Words matter. These are the best Ken Hakuta Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
As a book is judged by its cover, so a fad is judged by its name.
Contrary to what most people believe, fads are made, not born.
Opportunity just exists in the air for a few minutes. If you don’t obey your gut feeling right away, you’ve lost your chance.
Everyone underestimates the maturity of kids.
I’ve become obsessed with preserving Shaker furniture. I feel as though every influence in my life, everything I’ve learned and know, all the money I’ve made, has come together to take care of it.
I want the Wallwalker in the back of consumers’ minds, but not actively thought about. When it returns, they’ll react, ‘Oh, there they are!’ and they’ll buy them again as impulse items.
Shaker pieces were not to show off. One was not to waste energy to decorate.
Other people might buy a Rolls-Royce. I’d rather encourage people to be creative.
I think what you inherit is not real. I haven’t inherited anything. What I have is really mine because I made it myself.
Many young people don’t vote because they feel unwelcome and irrelevant, and that’s the system’s fault… As much as MTV tries to get them to vote, politicians don’t include young voters because young voters don’t donate money.
People will try to tell you that all the great opportunities have been snapped up. In reality, the world changes every second, blowing new opportunities in all directions, including yours.
It was very enticing to become a yuppie, but I didn’t want to do that.
I’m no Mattel.
Whatever you do, don’t sink your life’s savings into cliche items.
To me, all these things tell a story, and I find clothespin parts as interesting as ‘collectors’ furniture.’ Good pieces of Shaker furniture are interesting, but only so much. It is the other things and the personal effects that let me feel the Shakers.
Voting statistics for younger voters is pathetic.
The product of stickers will be around for a long time, but how it gets to the consumer will change.
People came to my house in limos looking for WallWalkers, and they made emergency calls, breaking into our phone conversations trying to order them.
There are conventions for people with serious, boring inventions, but fad inventors need help. You need someone to talk to. You just can’t tell your friends you’re going to invent a pet rock and mortgage your house to pay for it. It’s embarrassing… risky mentally. Your friends think you’re crazy.
If you come up with something that’s useless and promote it the right way, everybody will have to have it yesterday, even though they get up the next morning and wonder why they bought it.
A lot of great inventions are just little improvements on past ideas.
When I did inventions, I always thought only of the invention itself, but the kids would ask for marketing materials.
Al Gore has a lot to do with the mainstream attention to global warming, but you can’t call him a fad, even if he did dance the Macarena.
I want to be the Ann Landers for fad people.
I like things that don’t go together.
I don’t need a big K Street office or a British secretary or a facade for my ego.
A fad is something that gives just a couple of minutes of extreme fun. It can be useful. It can be useless.
Most people who have had big fads have turned out to be just like their products: one-shot deals.
When I was a boy, my father used to criticize me for – it’s hard to translate – I guess you could say ‘mindless time.’ Thinking what to do. I need to be bored so I can be pushed into doing something.
Fads get hot in California. A good idea can come from Des Moines, but it’s not going to be anything there. Then it’ll hit Venice Beach or Westwood and go all around the country, back to Des Moines.
I know my life runs in cycles.
A true fad has little utility beyond its entertainment value. Think of the Mood Ring, the Pet Rock, the Slinky, Silly Putty.
The Japanese really like things very well planned out. I enjoy things as they come by.
In California, you want to have the strangest thing, be doing the strangest thing. People admire that.
I wouldn’t finance a fad if I were a banker.
