Ty Warner

Warner was born on September 3, 1944, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in suburban La Grange, in a Prairie-style house designed in the early 1890s by Frank Lloyd Wright, now known as the Peter Goan House. His father was Harold "Hal" Warner, a jeweler and toy salesman.[2] His mother was Georgia Warner, a pianist. He has a much younger sister, Joyce.[2] He was named after baseball player Ty Cobb.

At the age of 14, Warner went to Lyons Township High School (north campus) in La Grange, Illinois. He then went to St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, and graduated in 1962. Warner attended Kalamazoo College in Michigan but dropped out after a year.[2][3]

Warner's relationships with both parents were strained. Georgia was noted for erratic and sometimes abusive or dangerous behavior and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the 1970s.[4] When Ty was an adult and his parents divorced, he was said to have attempted to seduce several of his father's girlfriends out of jealousy or competitiveness.[4]

Warner moved to Los Angeles to start a career in acting. He had little success and returned to Chicago after five years. There he began working for plush toy maker Dakin as a salesman, the same company where his father worked.[2] He was described by a former co-worker as possessing "uncanny" instincts as a salesman to retail shops, knowing which items would be most successful.[4] In 1980, he was fired by Dakin, reportedly for selling his own products to established customers in competition with the company's line.[2] After spending a three-year sabbatical in Italy, Warner returned to Chicago.

In 1986, he mortgaged his home and invested his life savings and a bequest from his father into founding Ty Inc.[2] Warner started out selling stuffed toy cats (inspired by some plush he had seen in Italy).

In 1993, Ty Inc. launched Beanie Babies, a series of small plush toys shaped like various animals.[2] He focused on selling the $5 or $10 Beanie Babies to small independent toy stores rather than large retailers like Toys R Us, Target, or Walmart, preferring to have multiple small clients rather than a handful of large ones.[5] He drove up demand by artificially restricting items shipped to each store below requested orders, and by creating deliberate shortages by discontinuing old items and introducing new ones in an essentially arbitrary manner rather than the more common toy industry pattern of releasing new items once or twice a year. A secondary market developed when collectors began reselling the toys at greatly inflated prices, and various books, magazines, and accessories like carrying cases devoted to Beanie Babies appeared. At the peak of the Beanie craze circa 1999, the privately owned Ty Inc. is believed to have earned over $700 million in profits in a year. The Beanie Babies phenomenon, coupled with the rise of the Internet, is cited as elevating Warner to billionaire status[6] with a net worth of over $2.5 billion.[7]

Lina Trivedi was a college student when she worked at Ty Inc. and she approached Warner to talk about a new development that existed on college campuses called the Internet. She indicated that the Internet was primarily a research tool, however, college students were starting to make personal websites and she thought creating a website for Beanie Babies could present an unprecedented opportunity to engage the market uniquely. She brought a 14.4k modem to Ty's office and demonstrated how the Internet works. Warner was intrigued and gave Trivedi free license to create a website using her judgment and skills.[8] By the time the first iteration of the Ty website[9] was published in late 1995, only 1.4% of Americans were using the Internet.[10] The population of people using the Internet grew exponentially in the following years, along with the popularity of Beanie Babies.

In 2007, Ty Inc. went head to head with MGA Entertainment, the makers of the Bratz dolls, with the release of the Ty Girlz dolls and virtual world.

He also has significant investments in hotels, property and golf courses. Ty Warner Hotels and Resorts include the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City;[11] the Sandpiper Golf Course in Santa Barbara, California;[11] the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California;[12][13][11] the Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore in Santa Barbara, California, purchased in 2000;[11] the Kona Village resort in Hawaii, purchased in July 2004; the Montecito Country Club; and the Las Ventanas al Paraiso Resort in Los Cabos, Mexico, purchased in September 2004.[14] In 2005, Warner also bought the beachfront Miramar resort and Rancho San Marcos golf course but sold the Miramar hotel in 2007 to Caruso Affiliated.[15][16]