{"id":41776,"date":"2023-07-28T19:10:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/news\/this-woman-helped-put-beanie-babies-on-the-map-and-says-she-made-just-12-50-an-hour\/"},"modified":"2023-07-28T19:10:02","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T23:10:02","slug":"this-woman-helped-put-beanie-babies-on-the-map-and-says-she-made-just-12-50-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=41776","title":{"rendered":"This woman helped put Beanie Babies on the map \u2014 and says she made just $12.50 an hour"},"content":{"rendered":"
For all the attention that\u2019s been paid to how toy-industry executive Ty Warner turned Beanie Babies into a can\u2019t-keep-them-in-stock sensation some three decades ago, there\u2019s also the story of the people who worked alongside him to make that reality happen. In fact, the newly-released Apple TV+ movie, \u201cThe Beanie Bubble,\u201d looks at three women who were critical to Warner\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n
But none may have a more compelling tale to tell than Lina Trivedi.<\/p>\n
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Now a 50-year-old tech entrepreneur living in Wisconsin, Trivedi is said to have been the 12th<\/sup> employee hired at Ty, the Warner company that was behind Beanie Babies. Trivedi is often credited with two key innovations that helped put the company on the map. First, she got Ty on the internet \u2014 an idea she says was almost unheard of in the mid \u201890s, but one that helped the company cement an early and invaluable link to Beanie Baby fans.<\/p>\n
Read more: Remember the Beanie Babies craze? It\u2019s back, and people are paying thousands for some rare ones.<\/p>\n
But her job wasn\u2019t just on the tech side: Trivedi says she played a role in shaping the cutesy character of the toys themselves by coming up with the idea to include a short poem about each of them on their tags. And she wrote dozens of those initial Beanie odes.<\/p>\n
So, how much did Trivedi earn for her contributions? When she left Ty around 1998 after six years at the company, she says she was making no more than just a couple of bucks per hour beyond minimum wage.<\/p>\n
Trivedi went through her ups and downs after working at Ty \u2014 she admits to being arrested more than once \u2014 but is now the co-founder of Joii.ai, a tech startup that specializes in AI. She spoke with MarketWatch about her time at Ty and her reaction to the new movie. <\/p>\n
Here are a few things Trivedi had to say\u2026<\/p>\n
About her role at Ty<\/h2>\n
Trivedi says she was a college student at DePaul University when she joined Ty. She took on various jobs at the company, but none was perhaps more important than giving it a presence on the web. At the time, use of the internet was mainly limited to the academic world, but Trivedi says she was frustrated that Beanie Babies fans couldn\u2019t find out more about their beloved toys.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Everybody doesn\u2019t know [which] Beanie Babies exist. You have to drive from Hallmark store to Hallmark store without even knowing if these were in stock,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Trivedi says she knew of the internet from her college studies, so she thought that might be a way to spread the word, even if the internet was a nascent idea. Still, it was worth a shot, she recalls, and she aimed big: \u201cI didn\u2019t just want a website, I wanted to build social engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
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What about the Beanie poems?<\/h2>\n
Trivedi explains that the poems were actually connected to her web development role \u2014 she wanted to have more content for the site and felt it wasn\u2019t enough just to post the names and pictures of each Beanie. So, the poems became part of their stories (and on their product tags). She says she approached Warner about the idea, and that he liked it so much, he wanted her to rush through writing 80-plus of them one night before he left for an overseas trip. It was a challenge \u2014 \u201cYou write 40 and you run out of steam,\u201d she recalls \u2014 but she finished the task.<\/p>\n
Trivedi still recalls her first poem, written for Stripes the tiger: \u201cStripes was never fierce nor strong \/ So with other tigers, he didn\u2019t get along \/ Jungle life was hard getting by \/ So he came to his friends at Ty.\u201d<\/p>\n
How her time at Ty came to an end<\/h2>\n
It was very much about money. Trivedi says she was making about $12.50 an hour when she left \u2014 and when she appealed to the Ty board for a salary boost to reflect what she says her true value to the company was, she claims they refused to meet her request all the way. \u201cI thought it was unfair. I said there wasn\u2019t a reason to come back,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n
A Ty spokesperson disputed some of Trivedi\u2019s story, calling Trivedi \u201ca part-time employee who was let go. She ended up making some unfortunate choices, but life goes on. The movie does not pretend to tell the truth or represent the facts, and that includes assigning credit for who did what and who invented what.\u00a0\u201c<\/p>\n
Is she bitter in any way?<\/h2>\n
Trivedi says she\u2019s often asked this, especially given that Warner became so wealthy from Beanie Babies. (Forbes estimates his net worth at $6.1 billion, putting him in the top 500 of the world\u2019s richest people.) Trivedi doesn\u2019t go negative, however, saying she looks back at her time at Ty by likening it to being in a whirlwind romantic relationship that ends. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018What the hell just happened?’\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
And she expresses gratitude to the company in some respects for offering her such a unique experience. \u201cI was in the right place at the right time with a visionary CEO who allowed me to follow this path,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Her life post-Beanie Babies<\/h2>\n
Trivedi did do web design after leaving Ty and is currently involved with that aforementioned AI startup. She is also mother to a special-needs child, her daughter Nikhita, and she says that takes up much of her time.<\/p>\n
And, yes, there have been some rough patches for Trivedi. In Zac Bissonnette\u2019s 2015 book, \u201cThe Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute,\u201d he says Trivedi was \u201ccharged with a string of felonies\u201d in late 2001, did jail time and was homeless for a period. Trivedi acknowledges some problems in her past and attributes it to a wild streak she had decades ago. She says, \u201cI haven\u2019t been arrested in more than 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
How accurate is the new Apple TV+ movie?<\/h2>\n
Trivedi\u2019s character has a different name \u2014 Maya \u2014 in the picture, but Trivedi says most of the details about her time at Ty are spot on. \u201cIt\u2019s like so eerily accurate,\u201d she observes. She points to one exception: a pivotal scene in which she gives a presentation for the company\u2019s head executives \u2014 an event she says didn\u2019t really happen that way.<\/p>\n
And what does it feel like to have a movie based in part on you? The normally chatty Trivedi goes a bit silent on the subject.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still wrapping my mind around it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n