Hi from Jeremy Padawer!

I love working in the toy industry.  As a marketer / general manager, I touch everything from brand acquisition to the traditional 4 P’s (product, pricing, packaging, promotion) to sales, operations, forecasting, inventor relations, financial modeling, you name it.  The balance of creativity and analysis has been truly rewarding and complimentary to my nature.

MY BIO:

I was born in 1973 and raised (for the most part) in Memphis, Tennessee… specifically Germantown, a happy, relatively little, quiet suburb. I attended the University of Texas at Austin for undergraduate school, the University of Tennessee Law School (JD) and Vanderbilt Business School (MBA). I highly recommend spending 9 years after high school trying to find oneself.

During law school and business school (1996-2000) I started an online business that specialized in creating collector oriented websites and benefitting from paid click-throughs… I also bought up a bunch of great domain names, which I sold by the height of the market in 2000. My best domain name was act.com and now hosts Symantec’s Act! scheduling software site. I also picked up www.jeremy.com and about 50 others. During my entrepreneurial phase, I also ran a site called domainappraiser.com, where I provided a valuation model for approximately 3,000 clients over a 2 year period. Needless to say, I wasn’t the best graduate school student, and now you understand why I hacked away in the educational system.

I was recruited to Mattel after graduate school (2000). There, I worked on Hot Wheels, Nickelodeon brands and had the opportunity to relaunch He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! I definitely plan on blogging a bit about my days on He-Man at this site. I loved the brand.

In mid-2003, I left for Jakks Pacific to head up all Boy’s Entertainment brands, including my all-time favorite action brand, WWE.  At JAKKS, I acted as the Senior Vice President Entertainment Brand Marketing for globally recognizable brands including:  WWE, UFC, TNA, Pokemon, Neopets, Club Penguin, Dragonball Z, the Rocky series, Sponge Bob, Phineas & Ferb.  I also headed up some terrific Star Wars, Marvel and DC Superheroes projects as well as a dynamic blue sky group.

In January 2010, I was promoted to Executive Vice President of Marketing, overseeing all JAKKS brands and new business development.  Moreover, we have recently announced our first JAKKS created television series – Monsuno.  We are in the process of developing 52 animated episodes.

I’m very happily married.  I have a bizarre dog named Bigs and two beautiful kids.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Padawer