Why carry "Melissa & Doug" and "Plan Toys" when you can build them?

Lulu and I had been planning for a long time to carry children's wooden toys and other items that were currently not on the website.  I had made a number of set of blocks for Zander before he was born and we sat down during a number of evenings and decoupaged them.  We thought they were great!  Lots of colour and great images from "Wired" magazine (we are both computer geeks at heart).  Hoping people would buy them from us, we tried the out on ETSY... Sadly, nothing sold and we seriously had to rethink what we were going to do.

In the meantime, we gave Z the blocks. He absolutely loved them but, to our dismay he started to grind off the sides of the blocks with his teeth.  Fearing complaints from future customers, we dropped the idea of selling them.

While we were traveling in San Francisco during the summer with Zander, we discovered the awesomeness of "Plan Toys" and "Melissa & Doug" toys.  I think I was more entertained about the toys than our son.  Plan Toys has great colours and a wonderful feel (all of their products are Eco-friendly and mostly made of wood).  The M&D toys are great; very low-tech dynamic play sets and play-boards.  We had already wanted a ton of the toys for our own son and it got me thinking about carrying it on the website.  It was a perfect solution to our problem of expanding what we carry.  M&D and Plan Toys spend millions on Research and Development, saving me the hassle of doing it.  So, we got back to Toronto and I set up the accounts.

I know that there is more value to handmade products and there is a certain uniqueness to each one; I just didn't want to take a chance with someone elses kids.  I am very happy with both companies.  I wish I could sell more but I am not too worried.