• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, December 12, 2014

When it comes to marketing success stories, not many start with a limited appeal and seasonal restrictions. But with “Mensch on a Bench,” founder Neal Hoffman believes he has a brand he can build on. In addition to taking the product — a stuffed doll named Moshe the Mensch, a bench, and a book that teaches kids about Hanukkah — on “Shark Tank” to seek additional investment money, he’s busy selling the cute little Moshe as hard as he can heading into this year’s Festival of Lights. And on its blog, Target — which positions the product as a way to put a little “Funukkah in Hanukkah”— says the toy is “flying off shelves.”

The Cincinnati dad — who had worked at Hasbro — got the idea two years ago, while shopping with his wife and older son, then just 4. “Can I have an Elf on the Shelf?” the kid asked, as they wandered through a department store. “No,” replied Hoffman, who is Jewish. “But you can have a Mensch on a Bench.” Hoffman laughed off his joke, but his wife — a Catholic — thought it was such a good idea that she leaned on him to trademark it. They then raised $22,000 on Kickstarter, and found a Chinese factory to crank out 1,000 mensches. Before long, he’d gotten traction on Jewish parenting sites, and sold out. 

But he realized he was onto something bigger when none other than Al Roker brought a five-foot version of Moshe onto “The Today Show,” a feat repeated in the second season. “We’ve always known this was a PR play,” he says, “and in the toy business, ‘The Today Show’ is the gold standard.”

Hoffman, who says the company turned a profit even its first season, had 50,000 mensches made this time around. (The business is still based from his home, “but my wife let me move out of the basement because there are 4,000 mensches down there. The big distributors ship them straight from China, but I fill all the online orders from my home.”)

The “Shark Tank” experience wasn’t particularly harsh, he tells Marketing Daily: “When you work on a product made for 3% of the population that’s only appealing for six weeks of the year, you pretty much know what they are going to say.” And of course, he’s capitalizing on the exposure, offering those who come to his site through “Shark Tank” a 20% discount. (Product code: Oy vey.)

But the flip side of those limitations “is that I know exactly who is buying it and when they are buying it.” While parents of 3- to-10-year-olds are the core demographic, “it’s so shticky that older people love it, too, so it does have a wider appeal.”

Reaching that audience through social media has been key. “When I’m on Facebook, I’m the entrepreneur and the father. On Twitter, I’m the voice of Moshe, I have a shtick,” he says, with tweets like “Ooooohh ooooohh sweet bagel of mine #RuinAClassicRockSong#GunsandRoses. “ On Pinterest, I’ve got fun ideas for mom, and on Instagram, it’s all entertaining.” The idea, he says, is to create as many advocates for the brand as he can, and encourage user-generated content.