Creative Kidstuff Continues Toy Store After 30 Years

With its expansive store seemingly bursting out of its corner of the Linden Hills neighborhood, it's hard to believe the first once squeezed into a portion of what is now in Minneapolis.

But that's just where Cynthia Gerdes found herself on what would turn out to be a momentus day in May of 1982 as she turned the key opening her new toy store's front door and launching herself into the great unknown.

Thirty years, six Twin Cities stores () and six airport stores later, Creative Kidstuff has become a common name among parents.

Gerdes had decided to start the toy shop while studying for her MBA at the University of St. Thomas, said current CEO Roberta Bonoff. Assigned a paper on starting a small business, Gerdes started pondering what to focus her research on. Her own small child very much in the forefront of her mind, she settled on a toy shop, but the more she researched, she realized she couldn't find a single toy shop that offered the kinds of toys she'd want her child playing with. 

Nowhere could she find something selling fun, brain-teasing toys that help kids grow. In the end, Gerdes never did finish her MBA, choosing to make her idea a reality.

By the time Bonoff joined the company as a marketing expert in the early 1990s, Creative Kidstuff had expanded to several stores throughout the metro area.

The Maple Grove location came along, opening near The Fountain at Arbor Lakes in October 2007.

"We felt that the community was underserved and we had a customer base that was located in that area," Bonoff said. "We are so very privileged to have a loyal customer base that really appreciates the quality and service we bring. They have been thrilled to have us close by."

The chain of Twin Cities stores wasn't bad for the brainchild of an MBA student, but things were still relatively modest, Bonoff said. 

"Cynthia decided to go into the national catalogue business," Bonoff said. "We used to ship out of our offices—they were above the Linden Hills store. Peanuts were flying—it was crazy. When the UPS truck showed up, we had to make a relay down the stairs, passing packages hand to hand."

Now, Bonoff sits in offices near the corner of 46th Street and Hiawatha Avenue, and the UPS truck pulls into a loading dock at Creative Kidstuff's warehouse, whisking packages as far away as Australia (A family of ex-Minneapolitan customers moved there, Bonoff said, and continued to buy all their toys from the store). All that growth has been despite the store being part of an ever more digitized world, where a baby could as easily be playing with an iPad as a picture book.

"Parents will come in to one of our shops and say 'Oh, I had that when I was a child,'" said Ione Stedje, who's worked in the Minnetonka Creative Kidstuff store for 25 years. "It speaks to the longevity of some 'old fashioned' toys."

As for the future of Creative Kidstuff in the Twin Cities, the business plans on staying around for awhile.

"Our plan is to keep providing wonderful product and service for another 30 years," Bonoff said. "You can visit our new CK Baby Store at our Grand Ave. location, plan a birthday party at one of three locations and you can plan on us bringing more fun products for families to share and play with together. We are committed to creating wonder and learning with a lot of play factor."

Follow us on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Sign up for our daily newsletter