Patrick Calello parks his 11-year-old Honda Civic against a yellow curb on Margaret Morrison Street and flicks on the hazard lights. They are among the few lights that work on the Civic, which has one high beam, no low beams, a spider crack on the windshield, a cracked cylinder head in the engine, and a hole in the floor through which Calello can watch the road passing by. The senior industrial design major recently bought the car for $100 at a junkyard after his family’s financial hardship required him to sell his brand new, souped-up Honda CRX. As Calello gets out of the car to walk to his design class in Baker Hall, he leaves the Civic’s lights flashing. He never legally parks the car—it’s his way of daring someone to steal it. No one ever does.
Before heading to class, Calello made sure to stuff extra sketch paper in his backpack so that he could spend time sketching cars. He’s always been fascinated by them. As a toddler, he uttered his first word—car—in the back of the family station wagon. At seven years old, he happily trudged alongside his father at auto shows. Only when he left for college did he abandon his 300-car Hot Wheels collection. Now his classmates tease him about doodling cars.
When Calello arrives at his design class, he doesn’t have time for sketching. His professor invited a guest speaker from Waddell Manufacturing, which produces wooden trinkets for the hobby industry. The speaker announces a competition for the class to create a wooden toy.
“I have to make a car,” Calello thinks. He never considers other concepts.
In the Baker Hall woodshop, he starts creating a toy that will let children do what he always wanted to do—design and build cars. His concept involves interchangeable parts that wouldn’t limit children to building a stock toy. After refining his drafts, he builds a prototype out of insulation foam. He takes it to Carnegie Mellon’s Children’s School and watches the preschoolers’ reactions. The children, huddled around his foam prototype, understand the concept and love it. Calello has a revelation that goes beyond the class assignment: Start a toy company.
“The idea is nothing,” he says in hindsight. “Everything else is the hard part.”
For Calello, “everything else” spanned a decade of hard work and failed attempts. He gave up not long after graduating from Carnegie Mellon in 1993 when a toy company executive told him the toy would have to be simplified so it could be sold at an appealing price.
Moving on, Calello took a job. Quit. Took another job. Quit again. At his next job, he squeezed in time to plan the company that never left his mind. After about 100 hours, he came up with a name: Automoblox. He quit his job again, this time to pursue Automoblox full-time. He shopped for manufacturers in China and, after settling on one, he found that the models of his toy didn’t work. He changed toy companies, got married, bought a house, had a baby, and wondered how he would afford to live.
He doesn’t have to wonder anymore. Automoblox toys have received national media attention, have won numerous awards, and are now sold around the world. “The day I delivered the first order for Automoblox to a small toy store in Darien, Connecticut, was a day that rivals only the day that my daughter was born,” he says.
