Next Thursday, the University of Arkansas Fort Smith is hosting their third annual CED Excellence in Family and Small Business Awards at the Bakery District. The event will feature Robert Pasin, the chief wagon officer of Radio Flyer. Pasin joined us over Zoom earlier this week to talk about the history of Radio Flyer, being the third generation to run the business and what it looks like to expand beyond the signature little red wagon. He says his grandfather Antonio, the founder of Radio Flyer, came to the U.S. as an immigrant and eventually settled in Chicago.
Pasin: And he got jobs anywhere he could find in Chicago. Like so many immigrants, he was doing menial kind of day labor type work. And he did that for a few years until he was able to save up enough money to rent a garage on the west side of Chicago. And that’s when he really started to put his carpentry skills to work.
And he started making furniture and wine presses for the Italian community he was living with. He made phonograph cabinets, those old things that you used to play records on. And he also made a wooden wagon. And the first wooden wagon he made was just for himself to haul tools around in his workshop. But pretty soon, people coming into his shop were buying more wagons than anything else. So he focused on that and started to build a wagon business.
Moore: Why wagons as opposed to maybe a toolbox or something else?
Pasin: Yeah, I’m not really sure. We don’t have total clarity on those early years, but that was the way he told the story. And I think once he saw that people were buying them to use as a tool, but then also to use with their kids, to pull their kids around with and everything, I think he saw that it was this kind of unique multipurpose vehicle that could be a toy and a tool. And it was where he found his success. So like anybody starting a business, he just went with what was selling.
Moore: When you think about the legacy of your grandfather coming here and just trying to find something that works and then landing on something that works, what does that look like when you think about, “All right, we found it. Now we just stick to it”?
Pasin: Yeah. Well, I think it was a long road for him and it was really challenging. And I think once he was able to start selling these wooden wagons, he started to scale up a factory for them. He started to make more of them. He called it the Liberty Coaster because the first thing he saw when he came to America was the Statue of Liberty.
And I think one of the secrets to his success was that he was always striving to improve this product, and he was really focused on this one product of this wagon. And in the 1920s, while the wood wagon business was growing, he was introduced to the metal stamping technology that was pioneered by the auto industry. And so he was at a supplier, and he saw these big punch presses stamping out pieces of metal. And my grandpa had the idea that he could apply this technology to his wagon, and instead of making them out of wood, making them out of steel.
And the benefit of that was that he saw that it could bring the cost down. He could mass produce the product. And that was really what created this iconic little red wagon that everybody thinks of when they hear Radio Flyer, was that he started making them out of steel.
He named it Radio Flyer because they were the two coolest high-tech inventions of the day, so the radio and the airplane. So if he were naming it today, a comparable name might be like Quantum AI Drone or something like that.
Moore: Yeah. Radio Flyer comes off the tongue a little cleaner, in my opinion.
Pasin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We’re not going to change the name. Don’t worry.
Moore: I was just listening to the story of the Brannock Device. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this piece of technology. It’s the thing that you have seen in every shoe store in your life. It’s the metal device that shows you how to put on a shoe and what makes it fit well. And the company who made the Brannock Device was based in Syracuse, New York, and that was essentially all they have ever made, is this one thing.
And I know and I understand that Radio Flyer does now make a lot of things. But I think in the early years, it’s fair to say that you found the thing you made, you found the equipment to help you do that, and you did it really well. And I think that kind of fits into this ethos of the early 20th century of, we’ve got a thing and we do it well. And you take pride in doing that one thing pretty well.
Pasin: Yeah, very much so. I think you’re really describing my grandpa’s whole ethos. He came from this very modest background, and he wanted to build a company that made a great quality product. He was very passionate about design, so he was always trying to make products that were really well designed and that were beautiful and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
And at a certain point, he achieved a certain level of success and he was satisfied with that. He had a very comfortable life, but it wasn’t like grow and grow at all costs. And he wanted to have a company that treated everyone who worked in the company really, really well. And he was known for that. He was known for being a person of very high integrity and being a man of his word.
