Ty (company)

Last updated
Ty
Industry Soft toys
Founded1986;38 years ago (1986)
Founder Ty Warner
Headquarters,
Number of locations
Worldwide
Products Beanie Babies, Beanie Boos, Frizzys, Disney, My Little Pony, Hello Kitty, TMNT, SpongeBob SquarePants, MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, Rush Zone, PAW Patrol, Despicable Me, Beanie Ballz, Beanie Bellies
Owner Ty Warner
Parent Ty Warner
Website ty.com

Ty (styled ty) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It was founded by Ty Warner in 1986. It designs, develops and sells products, most notably Beanie Babies, exclusively to specialty markets[ clarification needed ] worldwide.

Contents

Internet

First "business-to-consumer" website

Lina Trivedi was a college student when she worked at Ty Inc.[ when? ] She approached Warner to talk about a new development that existed on college campuses called the Internet. She indicated that, while the Internet was primarily a research tool, college students were starting to make personal websites. She thought that creating a website for Beanie Babies could present an unprecedented opportunity to engage the market. She brought to Ty's office a 14.4k modem and demonstrated how the Internet works. Warner was intrigued and gave Trivedi a free license to create a website using her judgment and skills. [1] By the time the first iteration of the Ty website [2] was published in late 1995, only 1.4% of Americans were using the Internet. [3] The population of people using the Internet grew exponentially in the following years, along with the popularity of Beanie Babies.

Ty was the first business to produce a direct-to-consumer website. This was a major contributing factor to the early and rapidly growing popularity of Beanie Babies. All Beanie Baby hangtags had the website URL and a call to action printed underneath the poems and birthdays that commanded audiences to visit the company website with text that read "Visit our web page!!!" This effort evolved into the world's first Internet sensation. [4]

Fundraising

Ty has been involved in a large amount of fundraising, with the proceeds donated to various causes. Some of this has been raised from the sale of certain Beanie Babies. It has also been raised through other means, such as voting for a fee. [5]

One such fundraising Beanie Baby was Ariel, made to raise funds for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Its sales raised a total of $3.4 million for the foundation. [6] Others include Aware and Awareness, sold to raise funds for breast cancer research and awareness; and Barbaro, created in memory of Barbaro the Horse, to raise funds for the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, which tried to save the horse.[ citation needed ]

Ty has also raised money for the 2004 PGA Tour with a beanie called ChariTee; one, signed by Jack Nicklaus was auctioned for $455. [7]

Ty was the shirt sponsor of Portsmouth FC from 2002 to 2005, in which the club was promoted to the Premier League.[ citation needed ]

A beanie baby named "Cito" was given out to school children in Montecito, California to welcome them back to school after the area was affected by the 2018 Southern California mudflows. [8]

During the wake of Beanie Babies' success, Beanie Baby-centric publications were issued. One of the largest was Mary Beth's Bean Bag World , a monthly magazine dedicated to Beanie Babies and competing plush toys. It ran from 1997 to 2001. [9]

In August 2021, Beanie Babies was the season 1, episode 4 feature on Vice Media's Dark Side of the 90's entitled "Beanie Babies Go Bust". [10]

A documentary film about Beanie Babies, titled Beanie Mania, was released on December 23, 2021, on HBO Max. [11]

The story of Ty has also been covered by two films, both named The Beanie Bubble, one a 2022 documentary directed by Ben Kitnick and a 2023 comedy-drama directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash and written by Gore, based on the 2015 book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette about the Beanie Babies bubble. It stars Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook and Geraldine Viswanathan.

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The dot-com bubble was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Internet, resulting in a dispensation of available venture capital and the rapid growth of valuations in new dot-com startups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beanie Babies</span> Popular American brand of stuffed toys

Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman H. Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986. The toys are stuffed with plastic pellets ("beans") rather than conventional soft stuffing. They come in many different forms, mostly animals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stuffed toy</span> Toy with outer fabric sewn from a textile and stuffed with flexible material

A stuffed toy is a toy doll with an outer fabric sewn from a textile and stuffed with flexible material. They are known by many names, such as plush toys, plushies, stuffed animals, and stuffies; in Britain and Australia, they may also be called soft toys or cuddly toys. The stuffed toy originated from the Steiff company of Germany in the late 19th century and gained popularity following the creation of the teddy bear in the United States in 1903. At the same time, German toy inventor Richard Steiff designed a similar bear. In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy. In 1921, Christopher Robin's stuffed toy, given to him by his father, A. A. Milne, would inspire the creation of Winnie-the-Pooh. In the 1970s, London-based Hamleys, the world's oldest toy store, bought the rights to Paddington Bear stuffed toys. In the 1990s, Ty Warner created Beanie Babies, a series of animals stuffed with plastic pellets that were popular as collector's items.

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H. Ty Warner is an American billionaire toy manufacturer, businessman, and convicted felon. He is the CEO, sole owner and co-founder of Ty Inc. which manufactures and distributes stuffed toys, including Beanie Babies and other lines. He is also the owner of Four Seasons Hotel New York, which he bought with profits earned selling Beanie Babies during a fad in the late 1990s. In 2020, he was No. 359 on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America, with a net worth of US$2.3 billion.

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The retirement of a Beanie Baby or a product from any line of Ty Inc., the manufacturer of Beanie Babies and other lines of collectibles, is its withdrawal from production. This has occurred in varying amounts of time following its introduction, depending on Ty's goals for that particular item. Some Beanie Babies have remained in production for several years following their introduction. Others have been retired just days after being introduced. Occasionally, beanies that have been introduced for a single purpose have been retired on the day they have been distributed. More rarely, some beanies have had their production canceled prior to their shipment to retailers, but following their announcement to the public, thereby never becoming available.

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References

  1. Wolkoff, Melanie (December 2000). "The Girl With The Midas Touch, What Lina Trivedi Touches Turns to Gold – Just Ask Ty Warner". Mary Beth's Bean Bag World . H&S Media Incorporated. 4 (#3): 56–59. ISSN   1520-7005.
  2. "Welcome to the OFFICIAL website of: Ty Inc". ty.com. 18 December 1996. Archived from the original on 1996-12-18. Retrieved 28 July 2023.
  3. Pew Research Center (February 27, 2014). "How the Internet Has Woven Itself Into American Life" . Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  4. Bissonnette, Zac (March 2015). "The $12-per-hour Sociology Major Who Made Ty Warner a Billionaire in 1999". The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. Penguin Books. pp. 107–121. ISBN   978-1591846024.
  5. Ty Puts Beanie Babies' Fate Into the Hands of Consumers. New York Times
  6. Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Achievements and Milestones
  7. Ty Beanie Baby Beanies News Ty
  8. Palminteri, John (23 February 2018). "Ty Warner provides mud zone kids with comforting 'Cito' beanie baby dolls". KEYT. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
  9. "Mary Beth". Beanielad Trading Cards. 10 November 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  10. Topel, Fred (August 5, 2021). "Beanie Babies Landed Some People in Jail According to 'Dark Side of the '90s' Episode". Shwobiz Cheat Sheet. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
  11. Squires, Bethy (2021-12-16). "LuLaRich Meets PEN15 in HBO Max's Beanie Mania Trailer". Vulture.