12th March 2008

Small Firm of the Week - LIVERPOOL Echo

Meet the man who plays games for a living.

Paul Edels, from Grassendale, has worked in the toy business for 10 years and has now invented his own board games which he aims to sell worldwide.  The 34 year-old from Garston Old Road who began his career in the investment accounts department at Liverpool's Royal Sun Alliance, specialised in sourcing toys from the far east and getting them to market.  He worked for a time for the BBC in London and was responsible for developing Teletubbies and Tweenies toy spin-offs from their TV shows.

Now under the guise on his own FENLEY'S operation, he works as a consultant, helping clients get their ideas into shops and sourcing toys for his own projects and also on behalf of clients.  One of his recent projects is a new line of soft toys from Canadian Wendy Ann Gardner whose 30-plus range of Naughty Naughty Pets has already taken off in America and is now in top UK toy store Hamley's thanks to Paul.

"They have big collectability from students to new born kids," said Paul, who has the UK and Ireland license for the toys.  In between marketing Naughty Naughty Pets he has also invented two board games of his own, marketed under his latest venture SOLBENK.

He said Solomon's Stones takes 30 seconds to learn and a couple of minutes to play, while dice game Saikoro is a bit more complex taking a couple of minutes to learn.  Paul said "I see their worth anywhere in the world because there's no language in them and I could also do software versions."

He said they took a couple of weeks to create, but more than a year to develop as a sound business proposal: "I first went to people like games giant Hasbro to get them to license the games off me but realised I had to put my money where my mouth is.  I have put in about £20,000 for stock and testing."  Paul added, "I just love playing, but it needs to be fun."

And he said his games are a refreshing change from kids' 'shoot 'em up' video games.  "Maybe the world is changing too quickly for us.  Kids need to understand about winning and losing and moving on and playing again.  It's about thinking more and not just about how quick your thumbs are."