At Maggie Rothschild's home office in Sherman Oaks, multicolored wigs rest on Styrofoam heads, mascot toys line the shelves and plush Rally Monkeys dangle from display rods.
Her Rothschild Worldwide Licensing Inc. may look like a children's playroom, but it's a business that sells hundreds of thousands of novelties a year to sports teams and retail stores. If you've ever gone to a ballgame, chances are you've spotted -- or bought -- one of Rothschild's products.
The success of her operation, she says, is simple: Her novelties make people feel good. "When times are tough, why not monkey up or wig out?" she quipped.
It wasn't the career Rothschild had expected when she switched to product manufacturing after running a children's clothing showroom for 24 years. It was 1999, so Rothschild created the Millennium Bear, a bean-filled toy with a clock in its belly that counted down to the year 2000. Although the bears sold well, she didn't foresee a major flaw.
"Once the clock hits the millennium," she said, "you're out of business for the next 1,000 years."
Then the Dodgers, who had ordered bean-filled dogs from her, called. Could Rothschild design Dodger blue novelty wigs to be sold in the team's retail stores?
"Blue hair?" she recalled thinking. "I was very taken aback. I was like, 'I don't know if I'm the right person for this.' "
Rothschild, who'd never made or even worn a wig, began rifling through catalogs, sampling dyes and contacting designers. Soon she had fashioned 600 fluffy, blue wigs made of polyester and acrylic fiber.
The wigs "sold out almost immediately," said Mike Nygren, the Dodgers' former director of merchandising, who came up with the idea. "They were kind of goofy, they were kind of fun, they were a way to identify. We knew they'd sell."
Orders quickly poured in from teams who wanted wigs made in their own colors. The flamboyant pieces -- available in such styles as mullet, mohawk, curly and fuzzhead -- are now given away by the thousands as game-day promotions and sold by retailers for about $25.
"When we took this on, I didn't know if it was going to last one month," Rothschild said.
The business kept growing. Rothschild, 56, added Rally Monkeys, stadium cushions, plush toys and other items to her inventory.
