Helen M. Schelle (1893 in
Piqua, Ohio
Piqua ( ) is a city in Miami County, southwest Ohio, United States, 27 miles north of Dayton. The population was 20,522 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area.
It was founded as the village of Washington in ...
– 12 April 1984 in Piqua, Ohio)
was co-founder of the toy manufacturing company
Fisher-Price.
Schelle was born in Piqua, Ohio and moved to
New York as an adult, where by the middle of the 1920s, she had become owner and manager of the Penny Walker Toy Shop in
Binghamton
Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...
.
This role saw Schelle established as a prominent and connected figure within the toy industry and in 1930, she was asked by financier
Irving Price to join him as a partner in a new toy company he was starting. Alongside businessman
Herman Fisher
Herman Guy Fisher (November 2, 1898 – September 26, 1975), was born in Unionville Pennsylvania. He is best known as the co-founder of the famous toy brand Fisher-Price.
Biography
Herman G. Fisher was born in Unionville, Pennsylvania in 1898. ...
and Price's wife, Illustrator
Margaret Evans Price Margaret Evans Price (March 20, 1888 – November 20, 1973) was a U.S. toy manufacturer. With her husband, Irving Price, and Herman Fisher, she co-founded Fisher-Price Toys in 1930. Margaret Evans was a children's book illustrator and artist. ...
, the Fisher-Price Company was formally established later that year in
East Aurora, New York
East Aurora is a village in Erie County, New York, United States, southeast of Buffalo. It lies in the eastern half of the town of Aurora. The village population was 5,998 per the 2020 census. It is part of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metr ...
.
Schelle undertook the role of secretary and treasurer.
She resided in a cottage just outside the town, and also owned a farm.
Many of the company's early toys were the result of a collaboration between Schelle and Margaret Price, who together worked on their designs.
Sixteen wooden toys were brought to the 1931
American International Toy Fair in New York City before later being introduced to the public through
Macy's
Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...
Department store.
The toys' first year on the American market saw their placement on shelves in hundreds of stores throughout the country— an achievement partially attributed to Schelle's established contacts within the toy industry.
Schelle retired from Fisher-Price in 1957 and moved from New York back to her hometown of Piqua, Ohio.
She died there on April 12, 1984, at the age of 91
and is buried at the Forest Hill Union Cemetery.
References
American women chief executives
1893 births
1984 deaths
People from Piqua, Ohio
People from East Aurora, New York
American chief executives of manufacturing companies
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American businesswomen
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