Success Stories
Success Stories
These are only a few of the many success stories of licensees and students that Brian Zheng has helped succeed over the years.
Grace Todd
She went from working out of her own garage and grew her company, where she is now the CEO of a $33 million business.
Grace Todd is the founder and CEO of Premium Up INC. Brian Zheng has coached and licensed to her company to carve out a premium incentive industry for her to run the business in this industry. She has done many premium partnerships with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Camel Cigarettes, Kraft Foods (Heinz Ketchup), Yahoo, IBM, and many others throughout the years.
She printed their logos on Automotive Sun Shades for promotion as a premium incentive product. It was a great success from Brian Zheng's coaching. It also helped him source out a much better price point from overseas to help her generate better design and bigger volume of product to build higher profit margins.
In 1994, she was able to ship 231 containers of the product only under the Kraft foods promotional contract. It was approximately 2.7 million pieces of product, generating more than $15 million on this deal alone. Brian Zheng not only coached her through the business practice but also helped her son get into the College of Art Center and Design in Pasadena, California. He eventually went onto become a teacher at Standford University.
Azar Azera
As an immigrant, he started his own organizer company. Partnering with Brian Zheng and his EZ Twist technology, he generates almost one-third of his revenue each year with that line alone.
Azar Azera is the CEO of Promart, located in Orange County, California, selling organizers and home goods for the household. After a litigation settlement, he became a licensee of the Patent Category Corporation (PCC) and started paying royalties for the Pop-Up/EZ Twist patented technology.
Under Brian Zheng's coaching, tutoring, and consulting, he was able to grow his product line from two knockoff products, previously, to more than 17 items and SKUs. Azar grew it exponentially as a food container organization line, offering to customers such as Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Target, Walmart, Ross, and many others. His business, within this product line, and under Brian Zheng's instruction, grew from $5 million to $37 million from 2001-2007.
Phil Hale
Launched his company by first leasing a cubicle from Brian Zheng’s office. Today he generates millions every year, working in his own facility.
Phil Hale and Brian Zheng grew up together during his college years while Zheng was studying English as a second language at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. Zheng was living in Hale's parents' home. Hale starting working for Zheng in the late 2000s in Los Angeles and later on he was able to establish his new company as a startup, Presentation Switchers.
Zheng was able to provide Hale with an office and cubicles to help him start his business in Zheng's own office facility in City of Industry, California. Within 16 months Hale was able to launch the product line and grow the business from his own idea into a multi-million dollar success story in his own niche market.
Dan Kellogg
He first started his company by striking a licensing agreement with Brian Zheng. Today, he is generating $39 million annually.
Dan Kellogg is the founder and president of Sport Pet Design, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His company originated from a licensing program from Brian Zheng and the Patent Category Corporation (PCC). He utilized Playhut's design into a smaller design for dogs, cats, hamsters, etc.
He grew his business from nothing to $39 million within five years based on the product line from PCC and Brian Zheng. His product is available in Petco, Petsmart, Kmart, Walmart, Target, and Amazon locations throughout the nation. Under Brian Zheng's consulting, Kellogg was able to source a reasonable price for a manufacturer in China to produce a good quality and reasonably priced product.
Eric Zhang
Working for many of Brian Zheng’s companies, he eventually moved from the U.S. to China and formed his own company, generating $14 million annually.
As a student of Brian Zheng, Eric Zhang first met Brian when he was a graduate student, studying industrial design, in China. His professor at the time asked Brian to train Eric and a group of several students. Brian invited Eric to California to finish his master thesis from Brian's Playhut product line. Eric also worked for Playhut from 2014-2017 in California.
Eric decided to start his own entrepreneurial business in China with an after school program for elementary and middle-grade school kids. It has amassed great success and he is in the process of opening multiple locations. Based on this program, China is now open to allow more children to be born into the family, and because of this, Eric is now opening a daycare and preschool. He makes more than $17 million a year with the partnership and a consultant of BZ for his business.
He is also running Brian's other company, Azooca, in China and handling Brian's design and concept to produce products in the pet category as an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) supplier in Europe, Australia, China, and Japanese markets. The business is strictly dealing with licensing and consulting and generates $7 million per year in income.
