Early History
Ives was founded in Plymouth, Connecticut by Edward Ives, a descendant of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford. The company initially produced paper dolls whose limbs moved in response to hot air, but soon began producing a wide range of toys, including a toy cannon that shot using real gunpowder and clockwork powered dolls and animals that could move. The clockwork toys were designed by Jerome Secor, Nathan Warner, and Arthur Hotchkiss and by the 1880s, Ives was a leading producer of these toys.
Its emphasis shifted to trains as its designs were copied by other toymakers who were willing to sell them more cheaply. Ives' trains were made of tin or cast iron and initially powered by clockwork, but like later electric trains, some models could whistle and smoke. On December 22, 1900, a fire destroyed Ives' main factory and its tooling, prompting a re-design for 1901 that resulted in Ives' first toy train that ran on track. In the end the fire benefited the company, as the insurance money permitted it to build a modern factory with state-of-the-art tooling.
Although several companies were selling electric trains at the time, Ives opted to remain with clockwork, partly because many U.S. homes still lacked electricity.
Initially, Ives' greatest competition came from German imports, and not from domestic manufacturers. Ives' response was with marketing, which it directed at its target audience, the twelve-year-old boy. Its campaigns addressed boys as business partners, telling them that the success of Ives' fictional railroad, Ives Railway Lines, depended on their shrewd management. This worked, building brand loyalty.
Read more about this topic: Ives Manufacturing Company
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or history:
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)