Can trend marketer Carlton Calvin influence culture enough to turn a fad into an institution?
Carlton calvin knows from fads. in the mid 1990s, he hit on the idea of putting preserved scorpions inside Slammers — small acrylic game pieces that players flick at their opponents’ cardboard Pogs. Calvin went on to sell close to 400,000 of the gruesome creations within six months — at which point the popular kids’ game died the typical death of a once-hot toy. He took the leftover scorpions and recycled them into yo-yos — a fad that lasted a little longer. After that he came out with Fingerboards (miniskateboards that you steer with your fingers), which also had their moment of fame. But this time Calvin is sure he’s found a keeper. As president of Razor USA LLC, he has been riding the wave of one of the hottest sensations in years: scooters. By the end of last year — the first in which this updated version of a decades-old kids’ favorite started selling big in this country — more than 4 million scooters had been sold under the Razor brand alone. Calvin takes surprisingly little
