What are these things? Endless Possibilities Š1998

Meghan Murphy
• 2003 NASE Future Entrepreneur
• Scholarship Award Winner

The winner of the nation’s top award for young entrepreneurship -- 2003 graduating high school senior Meghan Murphy of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan – has viewed the world from a vantage point that few can imagine, with experiences that have opened her eyes to the endless possibilities of product invention, running a business, growing up and achieving dreams.

When she enters college this fall to study business and finance, Murphy – age 17 – not only will bring to her studies the foundation of being involved in her family’s toy business; she also brings the experience of inventing one of the company’s key toy products and shepherding it through every phase of marketing, from research and development to manufacturing, sales and distribution. At the age of 13, Murphy invented BOINKS! Buddies™ -- a safe, durable plastic “burst-of-energy” toy. The product was developed as a companion item to a highly successful toy called BOINKS!™ invented by her sister and manufactured and marketed by her family and its Bloomfield Hills-based company Endless Possibilities, Inc.

Murphy is the winner of the 2003 Future Entrepreneur Scholarship Award given annually by the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE), the nation’s leading resource for the self-employed and owners of micro-businesses. Murphy graduated this month from Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Michigan, with a cumulative 4.01 grade point average achieved while playing school sports (Track & Field) and maintaining a strong commitment for community volunteer work with her friends. She will attend Villanova University in Pennsylvania in the fall.

Murphy’s entrepreneurial talents are part of her DNA. Sister Colleen invented the original BOINKS! Pocket Rocket in 1987 at the age of 12, introducing the product at the International Toy Fair in New York. The brainstorm for the product came from playing around with various coiled plastic packing materials from father Kevin Murphy’s automotive business. From there, the Murphy’s family-owned toy business began an impressive trajectory into the novelty toy stratosphere, achieving notoriety in the toy industry and distribution throughout the world, including Europe, Asia and Canada as well as the U.S. The family’s products have appeared everywhere, from on CBS News to the New York Stock Exchange.

For as long as she can remember, Meghan Murphy has had the “call” to invent, fueled and fed by her parent’s mantra to their children that: “The world is full of endless possibilities.” In working with her sister’s core Pocket Rocket toy, the younger Murphy saw the possibilities for a new and different twist to the BOINKS! fun, coming up with the idea of smaller propelled characters that kids and people of all ages could enjoy. BOINKS! Buddies were launched in 1999 when Meghan was 13.

Murphy’s story is all the more remarkable because of the hands-on entrepreneurial role she has taken in bringing the product to market. As an active participant in the famed International Toy Fair in New York over the past four years, Murphy’s inventive spirit and love of the Chinese language led her to make key connections that would be the start of her BOINKS! Buddies journey. When roaming the convention hall on breaks from working her family’s demonstration booth, Murphy came upon a vendor who sparked her idea for the “Buddies” line. The vendor was from Guangzhou, China, and using her knowledge of the language and earlier experience as a traveler to China, Murphy approached him to talk about how Endless Possibilities might employ his innovative foam plastic material. In particular, Murphy began to see the possibilities for creating a character-based BOINKS! extension.

The material could be imprinted and personalized for corporate promotions.
Later, Murphy “sealed the deal” to partner with the vendor’s firm in supplying materials for BOINKS! Buddies. She conducted market research on the planned product’s features and benefits among students at her school, fine-tuning her product and marketing plans to reflect and incorporate the input she received from her market sample. Since then, she has traveled extensively to promote and educate audiences about the toy, which is featured in venues such as Exploration Place, a science museum in Wichita, Kan.; the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts in Harrisburg, Pa.; the Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans, La.; as well as Mad Science National Science Programs throughout the U.S. and Canada.

If Murphy sees the world in a different way, it is no doubt rooted in being blind at birth, then gaining her sight. “People are surprised when they learn that I went from being blind to gaining my sight and teaching myself to design small and intricate toys,” says Murphy. “One of the things that makes my business experience so amazing to me is that it’s helped me overcome a lot of the shyness that came with my early condition and go on to make presentations to groups and individuals of all ages and backgrounds.”

Murphy’s family has been key to her business acumen, creativity and problem solving, she notes. She grew up immersed in the family toy business, and dinner table conversation routinely was focused on business issues. Her parents and sister frequently engaged Meghan and her brother in dialog about pressing planning and operational issues, seeking the whole family’s input in how to address various problems and opportunities.

“ Of course, it helped that as kids, we were the end-users and consumers of the family’s products,” she says.

What inspires Murphy the most, she says, is taking her message out to younger kids and motivating them to achieve their own dreams.

“ I can see the excitement and wonder in their faces when I talk about my experience,” says Murphy. “You can see the light go on the moment they ‘get’ what my story is all about – that there are endless possibilities for all of us and that everyone has the potential to accomplish good things, no matter what age they are and what issues they confront.”