And so those things were really important to him because he wanted to be home with his family. He wanted to be able to go on vacation, so it wasn’t work, work at any cost.
Moore: When you think about a generational company like the one that you now run, what does it mean to think about the nostalgia of what Radio Flyer is with the future of what Radio Flyer can become?
Pasin: Yeah, nostalgia is a huge part of our brand and what it means to people. Because when you say the words Radio Flyer to somebody, usually the first thing they do is smile, and the second thing they do is tell a story. And there are always these stories about their childhood, and often it’s like their best parts of their childhood: playing outside, imagining that their little red wagon was a race car or a rocket, feeling the wind in their hair and the sun on their face and being with people they love.
So all these really beautiful parts of childhood, I think, are associated with Radio Flyer. It’s why we often hear from people that say, “My kids are all grown up. I’ve gotten rid of everything that they used to play with, except I can’t get rid of the wagon. It’s still in the garage, and I use it in the garden, or I use it to haul out the recycling today.” And so that is a really beautiful, powerful thing that we love to be associated with.
And we have to make sure that we don’t become a relic. We want to make sure that we’re staying current and relevant to families today. So today, our product development team spends a lot of time doing research with families, talking to parents, talking to moms specifically a lot about what can we do to make their lives easier? What can we do to make their lives a little bit more delightful with a product that maybe folds up really easy and goes in the car, or that has a really nice steering feature on it? So a tricycle that you can steer like a stroller.
So those are some of the ways that we’ve stayed true, I think, to what Radio Flyer means. We’re all about wheels and outdoor active play, but we’re also staying current to make sure we’re delivering the features and benefits that families want today.
Moore: Yeah, the two things I think about with Radio Flyer: One is mobility and thinking about how do we make things more mobile, whether it’s a garage full of tools we need to move around or it’s soccer gear that we need to haul across all the soccer fields to get to where we’re going. Mobility seems to be a big part of what continues to drive your work.
Pasin: Yeah, absolutely. Radio Flyer has always been on wheels. Wheels are a key component to our product. We like to say we’ve got over a billion wheels on the road through the years of all the different products, because every wagon’s got four wheels, so it might just be one wagon, but there’s four wheels attached to it.
I think a big part of what our brand means to people, for little kids, a lot of times it’s their first set of wheels. It’s kind of their first exploration down the sidewalk away from the house. So I think that kind of spirit of adventure is a real big part of the brand too.
Moore: And independence too, right? For many kids, it’s their first opportunity to be independent.
Pasin: Yeah, absolutely. We talk about this thing about the Radio Flyer brand, this element we refer to as “safe danger.” So there’s a little bit of excitement about going fast. There’s excitement about... but the products are safe, but it feels exciting.
Moore: The other thing I was going to say that sticks out to me about Radio Flyer is that red color.
Pasin: Yes.
Moore: Why red?
Pasin: Yeah. Everybody asks, “Why red?” And really, it’s because that was the best-selling color in the early years. And so it’s a pretty practical reason behind it. But in the early days, my grandpa made wagons out of a lot of different colors, but over time, the color that sold the best always was red. And so that’s what became this iconic product.
Moore: Well, as someone who grew up a Cardinals fan, I appreciate the red, but I’m sure your Cubs and White Sox fans in Chicago may bristle a little bit at such a cardinal red.
Pasin: Yes. We don’t associate it with that in Chicago, but I’m glad it’s good for you.
Moore: You’re going to be speaking at a keynote address at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. You’re thinking about entrepreneurship. You’re thinking about business leaders. When you’re thinking about building a keynote around these sorts of conversations, what are some things that come to mind for you when you think about entrepreneurship? Because for you, you’re someone who came into a family that, you’re essentially just carrying on a legacy, but you’re also, I’m sure, able to have some entrepreneurial spirit in your work.
