Designer shifts focus from sleek tech gadgets to childrens' toys

Scot Herbst, a Silicon Valley star designer of tech products for a decade, has traded working on sleek HP desktop PCs for child's play.

As the global economic meltdown sent shock waves across the valley, the product designer took the ultimate career leap of faith -- he launched a one-man company, Kaiku Design, to make hand-built, eco-friendly and safe wood-based toys for children.

"I've been living the last year and a half of my life with a giant question hanging over me: Am I absolutely insane or completely brilliant for doing this?" joked Herbst, who played a key role in the creation of the HP Touchsmart computer.

Instead of tinkering with electronic gadgets full-time, he's now crafting wooden wagons.

"Designers have a certain way of thinking about things -- once you have that kind of methodology embedded in your psyche, you can apply it to anything, whether its' an all-in-one computer or a wagon," said Dave Skinner, an HP senior product design manager who has worked with Herbst for about five years.

"Scot has a lot of natural ability as a designer," he added. "The actual implementation, the work of bringing a product to market -- that takes an incredible amount of effort." Designing for lower-volume wood products, as opposed to mass-produced tech toys, gave him more wiggle room to incorporate "green" materials, Herbst said.

"Adding even a few dollars to a (tech) product can translate to millions of dollars in your total cost of goods," he said.

Herbst has left his position with Bay Area-based Lunar Design, where he handled top-shelf projects for Hewlett-Packard. The move was possible because evolving technology and the global supply chain ecosystem can enable a guy to design products in his San Jose home, have them built in China and be delivered to the United States on time. And this venture was launched with less than $100,000.

"I don't have to sell one billion dollars in inventory to make a profit," he said. "I don't have to have a mega officeplex in Cupertino. I don't have to send a product manager to Asia one week out of every month to make sure everything is going smoothly." An agent helped him locate a reputable manufacturer and other partners in China. After a trip to Guangzhou last spring, Herbst worked with Chinese contractors over Web cams and by swapping digital photos across the Internet. Had he launched his venture just a few years ago, he would have had to make a half-dozen trips to China and spend weeks in factories.

"The fact that I've been to China on only one occasion and I'm launching my product is nothing short of a miracle," he said.

While Herbst relied on Alibaba.com to locate makers of such things as non-toxic rubber wheels in China, he needed a sourcing Sherpa to help him navigate the country's sometimes perilous manufacturing landscape. Herbst's exacting requirements made the process even more time-consuming.

"It's a great product. The quality is great," said Eric Pfeiffer CEO of San Francisco-based Pfeiffer Lab, a design company with years of