So Many Dolls to Love
by Tina Manzer
This is just a sample of the many dolls available from Pattycake Doll Company. Clockwise from top right: Cari – HABA; Carlos – Miniland Educational; Green Gardens – Gund; Good Buddy Graham – HABA; Playtime Princess Sunny Citrus – Adora; Cody; Alma – Adora; Dottie Aja.
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Pattycake Doll Company (BestDollsForKids.com) is an online store only, and its owners, Peter and Addie Laudin, are typical independent retailers. Peter gets prickly if you suggest otherwise. “We are an American Specialty Toy Retailer, just like ASTRA’s other members,” he says. Like brick-and-mortar merchants, they love the Santa Claus feeling they get each time they sell a Cari doll by HABA, or Leota by Bonikka. They get annoyed by the occasional customer who returns a Dottie Aja doll that obviously has been played with. Gift-buying parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles are their bread and butter. They scour the shows and the magazines and the blogs for new and unique merchandise to bring in. In the past 19 years, business has been up and it’s been down. They are not in it for the money. “Look, we’re not Amazon,” Peter explains. “Amazon is a marketplace, a collection of stores competing amongst themselves for placement. For that privilege, Amazon takes a 15-percent cut. We’re a store and we don’t sell on Amazon.” But sometimes in our industry, he’s treated like a ruthless e-commerce giant. Brick-and-mortar retailers have a natural antipathy to online etailers, he points out, “when, instead, their question should be, ‘How can we profit from the internet’s strengths?’” 8 May 2021 — edplay.com
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And every once in a while, a vendor is hesitant to sell to him; afraid that his online business will undercut brick-andmortar customers. “It’s because they don’t get that we are, in fact, the same as their usual B&Ms. It doesn’t really hurt my business – it doesn’t matter to my customers if we have 80 Black dolls or 81.”
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A doll to love for every child Black dolls are, in fact, a Pattycake Doll specialty. They have been since day one. “We kind of fell into multicultural dolls when our previous attempt at ecommerce failed,” Peter said. “While trying to recover our investment in inventory, we discovered a need. And when you’ve discovered a need, you’ve discovered a business.” Back in 2002, Peter and Addie ran a graphic design and print shop. They also assembled baskets to sell to families of adopted children. In them were a variety of items – one was a cloth doll named Ling by Russ Berri, and another was an infant T-shirt proclaiming, “I am the newest Asian American!” (or Irish American, Russian American or Black American, depending on the child). “We never sold one basket,” Peter laughs, “but when we deconstructed them and sold the items individually, we found there was a market for multicultural and ethnic dolls.” After that, the Laudins just kept adding categories. Today they sell Boy Dolls and Dolls for Boys, Dolls for Black Children, Multiracial Dolls, Biracial Baby Dolls, Dolls for Asian Children, Baby Dolls, Dolls for Bath and Water Play, Doll Clothes, and The Grinch & Other Holiday
