Victoria Baumann quit her teaching job to sell plastic spinners with her dad. They made $428,000 last year. The business is called Victoria Essie Studio. The product is 3D-printed fidget toys. This is what passes for entrepreneurship in 2024.
Teaching didn't work out so she pivoted to manufacturing anxiety relief for people who already spend nine hours a day on their phones. The target market is adults who need something to do with their hands besides doom-scrolling. Charlie Moreton is the dad. He owns a 3D printer. That's the entire competitive advantage. A machine that prints plastic and a TikTok account.
The toys went viral. Of course they did. We live in an economy where you can make half a million dollars selling fidget devices to people whose attention spans have been obliterated by the same platform you use to sell them the fidget devices. It's a perfect closed loop. Break the customer then sell them the repair kit.
Victoria Essie Studio sounds like a boutique art gallery in Brooklyn where everything costs $800 and nothing has a purpose. Instead it's a father-daughter operation running a printer in what I assume is a garage. They're grossing $428,000 annually on toys that solve a problem created by the device you're reading this on. The margin structure probably looks incredible until you factor in the part where your entire supply chain is one machine and your entire distribution model is hoping the algorithm doesn't get bored.
The business model is print plastic, post video, collect money. If that sentence makes you want to quit your job and buy a 3D printer, congratulations. You've just identified yourself as the next customer, not the next entrepreneur.
Charlie Moreton spent thirty years doing whatever he did before this and now he's in the fidget toy business with his daughter. That's called a midlife crisis with revenue.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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