Evolved Novelties staffers do know how to spell. The first four letters of the company’s name are backwards on purpose to include “love” in their title. Evolved’s motto is “Love Is Back.” And their mission is that their company and its products epitomize their commitment to bringing an air of style and sophistication to the industry. So Evolved Novelties has got nothing backwards. In fact, they’ve become one of the most visible and innovative toy companies over their first year.
This month wraps Evolved’s rookie season on the floor, and it has no doubt come with aggressive play, earning remarkable accolades and leaps forward to prove it. There’s hardly a piece of major media that doesn’t rock an Evolved advertisement or logo, and they were even awarded “Best International Toy Collection” and nominated for “Toy Manufacturer of the Year” by some major players.
“It’s been a great year,” agreed Greg Alves, president of Evolved Novelties. “We’ve had great responses across the board. People really like the packaging and the unique models. We’ve been very aggressive in all of our endeavors,” Alves said with great pride. Evolved has already done more than their original business plan had projected. “We have all the ads in every major publication and our products are carried internationally. In our opening month we were on the cover of four international publications. All the first month, this to me is unheard of. We started with 47 items: done, packaged, and sitting in our warehouse. We had a full line. We were a toy company immediately.”
Their success has been a combination of their ambition, openness to change and improvement, and, of course, their high quality and simplicity-based products. All of the Evolved product line is phthalate-free, non-toxic, and waterproof, as well as being extremely easy to operate as most of the toys have one three-speed button.
“We realized through live feedback that the power of our motors and the simplicity of the molds would be major attractions to our buyer. People were tired of all these crazy buttons and all the other over-the-top functions. I mean, some people can’t program their remote or set the clock in their car, and they have a hard time figuring out all of these complicated devices,” Alves judged, but in an accommodating fashion. “So we went with a simple by design strategy from the get-go. Most of our toys, the majority of our line, are three speeds on a button. A lot of people didn’t need too many functions.”
As a precedent, Evolved got out on the streets and into the stores to discover what the consumer wanted in a high quality toy. The team stayed grounded as a young company that was ready to evolve with the buyer’s needs.
“We assembled a questionnaire to fill out that covered specific preferences. What may be the problems with the toys? What are the batteries that you prefer? What are the materials? Let’s go over packaging?” directed Alves. “One of the first big issues was the packaging. A lot of the consumers wanted a more discreet package. The female buyer didn’t want to see boxes with images of people on it. They wanted more of a cleaner and classier package. Also somewhere to store their toy that was clean so that it wasn’t rolling around in the drawer—stuff gets stuck to it—then they’re inserting it or using it however. So we immediately started focusing on the package and came up with the idea of putting it in the tins. We thought that was a really nice storage device. Then we worked on refining that, and mostly because we were always strong packagers with our video line.”
Evolved’s jazzy tin packaging remains one of the unique, high quality features that elevates the product in popularity. Each toy is placed snuggly in a bed of dark foam inside a classy yet vivacious rectangular tin box. These tins seal tightly with metal clasps and have upgraded to a rich translucent acrylic lid keeping what’s inside safe, clean, and, if preferred, secret. The tins also indicate through size and color different attributes of each line.
“Each tin is a different,” Alves explained “The Fleur-De-Lis line is in that smaller size tin. It’s our best-selling line, made with that hard plastic. All of our hard plastic toys have that velvet touch to give them a softer feel.” He continued in detail: “The Symphony line is packaged in red tins and [includes] smaller sizes, whereas the True Love Edition wears a black tin and is considerably larger. The Fusion [line is] double-sided with that same hard plastic with the velvet touch. And one of our new toys is a product of heavy feedback. We didn’t yet cater to those who wanted a slimmer toy, so we created our line, the Slenders, and they are all thinner, bendable toys.” For year two, Evolved will be just as expansive and innovative in both their design and their marketing. They have plans to shoot commercials that will be very visible within the market as well as their now $500 plan-a-gram, in which, if stores take part, they will receive all of the massagers for that price, and will in addition get testers, tester holders, displays, signage, flyers … the whole shebang. And they will feature a new, more art-oriented model, the Bottle Rocket.
“What we’ve done with the Bottle Rocket, we’ve put a mini vibrator in it, like a bullet vibe of sorts, and we’ve put it in a bottle. We came up with this idea on Fourth of July,” Alves admitted. “And we thought bottle rocket, wow, what a cool name for a toy. We’re doing a bunch of stuff in acrylic jars; it will be with European motors and European silicone and assembled in Europe, and placed in acrylic jars so that the product can be viewed from all sides like a piece of art.” It seems that there will be plenty of new additions and improvements from Evolved Novelties in their sophomore stint. As they keep learning and pressing their ear to the ground of the toy culture, they’ll take more chances and continue to please their fans. After all, most things, especially in the bedroom (and in Evolved’s case, the bathtub as well), get better with age.
For more information, visit EvolvedNovelties.com.
