Of course, for Eichen and everyone else at Rokenbok there was something else outside the office that affected how things felt at work -- the suddenly hyperventilating economy all around them. All those names in the news, the latest initial public offerings, the feeling that people were out there operating in entirely un-Rokenbok-like ways and making a damn killing. One of Eichen's father's projects, the convergence-technology start-up Broadcom Corp., was becoming one of the gold rush's stars. Myron Eichen had helped seed Broadcom in 1991 and sits on its board. Today, Broadcom's CEO is worth more than $5 billion. Both Eichens separately describe the company as the workplace where no one can work enough hours, where it's understood that Broadcom comes first. Before health, before family, before God. It's "rock-and-roll," both Eichens will tell you. The big time. CEO Henry Nicholas has his meals specially prepared and brought to his desk, has his personal trainer come to his office and work him out in the next room. You wanna compete? These guys compete. These guys do what it takes to win.
But Paul Eichen -- despite the proximity of Broadcom's example and the world's growing reverence for a different kind of success -- just kept heading to Cardiff, to Pipes, and then to the warehouse in Encinitas, up the road. Not that there wasn't some stumbling. Both at the company and at home.
Plenty at Rokenbok went wrong. Mothers thought their children might choke on the first version of Rokenbok's toy cargo pellets. Forays into Europe were botched. In late 1999 a key retailer went bankrupt, Eichen says, owing Rokenbok $400,000. ("This company's a sports car," an employee remembers Eichen telling her once. "It can turn on a dime, but you feel the bumps.") Still, the toy company climbed from sales of $2.6 million in 1997 to $10 million in 1999 and has earned a kind of self-confidence in spite of the challenges ahead.
At a time when so much work is impossible to explain, here is a product anyone can understand.
How did Eichen get here? By groping his way: Make a toy. Don't commute. Aim for a company that feels good. Begin.
He knew that choosing to make his kind of toy in its kind of industry would by itself make his company feel different. Rokenbok was conceived as a legacy toy with a long life cycle, not as a fad. In theory, a Rokenbok model from years ago is as appealing as today's -- "which gets us off the obsolescence merry-go-round," says Eichen. "There isn't the fear of being left behind. The base technology for Rokenbok won't change for the foreseeable future." The pressure is on quality, not speed. It's a far slower industry than high tech is, and it's tiny; all toy manufacturers combined do less than half the annual revenues of IBM. And the toy industry operates in predictable seasons, not constant waves of product introductions. More than 80% of Rokenbok's sales are made in the the fourth quarter. "Once we have an agenda," says Eichen, "we have an agenda for the year." By wanting to make a lasting toy, Eichen built predictability and sanity of pace right into the new company's foundation.
His product choice, it turns out, has imprinted Rokenbok with some other characteristics, too. At a time when so much work is impossible to explain, here is a product anyone can understand. Anyone can debate which color is best for the railroad track or whether a motorized crane or a bulldozer is a better line extension. Anyone can think about how to package the toys for kids.
As a consequence of that kind of accessibility, colleagues at Rokenbok can understand one another's tasks, no matter how different their jobs are. Coworkers can make suggestions, help solve problems, commiserate. Managers -- including Eichen himself -- can confidently judge for themselves how work is progressing, because it isn't mysterious. That eliminates the anxiety that results from feeling in the dark even at the head of your own business. A whole different, and unusually collaborative, sense of team can evolve.
"Values that are important personally are things we're trying to design right into the product."
Making something anyone can understand transforms relationships outside the company, as well. Bankers, investors, and media people pay attention differently simply because it's possible. Even friends and -- most profoundly -- family can connect with your work life. A Rokenbok engineer describes horsing around with his kid and the company's toys on the family-room floor, puzzling out problems that way, revealing how work can be play. Suddenly, a parent's vocational life isn't opaque. Connections happen.
"It doesn't hurt that it's fun stuff," says Eichen, or that unlike so many things people work on today, it's tangible, pleasing to hold and manipulate, and intended to last a very long time. "We're trying to make something classic, not disposable. Values that are important personally -- quality, constructive fun, learning, design sophistication -- are things we're trying to design right into the product, and that feels great," he says. It invests the work with meaning. "Nobody remembers desktop projectors."
