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Meet Debbie & JB Frere of The Learning Journey in Deer Valley Airpark

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Debbie & JB Frere.

Debbie & JB, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Back in 1994, we had the opportunity to join World Book (International Division) and manage their UK operations. Due to the strength of Encyclopedia Britannica in the UK, World Book was looking for a “new way” to break into the UK market and the expand their sales representation. At that time Party Plan was all the rage, so the decision was made to start a new division focused on developing and selling lower-cost educational items while at the same time building a direct selling sales force.

Nine months later with over 1000 Party Plan Consultants selling Learning Journey branded items in the UK, World Book made the “big pitch” to the sales force, presenting the opportunity to earn “big bucks” by selling the World Book Encyclopedia. Well, that strategy did not work out so well as 95% of the sales force were quite happy selling lower ticket items as opposed to high-end encyclopedias.

Over the next four years, The Learning Journey expanded quite quickly with operations running in six countries – the largest being in the Philippines with over 2000 Sales Consultants. Unfortunately, in our toy industry, the margin made on “educational toys” lacks significantly behind those realized on a set of high-end encyclopedias. Seeing the writing on the wall, ourselves and two other equity partners made World Book an offer to buy out The Learning Journey. On January 1, 1998, The Learning Journey International LLC was born, and so was full access to the USA market which previously was off limits as we were part of the International Division, which meant “hands off” their Domestic Division. 23 years later, we remain “true to the core” of the Company’s main focus of offering high quality, award-winning, non-licensed educational products for children.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
We have certainly had our fair share of bumps along the way. We feel that the name of our company is very appropriate, as every day is A LEARNING JOURNEY. Like every company, we experienced growing pains. When you hit different milestones, you face different challenges – Office space, warehouse space, factory capacity to produce your products, staffing. Probably one of the most frustrating things we deal with are product infringements. When we look at our logo, we always say “as long as the sun is rising and not setting, we are OK!”.

Please tell us about The Learning Journey.
At The Learning Journey we design, manufacture and distribute an exclusive line of award-winning children’s interactive educational products – simply put – learning toys! All of our products are designed to build skills that are important for kids to learn in order to have a good head start in school. When creating new products, we look at curriculums and create the concepts that are being taught. It’s about creating intentional products that hone certain skills. The content actually comes before the product design. It’s then getting creative to make those skills you are trying to teach fun and engaging. We actually own and operate a Child Development Center – Explorers In Learning – where we test our products to see how the kids react before the products go to market. It gives us great, honest feedback – straight from the mouths of the babes. Our product line encompasses games, puzzles, construction, active play and electronic learning toys.

What we are most proud of is making a difference. We receive letters, emails and social media posts every day from parents, teachers, and children who use our products. People post YouTube videos, Instagram photos and make Pinterest Boards. And we see it ourselves every day in our Child Development Center – When our products are used they can and do make a difference! It’s so much fun to see the joy on a child’s face when they grasp a concept by putting together all of the Match It! Cards in a set – or the accomplishment of spending a few hours building one of our Techno Gears sets and then actually being able to watch it move and work. Our main goal is to create high-quality educational products. It is also our goal to keep them affordable. From Grandparents to parents and teachers, and even that child who saves up his or her allowance to purchase one of our toys, we want our toys to be accessible to everyone.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If we had to do it over, we would definitely have invested more initial capital in the business. As we were young and funds were limited, we started the company on a shoe string. We have a lot of sweat equity invested in The Learning Journey. This limitation of funds prohibited us from funding a more rapid growth of our product line. Currently we have over 200 products in our line and we refresh or replace new 20% to 30% of line each year.

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