viewpoint Richard


Gottlieb Global Toy Experts


LT Lam; a toy industry giant


During a recent visit to China, I was sitting at breakfast across from two prominent and highly successful Hong Kong businessmen. One was the founder of a business dynasty that encompasses numerous toy factories, and the other was the third generation of another toy industry family. As we sat and talked about the past, present and future of the region, it suddenly hit me that these people and their businesses were crucial to most of the world’s toy companies and retailers. Yet few people in the West had any idea who they were. As we continued to talk, I said: “You know, it just occurred to me that there are no Asians in the Toy Industry Hall of Fame.” As I said this they both quietly shook their heads in agreement; they knew. In an age where China functions as one big toy-making machine, and churns out 86% of the world’s toys, when you think about it, it is really inconceivable that these people upon whom we are so dependent go largely unknown. So, in order to try to correct that defi ciency, I thought you might enjoy hearing about one of the most dynamic people I have ever met, Mr LT Lam. LT is the youngest 88-year-old man in the world. He is mentally and physically agile. Put him in a room full of people and he will be everywhere, making introductions, greeting old friends, and generally creating a whirlwind of activity. He is one of the founders of the Hong Kong and Chinese toy industries. Today, he, along with his sons


Jeffrey, a prominent member of the Hong Kong City Council, and Daniel, runs the company he founded, Forward Winsome, and its seven factories. LT’s life got off to a diffi cult start when on


Christmas day, 1941, his father was shot to death by a Japanese soldier. It happened right where the Regal Hotel Causeway Bay stands today. LT came looking for his father and found him and the soldier who had shot him. LT asked him: “Why did you shoot my father?” The soldier told him that his father had not stopped when ordered to do so. The soldier had not known that LT’s father was deaf. LT’s mother took the family, and the $200 her husband left her, and returned to the family farm in China where they stayed for the next three years. During that time, LT would, in order to support his family, sell vegetables at a roadside market. The location was ten miles from his home, and LT walked it each way. To LT’s great credit, his father’s death did not cause him to hate. In fact, LT became driven by a passion to make something of his life and to give back to the community. LT returned to Hong Kong after the war and began working at a newsstand in the busiest part of Hong Kong. He learned English and, ever gregarious, managed to make many friends among the British and Chinese populations. As it turned out, that job was in many ways a launch pad for LT as he began using his contacts to arbitrage goods that were in short supply. In 1949 he became fascinated by plastic and the many colours in which it could be produced. He correctly saw that the bright colours would be highly attractive to people who had suffered the darkness of war. He used the relationships he had acquired and became the fi rst person to make plastic toys in China. He found a partner and developed a hand-and- foot-operated plastic extrusion machine. These machines, powered by human muscle alone, turned out Hong Kong’s fi rst plastics. It was from this beginning that LT went on to build factories in


Hong Kong. He was also the fi rst person to establish a toy factory in mainland China after the Chinese Communist leadership allowed private business to enter China in 1976. I asked LT about the risk he was taking on by entering China at that time. After all, they could change their minds and nationalise his assets. “No,” he said. “I was never worried. I believed in China.” LT’s belief paid off. Today, his company manufactures toys for the world’s largest toy companies. While not building his business, LT was busy


creating the Rubber Ducky; creating clothes for the Barbie’s inspiration, the German Lilli doll, and developing a joint venture with Hasbro. As a result, LT’s company manufactured and sold Transformers in China and today manufactures 60% of the world’s Play-Doh supply. In 1998 LT received a lifetime achievement award


from the Toy Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong. That was followed up in 2010 by his being awarded a lifetime achievement award by the China Toy Council in Beijing, honouring his 60 years of toy business in China. LT has produced three generations of highly accomplished children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They have attended Cornel, Boston University, Tufts, Ithaca, and the University of South Wales. Some are active in the business, so don’t be surprised if you continue to meet Lams for years to come.


Let me close by talking about LT’s charitable work.


He has endowed the LT Lam Research Awards at Cornell University, provided educations for Chinese underprivileged children, underwritten a library, and established the LT Lam Training and Research Centre at the Guangdong Toys Association; this centre helps to develop children who are interested in entering the toy industry. By the way, I asked LT what his fi rst toy was: it was a ping pong ball given to him when he was four years old by an American for whom his father worked as a personal chef. He cried when it broke.


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42 Toyworld


February 2012 volume 1 issue 5


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