Beanie Babies Phenomenon

Beanie Baby phenomenon has really opened a lot of eyes in the toys industry, especially, because this phenomenon was sustained in an industry that is known to be very turbulent based on the fact that, there are a lot of substitutes that come into the industry everyday, moreover, the excitement that these toys create, only can last for a short period of time as buyers in this market (usually children) tend to have an inconsistent buying behaviour and unpredictable majority of the time. This was not the case for Beanie Babies.
How did TY Warner achieve that?
Production of the Beanie Babies have started with the original collection of nine Beanies (Spot (the dog), squealer (the pig), Patti (the platypus), Cubbies (the bear), Chocolate (the mouse), pinchers (the lobster), Splash (the killer whale), legs (the frog), flash (the dolphin) . Those Beanies had certain characteristics that were considered unique and different: Design, price and quality. Warner himself designs the product with great care that children and adults can identify with them and build strong attachment to those beanies.
The most risky but successful production tactic: Limited production . In other words, Warner chose to retire some Beanie Babies every year, so he will discontinue some designs and introduce some new designs to maintain the craze for them. This tactic led to the opening of the second market for Beanie Babies mainly for collectors. The more one design of Beanie babies is limited, the higher the demand, and the higher its price in the secondary market.
In terms of production locations, Warner started his production in the Us market serving mainly Chicago market and then expanded to include Us market as whole and finally expanded globally through FDI in China and Korea by setting up manufacturing facilities to be able to serve the global market in attempt to keep his market share and maintain his competitive advantage.
Following the life cycle of the beanie babies (using