Pasin: Yeah. Well, for me, I was incredibly lucky. I was born the grandson of the guy that started Radio Flyer. So I feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity that I was given. And at a very young age, I fell in love with Radio Flyer.
I remember the first time I visited Radio Flyer, I came to work with my dad. I was 5 years old, and I remember walking around with him, holding his big hand and seeing all the production, seeing the shiny red wagons on the conveyor line, the noise, the smell of paint, and it seemed like this giant, magical Rube Goldberg machine that was moving and cranking out these little red wagons. And I just thought it was so cool that we make products, that we create things.
But when I came into the business, any business that’s been around for decades like ours goes through ups and downs. And when I came into the business when I was in my 20s, the business was at a crossroads. We basically were still making just wagons, but our core products of steel and wood wagons were on the decline. Competitors had come out with plastic wagons, which we hadn’t seen coming, and the company was in a state of crisis.
So it was a very stressful time because I was very young and inexperienced, but it was this incredible fertile time to experiment and try new things, because we were in a state of crisis, and my dad was incredibly generous with me, and he gave me tons of opportunities to try stuff. And really, we had to reinvent the entire company. We had to reinvent the team. We had to build up a product development team that could come out with new products. And we started developing products beyond wagons, which really fueled our growth.
So my story at Radio Flyer has really been about reinventing the company. But I never would have had that opportunity had it not been for my dad and grandpa keeping it going for 70 years.
Moore: Are there specific moments that you can look back on and say, “I’m glad I failed in that way, and I’m glad that I learned from that experience”?
Pasin: Yeah, one of my earliest experiences was when I came into the company, my dad said, “Here, there’s this guy Jerry from the bank. He’s here. He wants to talk to you. And he wants to talk to us.” And Jerry basically just started yelling at me, saying, “You have no cash. Do you understand? You have no cash.”
And I was so inexperienced. I said to him, “Well, how much cash are you supposed to have?” I didn’t know anything about the business. And he was a workout guy that the bank had sent in because we had a lot of debt. We were not making any money. And the bank was threatening to call our loans.
And so I walked out of that meeting and I went to my dad and said, “Oh my gosh, Dad, what is going on? This seems like we’re going out of business here.” And my dad was always super calm, and he’s like, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I think we’re going to get through it.”
But at an early age, it was this experience that I had that I realized I don’t ever want to have another meeting like that. It helped me understand the importance of cash flow in the business. Like, you got to have money making money if you want to do anything else. So some of those early learnings from that crisis period of time really stuck with me.
And I was going to school at night. I was getting an MBA at business school at night while I was working during the day, and I remember thinking, “I’m getting two MBAs here. I’m getting this MBA on steroids in this real work experience, and then I’m also getting this MBA at school.” And I just learned so much.
Moore: When you have conversations with young entrepreneurs, people who are just getting into business, they have a lot of ideas, but they haven’t had an opportunity to kind of put them into action yet. I’m sure you see yourself in some of those interactions. What are elements where you hear what someone says, and you often find yourself saying, “Well, hang on just a second”?
Pasin: Well, I don’t know if I say “hang on just a second” too much, because I’m very aware of the fact that I have a very narrow scope of expertise. I’ve only worked at Radio Flyer. It was our family business. It’s an established brand, so there was a lot of guardrails, constraints, that helped me to narrow what I wanted to do.
The main piece of advice I give when people, especially younger people, ask me what should I be doing and everything, I just say, just pursue what fascinates you. Pursue the idea that you can’t stop thinking about. Pursue the problem that you think you can maybe solve differently than other people and that gets you really excited, and forget about the expectations. Forget about what you think you should be doing. Forget about all that other stuff. Just, like, what really gets you fired up? And if the answer is “I don’t know,” then just start trying stuff to see what you really like and what you gravitate toward.
Robert Pasin is the chief wagon officer at Radio Flyer. He will present the keynote address “Play Is the Way” next Thursday as part of the CED Excellence in Family and Small Business Awards. You can find more details about that event at our website, kuaf.com.
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