roger von Oech | 26 January 2007 at 01:54 PM
Your supply and demand issues aren't quite up to PlayStation 3 heights yet, but this is certainly good news for the upcoming year.
Happy whacking to all!
Posted by: Mr. Zeus | 26 January 2007 at 03:29 PM
Roger -- pssst... I'll pay cash! Glad it's moving!
Posted by: Stephen Denny | 26 January 2007 at 07:09 PM
Roger,
So nice to hear that you've had some great success with the Ball of Whacks. I really appreciate that you sent me a couple. In fact, my boys were so crazy about them that after a couple of weeks there were stray pieces strew around the house and I reclaimed one of them back for myself. So it's in my office at work so the "big kids" like me can mess with it.
It's a great product--looking forward to seeing the colored versions too!
Posted by: David Armano | 27 January 2007 at 04:14 AM
Looking forward to reading a great report in Feburary about the success "Ball of Whacks" had at the Toy Fair.
It's encouraging to read your story of progress!
Keep creating,
Mike
Posted by: Michael Wagner | 28 January 2007 at 04:13 PM
Thanks for stopping by Crossword Bebop!
I have a suggestion for a companion product to the Ball of Whacks. It would be sheets of either stickers or magnetic shapes that would fit onto the sides of the individual whacks.
For example, one set of stickers could go on the bases of whacks, making a map of the world. I'm thinking of a variation on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Sky-Ocean Map, where he imagined the world as an icosahedron, and broke up the triangles so that he could have a distortionless projection. I recognized that a distortionless projection was a very good thing, but I considered the way he broke up the triangles to be quite arbitrary. So it would be great to have the possibility of further experimentation.
This is just one of many different possibilities.
Posted by: Douglas | 06 February 2007 at 12:26 AM
Hi Roger,
i'd like to sell the ball of whacks in Germany. Can you contact me, please?
Timo
Posted by: Timo | 19 May 2007 at 01:42 PM
I love the Ball of Whacks and have given a number as presents; first I met the creativity whack pack which I also use and enjoy. My current problem is that one of the tiny pieces of the Ball of Whacks fell apart--I have the magnets, the red pieces, the white core, but it doesn't snap back together. I wonder if a guest pried it apart. I don't know. I do know we NEED NEED NEED the piece. There seem to be special magnet layouts for the pieces, or maybe they're identical, I'm not sure. What can I do?
Posted by: Carol Murphy | 31 August 2008 at 11:20 AM
Fantastic, this is the reason i visit your site almost daily. Your articles are always up to date and interesting. Thanks again.
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