In 2022, Elenor Mak, currently the founding father of a doll company Jilly Bing, was busy juggling a business development role at a healthcare company and raising her 2-year-old and 4-year-old children. At that point, she “definitely didn’t want to start” an additional business. She had began an e-commerce fashion company in the past and knew what it took to get a business off the ground. But that modified when her young daughter Jillian began playing with stuffed animals and dolls.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Jilly Bing. Elenora Mak.
“It reminded me of my own childhood,” says Mak Entrepreneur. “You play with dolls, you are trying to understand the world. She ruled her dolls by saying, ‘Eat your dinner. Wash your hands”. I act like a mother. Not in these words, but at the age of two I exploit words like these, simpler versions of those words.
One day, Mak’s mother gave her granddaughter “a beautiful doll with blonde hair and blue eyes.” When Mak asked her why she selected that doll over the one that looked like her daughter, her mother replied, “It was the prettiest doll on the shelf.” Even though she knew her mother meant well, Mak found the words “so heavy,” which reminded her of her own experiences with a lack of representation when she was a child.
“They gave them an Asian name, like Ling, or something like a bad haircut. It was shocking and disappointing.”
Mak decided to buy her daughter a doll that looked like her and figured it will be a easy process: Because I live in San Francisco and the yr is 2022. But that wasn’t the case. Her local toy store didn’t have one. Neither did the second one she visited. Or the third one. The toy aisles at major retailers like Target and Toys “R” Us looked like they hadn’t “evolved” since Mak was a child, almost forty years earlier.
“There were just rows of Caucasian dolls, brunettes, and at the very end of the hall there were these dolls that I thought were supposed to be Asian because they were holding a panda bear,” Mak recalls. “They gave them an Asian name, like Ling, or something like a bad haircut. It was shocking and disappointing.”
Mak looked for more options in Asia, but when she asked relatives what they may find, all she found were “Eurasian-looking dolls,” she says, adding that “dolls largely represent what society considers beautiful, and in Asia that “what is beautiful is still beautiful.” Features of the Caucasian race.” Mak remembered wishing she was beautiful like the dolls she had growing up, and that’s when “her mommy bear instinct” kicked in – she was determined to give her daughter a doll that looked like her, even if she had to make it herself .
How difficult can it’s? “It’s really hard – Really “difficult to make a good doll.”
Mak Googled “how to make a doll” and, armed with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a “strong business background,” she took up a side hustle that shook the world The $40 billion toy industry. While she admits she wasn’t the best creatively (“My 6-year-old son is a higher artist than me,” she jokes), she had a clear vision when it came to the business side and the potential for mainstream demand: “The Asian-American population is one of the the fastest growing – us 7% of the country’s population“
And how difficult can it be to make a doll in a time when we are producing Teslas and developing artificial intelligence? She remembers thinking. As it turns out, “it’s really hard – Really difficult – to make a good doll,” says Mak. Fortunately, her business experience helped her develop an essential “superpower”: “finding really good people.” Mak contacted Asian designers for major toy brands and used her extensive network to connect with professionals who could make this dream a reality.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Jilly Bing. Elenor Mak and her daughter Jillian with their Jilly doll.
By June 2022, they’d a four-person team. Mak did a lot of research over the next few months, talking to Asian families and looking at photos of babies and dolls to really try to understand what parents wanted. “It’s not just about saying, ‘Oh, this doll is Asian,’” Mak says. “But what was important to them? What were the features? What were the stories?” By December of that yr, the Jilly Bing prototype, named after Mak’s daughter Jillian and the Chinese word for cookie “bing gan” (Jillian’s first word), was ready to be shared with the world.
“Adult women wrote and said, ‘Oh my God, this is like healing my inner child.'”
Jilly Bing began shipping the dolls in August 2023, and 2,000 units sold out inside six weeks. Greta Gerwig’s hit Barbie doll she also brought attention to dolls this summer, “opening up a national conversation” and giving us “a chance to change the narrative not just for our Asian children, but for all children,” Mak says. At that moment, Mak realized that the “high risk, high effort” passion project she had been working on for the past few years as a side hustle – taking work calls late at night while her children were asleep, and balancing all of it with her full-time job – would profit from her undivided attention.
Jilly Bing also appeared on the show Today aired around this time and the positive response was “overwhelming”. “Adult women wrote and said, ‘Oh my God, this is like healing my inner child. Life would be completely different if I had a doll that looked like me when I was growing up,’” says Mak. “Even non-Asian parents are writing [in to say]“Oh my God, I think my kids should have dolls that look like their friends.”
Earlier this yr, Jilly Bing was on Macy’s shelves; seller contacted after Today member. “This is the company I grew up with,” Mak says, “so it was really great that they recognized the value of Jilly Bing so early.” Jilly Bing is also a part Macy’s Mission for Everyone an initiative that has committed $5 billion to its people, partners, products and programs by 2025 “to create a more equitable and sustainable future.”
“Seeing kid’s reactions to a doll that appears like them gives me strength [more than] every little thing else.”
So far, Jilly Bing has sold about 5,000 dolls, Mak says. At $68 apiece, sales exceed $300,000.
And Mak’s favorite part about running a business? These would be the testimonials of her young clients. “It’s looking at photos,” says Mak. “And listening to the stories [from them] – and my own daughter – saying, “She looks like me.” He has black hair, just like me. [And] little asian boys say “she’s beautiful like my mom.” I am constantly motivated by watching children’s reactions to a doll that looks like them [more than] everything else.”
Photo credit: Courtesy of Jilly Bing.
Mak had to “trust her gut” to start a side business that turned into a full-fledged business that can make her mark in the toy industry and beyond, and she looks forward to building the brand in the years to come.
“I’m most excited about creating characters,” says Mak. “We started doing comics because it’s a doll, but we’re starting to create stories. I have a vision for an entire cast of Asian-American characters that actually reflect what Asian America looks like today. We have a mix of Asian kids, you have boys, Jilly is our first Southeast Asian doll, so I’m excited to expand and introduce the world to the rest of Jilly Bing’s friends.”