Making It
A Herndon couple reaps millions telling stories to little sports fans everywhere

By Margaret Webb Pressler
Sunday, April 1, 2007

Aimee and Naren Aryal were already entrepreneurs when they stumbled into the idea that would become a multimillion-dollar company in four years. Aimee made $100,000 a year as owner of a franchise business that taught science classes and held demonstrations in schools. Naren worked for a series of dot-com startups during the tech boom.

But after each one of Naren's companies failed, he turned his attention to a decidedly low-tech product right under his nose: a children's book written by Aimee.

"I'd left my last company, and I didn't know what I was going to do," he said. "So I went to Aimee and said, 'I think we should publish your book.' "

A kids' book doesn't sound like the seed of a multimillion-dollar enterprise, even if it is about the HokieBird, the much-loved mascot for Virginia Tech University. Naren and Aimee had met there as undergraduates, and gone back regularly to visit after graduating. When they took daughter Anna, then 2 1/2 , to the campus in 2002, she announced that she wanted a book about the HokieBird.

"I took her to the campus bookstore, but there was no book," Aimee said. "So I said, 'I'll write you a story.' "

It was a simple tale of the HokieBird visiting the main sites on campus, saying hello to everyone, then going home and going to bed. Naren thought every parent who'd graduated from Tech would want one for his little one. The school agreed to let the Aryals license the character, and Naren, while still consulting in the high-tech field, self-published the book.

The first 5,000 copies showed up in a tractor-trailer at the couple's Herndon house the day Aimee came home from the hospital with their daughter Maya in 2003. The book sold out in less than three months and was reprinted.

Based on that success, Naren, 37, persuaded the Barnes & Noble near the campus to carry Hello Hokie Bird! and it was a hit there, too. "That's when it became clear to me I needed to do this full time," Naren said. Mascot Books had become a preschool publishing company.

Aimee, 35, was supportive but nervous when Naren told her he thought it was time to roll the dice. In 2003, they invested $500,000 -- their life savings and their home equity line -- in creating 40 more titles, all based on college mascots, that were released in 2004. Most were written by Aimee.

"We got our money back, and more, that same year," Naren said, adding that their success made the frequent sleepless nights worth it. The couple took on a minority-ownership investor in 2005, which helped them expand into major league baseball, because "the pro sports market is just massive," Naren said.

This year, Mascot Books will have 70 titles, including its first books for NFL football teams. Aimee has created a proprietary character named Cort the Sport, who will be in a series of titles on good sportsmanship. Revenue this year is projected to reach $4 million.

Now that the company is launched and has its own office space with several employees, Naren and Aimee's home -- at her insistence -- has become a sort of Mascot-Books-free zone.

"It gets tiring," she said. "If we talked about it at home, it would be like Mascot Books 24 hours a day."

Did you turn a simple idea into a moneymaking enterprise? E-mail presslerm@washpost.com.