The Supply Side: TK’s Toy Box lands deal with Walmart

Toys that foster creativity have been a passion for Tara Kennedy-Kline. As founder and president of Reading, Pa.-based TK’s Toy Box, she made the trip to Bentonville to pitch Snapo building blocks at Walmart’s Open Call.

Since 2017, her company has owned Snapo toys, which are made from recyclable plastic in her family’s Pennsylvania manufacturing facility.

“As you know, 87% of toys sold in the U.S. are made abroad,” she said. “I worked for decades with the Toys for Tots program, and as a day care provider with two kids of my own, I was constantly looking for toys that prompted discovery and foster creativity. In 2014, I met the founder and creator of Snapo, and I fell in love with builder toys. They became one of our favorites for the Toys for Tots and other charities I was working with. We developed a strong relationship, purchasing thousands of units each year for the charity programs.”

Snapo blocks include a patented design that connects on all six sides through an interlocking slide or snap feature, which creates more creative possibilities. Traditional blocks primarily lock into place with one side. Unlike Lego and Mega Bloks, which are made outside the U.S., 100% of Snapo blocks are made in the United States.

When the Snapo founder died, Kennedy-Kline purchased Snapo’s excess inventory. In 2019, she bought the business and moved it to one of her family’s warehouses in Reading, bringing in Snapo technicians and machinists to help set up everything.

Kennedy-Kline said it was a wild ride after that. The pandemic shut down operations because they were not deemed essential. Even though Snapo does not source its plastic material from overseas, it comes from South Texas, which had a major freeze that disrupted the supply chain. Then, retailers had an inventory glut the following year from all the products they ordered but could not get during the pandemic. Through her educational toy work with distributors, the company landed a client in South Korea that used Snapo toys in its school curriculum, which kept inventory moving through other challenges in 2022.

“When we bought Snapo, their molds were very small, and we were at capacity with our Toys for Tots business and the South Korean customer who buys the product by the container full,” Kennedy-Kline said. “We had to increase our mold size and production in order to grow the business further. We knew Walmart was the retailer we wanted to get into, and that took more investment to ramp up production.”

Kennedy-Kline said her family worked with existing customers for two years to be able to self-finance the capacity expansion. This year, they saw the promos for Walmart’s Open Call and decided to apply.

“We got the invite, and we were thrilled to be able to put on our application that we could handle the capacity of a retailer as large as Walmart,” Kennedy-Kline said. “We traveled to Bentonville and did not really know what to expect. It was the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done. I mean, you have a vision in your head about what to expect. We tend to forget that they’re actually just people like us, who have a really cool job. We spent well over a month just preparing for our pitch. We didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a golden ticket. That’s how green we were.”

She said getting a golden ticket became her goal once she got to Bentonville and discovered that it was the must-have. Kennedy-Kline said the pitch with buyers went well, and then they started talking about “bringing us back in August after working on the packaging.”

“In my mind, I was hearing they would bring us back again to pitch again in August,” she said. “And so I was a little bit bummed when they left the room. They said they would work with us on labeling and get all that stuff nailed down, and that we would talk again, be in contact constantly. I was putting my stuff away, and I was a little bit down in the dumps. And my VP, Chris Summer, said to me that it was great news that they planned to have us back. But I had really wanted the golden ticket.”

As Kennedy-Kline was packing up her supplies, the Walmart buyers returned to the room.

They had forgotten to give Kennedy-Kline a golden ticket.

“Oh my goodness, I lost my mind,” she said. “It was downright giddy. It was amazing with all the emotions. You prepare for that moment for quite a while, and everything just kind of hits me in that moment. In fact, it still does when I think about it. I don’t think people realize how life-changing it is for your business.”

Kennedy-Kline has been working with the Toys for Tots Charity since 2004 as a vendor partner, scouring the country for educational toys at good prices for the charity. She then distributes toys on behalf of the charity each holiday season. She said this is still a passion on top of running the Snapo business, which wholesales to toy distributors, and more recently, began a retail operation.

“Our largest competitors are monster-size companies,” she said. “When somebody at that level of a Walmart buyer sees the value in our small company and is willing to take a chance to put us on the shelf next year, that’s pretty amazing. We’ve been on a cloud ever since.”

Snapo building toys are now sold on Walmart’s Marketplace. Since the meeting with Walmart, she said the product is going first-party, which means Walmart will buy the goods from TK’s Toy Box and hold them in inventory to resell.

She said work is underway to ready Snapo for Walmart store shelves by next August. The plan is to test the product in 200 stores ahead of the 2026 holiday season, focusing on the larger blocks for younger kids. She said shooting for next August also puts the blocks in test stores for the back-to-school season.

“We have a year to prove ourselves on the store shelves,” she said. “In the meantime, we’re pushing sales to the Walmart Marketplace. We have eight to 10 different SKUs (items) on the marketplace. We have lots of different price points. I think our 150-piece kits sell for $19.99. We go up to 1,100-piece kits for classroom sets for around $100. We have the standard size and larger blocks in multiple package sizes.”

Editor’s note: The Supply Side section of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers. The Supply Side is managed by Talk Business & Politics, and is sponsored by HRG.