As the CEO of Brown Toy Box, Terri Bradley is on a mission to disrupt the $27B toy industry. After deciding to make the jump from curator to creator, Brown Toy Box will launch in Target stores nationwide. During a recent interview with rolling out, Bradley her journey as a CEO and shared advice for future CEOs.
Can you describe the brand and explain what inspired it.
Brown Toy Box [is a] children’s educational products company, creating toys, books, games, and content, all that really center and celebrate Black children in a way so they can see themselves positively represented, that they can know that they can achieve anything that they set their minds to and really to create pathways to prosperous careers. The idea came to me when I was walking around Stone Mountain, [park in Georgia], meditating on what I would have wished my kids would’ve had, I started thinking about the world that we’re living in and what we’re giving to our kids. And so it just came to me.
What was the very first product that you decided to bring to market, to a big-box retailer?
We first launched as a subscription box. But I did not want to be in a subscription box business, so, during COVID we started evolving from the curator to the creator. We’ve been doing STEM kits, and we knew we wanted to kind of just build off of that. So we started having conversations with Target. And they got really excited about our work. We pitched on a Friday, that next Monday we got a call from the buyer [saying], “We want you in Target.”
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