Russell Berrie, master marketer of things most people didn't need but had to have, from small teddy bears to plastic trolls, has died. He was 69.
The founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Russ Berrie & Co. died Wednesday of heart failure in Oakland, N.J., where his company is based.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday December 31, 2002 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 7 inches; 279 words Type of Material: Correction
Russell Berrie obituary -- The obituary of Russell Berrie in Sunday's California section incorrectly said he died in Oakland, N.J. He died at his home in Englewood, N.J. In addition, the obituary stated that he married his third wife, Angelica, in 1993. In fact, she was his fourth wife.
The one-time Bronx street kid and college dropout spent many years selling toys for other businessmen. More than four decades ago, Berrie offered his boss the bright idea of creating a few cutesy items that could be sold for $1.
When he was turned down -- the employer couldn't understand how to make money on such low-priced merchandise -- Berrie set himself up as an independent representative for various toy manufacturers and began selling some of his own concoctions along with others' products.
He designed his own items to be sold for $1, beginning with the imaginative "fuzzy wuzzies" -- tiny critters made out of sheepskin with moving eyes that bore various heartfelt messages. He called them "three-dimensional greeting cards," and they caught on quickly.
In 1963, with $500, a rented garage for storage and a closet in his apartment for an office, Berrie founded his company. Sales went from $60,000 the first year to $250,000 the second and $750,000 the third.
Over nearly four decades, Berrie offered the latest "impulse gifts," which have included coffee mugs, various types of greeting cards, kitchen magnets, candles, picture frames and perennially popular stuffed animals, along with -- whenever they were in style -- trolls. Despite inflation, he kept prices at less than $10 for most items.
"We give you value, and we put a smile on people's faces," Berrie said in a CNBC interview the day before he died.
The little trolls, based on characters from Scandinavian folklore, were introduced in the U.S. toy market by Thomas Dam of Denmark a couple of years before Berrie went into business for himself.
But Berrie, who admitted personally identifying with the trolls, saw the expressive little characters as something he could cash in on. During their spurts of popularity in the 1970s, the '80s and again in the '90s, Berrie became one of the top three marketers of trolls in the country.
Oh, sure, there were lawsuits. But a federal court ruled that garden-variety trolls belonged in the public domain, and said no one company -- not even Dam -- owned exclusive rights to the generic troll design.
