ert: it wasn’t. That single order was ultimately worth nearly US$500,000, and Wishbone’s executive director Jennifer McIver says it helped transform the small business into a global brand.  Here’s how it all went down. Is this a scam? When the request first came through, the team was skeptical.  “For a small business like ours, with no prior experience at that volume, there was a tendency to suspect a scam or at best, a price negotiation tactic,” McIver told Inside Retail. “We had to make the decision to treat the request seriously and go for it.”  That meant doing some due diligence. McIver met with the buyer face-to-face at the annual International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, where Wishbone exhibits every January. “[T]he timing was perfect for the customer to touch [and] feel the product and for us to meet them and feel their integrity,” she said.  Wishbone also asked the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise team in Seoul for support. “They researched the company and the market for us and presented some really useful background information about how the customer fits into the Korean corporate world,” McIver said.  The buyer, it turned out, was one of Korea’s famous chaebol corporations, a massive, family-owned company with diversified interests, including a digital book club for preschoolers. Members of the book club could earn points to purchase toys from a small, carefully curated catalogue, and that’s where the Mini-Flip came in. “Our toy was the single ride-on toy in the catalogue and cost the most points to purchase,” McIver explained. “Our Korean customer knew that many of the members would be seduced by the idea that their book club membership could give them access to such a unique and character-full toy.”   Can we even make that many Mini-Flips? Even after the customer was vetted, Wishbone still had to fill the order. And because it designs all its products in-house (meaning it doesn’t use standard parts), there was no easy way to ramp up manufacturing.  In the end, Wishbone had to transfer all the workers, space and machinery in its factory near Hong Kong to the project for a four-to-six-week period. Normally, the factory would have been producing the brand’s trikes and bikes as well.  “The ability of the factory to scale up quickly was amazing,” McIver said. “The key thing was sourcing enough high quality poplar wood veneer, and quickly.” From small business to global brand After the deal was done, business went back to normal – in some ways.   “[T]he deal made a big impact on our business, offering us a substantial cash injection at a time when we need growth capital for our other business around the world,” McIver said. Today, Wishbone offers global shipping from its warehouses in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and the Netherlands. The brand’s biggest market is Europe, which accounts for roughly 50 per cent of sales, followed by ANZ, with around 25-35 per cent, and the US with 5-15 per cent.  On top of this, the order helped the team recognise the potential to market the Mini-Flip more aggressively in the Asian market. Over the past five years, it has come out with eight colours and a customisable, mix-and-match design and scaled down the overall size of the toy to better fit houses and apartments in Asia, where it has a growing number of stockists in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.  The Mini-Flip is now one of Wishbone’s best sellers globally.