Lina Trivedi (born June 11, 1973) is an American entrepreneur, author, educator and civil servant.
Her most noted writing credit is for authoring the first 136 poems of Beanie Babies. She is also credited for directing the world's first business to consumer Web site, which she did for Ty Inc., manufacturer of Beanie Babies. She is referred to as the woman who gave birth to the Internet and invented E-commerce. In effect, Beanie Babies evolved to become the world's first Internet sensation and Ty Warner became a billionaire.
Early life and education
Lina Trivedi, an Indian American who was born to a Gujarati-speaking Brahmin family in Chicago, IL. She lived in Addison, IL for most of her school-age and young-adult life. She attended DePaul University majoring in Sociology and it was during this time that her career at Ty, Inc. began.
She was raised by entrepreneurial parents who cultivated her skills at computer programming at a very young age. In the early 1980s, Trivedi's family purchased an IBM Personal Computer 5150 and at 7 years old, Trivedi's mother made Lina read the DOS 1.0 manual 3 times. In second grade, Trivedi was writing simple computer programs in BASIC.
Career at Ty Inc. Trivedi began working at Ty, Inc. in 1992 when she was hired as their 12th employee. In 1995, Beanie Babies were escalating as a pop culture craze throughout the world. In early 1995, Trivedi approached Ty Warner, then President of Ty, Inc., and shared her thoughts that the product hang tags were boring, and that unique birthdays and poems on the inside of the heart-shaped tags would make the items more collectible and interesting. She shared an example poem that she wrote for Stripes the Tiger, which ended up having Trivedi's birthday. Immediately, Mr. Warner assigned her with the task of writing all the Beanie Babies poems and designing the inside of over 100 product tags.
Later in 1995, Trivedi 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 Web site for Beanie Babies could present a unique opportunity to engage the consumer market. She brought her 14.4k modem that was supplied by DePaul University where she was enrolled as a student, and demonstrated how the Internet works. Warner was intrigued and he gave Trivedi free license to create a Web site using her judgment and skills. By the time the first iteration of the Ty Web site was published in late 1995, only 1.4% of Americans were using the Internet. The population of people using the Internet grew exponentially in the following years, along with the popularity of Beanie Babies.
The Beanie Babies Web site that Trivedi created was the first business to consumer Web site designed to bridge the gap between business and consumers. The Web site contained innovative features, such as the ability to vote for a Beanie Baby that managed a blog on the official site that contained multiple entries per day. There was also a trading post, featured fan mail and a list of 101 things to do with a Beanie Baby. The Beanie Babies Web site was receiving over 1 billion visits per year and Trivedi is credited with cultivating the demand of Beanie Babies through the Internet. In 1996, Trivedi coordinated three private Boeing 747s to bring Beanie Babies to American retail locations in time for Easter.
The snowball effect of the Beanie Babies craze and the rise of the Internet was not foreseen in advance. Although Ty, Inc. was very private about their sales figures related to Beanie Babies, Trivedi was quoted as saying that "sales were overwhelming." Trivedi also played a vital role in the design of Beanie Babies, as well as the new and retiring characters as they were announced. As part of her campaign to engage audiences, she coordinated fans to guide the creation of the 100th Beanie Baby character through the Internet in 1996.