Squishable manager Haley Lyons shows off a plush “Dachshund Hot Dog.” It’s part of a “comfort food” collection that includes everything from ramen noodles to avocado toast! | Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
An offbeat brand of stuffed toys has grown from an online shop run out of a one-bedroom apartment to more than forty stores, including one on Briarwood Mall’s center court.
“We have a very, very active fan community,” says Squishable cofounder Zoe Fraade-Blanar. “People who are Squishable fans are very serious Squishable fans.”
She and her now-husband, Aaron Glazer, got the idea in 2005 while on a volunteer mission in the wake of the prior year’s Indian Ocean tsunami.
“We found a factory in Asia that made this very ultra-soft plush,” she recalls. “We had never felt anything like that before. A year or two later, we were bored with our full-time jobs, and, just for giggles, we decided to see what would happen if we did something with that and reached out to that factory. And, lo and behold, they were willing to work with us.”
The IT consultants, both graduates of Johns Hopkins University, developed the brand online just as the era of social media was taking off.
“It was one of our biggest strengths that we did not know how to run a toy company,” Fraade-Blanar says. “We didn’t know you were supposed to start off with wholesale, and we didn’t know that you were supposed to open stores. … We were simply able to just throw up a website and see what happens. Early social media did the rest and got the word out and told people about this strange, quirky new brand doing all this weird stuff.”
Nearly two decades on, they introduce over three hundred new items each year, many crowdsourced via Project Open Squish, where contributors submit designs and vote the best into prototype and production. (It’s currently on hiatus while its online platform is upgraded.)
“We pay them, obviously, and make sure they get full credit for every design, and in return we get creativity in a way that we would never have expected,” she says.
Younger kids tend to like the comfort-food line, with plush versions of everything from avocados to sushi rolls. Spookier designs appeal to young adults on up, particularly the popular Plague Doctor characters. Alter Egos are released in series of five and are prized by collectors, who favor their small “snacker” size because they take up less space. Delving deeper for devotees are limited-run Capsule Collections, seasonal lines sold only in stores.
Sizes range from “micros” dangling from keychains to “massive” figures big enough to use as chairs.
The business started online and expanded into wholesaling to boutiques. The company stores are a recent addition. The first was a pop-up near their headquarters in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood.
“People loved it—you know, lines around the block—fans who had followed us since they were little kids taking pilgrimages across the country to visit it,” Fraade-Blanar says. “It was really pretty amazing. So we’re like, maybe we should open some more stores!”
Squishable, Briarwood Mall center court. (734) 926–4884. Mon.–Sat. 10 a.m.–9 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.–6 p.m. squishable.com
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