To say that toy maker and inventor Barry Mills, 42, never grew up is an over-simplification. The CEO and president of the newly launched “thought-to-market” company Wide Ideas is all business—and very grown up—at this year’s Toy Fair in New York City. But being all grown up isn’t his secret to successfully innovating products.

“I always look at the product with a child’s eyes,” Mills told Portfolio.com. But more than that, he looks at children as potential innovators. “We give them guidelines and we give them samples. But the creativeness with the tools and the objects goes way beyond that.” And beyond the tools is where Mills’ attention has always gone.

As a young boy in Canada, Mills said he always had trouble sleeping, his mind adrift with thoughts of ways to improve the world around him. By the time he was nine, his restless curiosity had so convinced his parents that their boy wasn’t any regular kid that they stopped pressuring him to go to bed, instead leaving him to his own devices until all hours of the night.

“By the time I was probably 11 years old, I took a pinball machine apart, went to RadioShack, bought a digital display, and put a digital display lock on my door,” said Mills. And by the age of 14, such successful innovations had convinced Mills that when he grew up he wanted to be an inventor.

“It doesn’t have to be a product, it can be a manufacturing process or just any old stuff,” said Mills. “I almost think for me it’s not work because I just see something better—always.”

Mills' products are diverse. On the surface, Wide Ideas seems to be a market-research and business-development company, applying what its website calls “thought-to-market” product research and development.

But a bit of digging (or a trip to the Toy Fair) and one discovers the building blocks of his growing company: innovative toys.

Remember when there used to be speakers? Oh, you still have them? Wide Ideas’ Vibe It converts songs from most electrical devices into vibrations that turn any surface into a speaker, as long as it’s capable of supporting the suction-cup attachment. There’s a snowman for kids in Arizona, a new kind of swing, and cookies and cupcakes made of clay.

"I don’t believe in limiting ideas,” said Mills. “I believe where recreation and passion comes from comes from outside of those boundaries.”

Being different, it turns out, has been an asset to Mills’ development of Wide Ideas. He told Portfolio.com that not going out and partying like many of his peers allowed him to save money and, in fact, start his first business (selling scuba gear) at the age of 19. Wide Ideas, too, was initially self-funded, though he has now brought on a silent investor, leading to a total investment of $1.5 million.

Mills’ first several years with Wide Ideas were spent building and understanding his own company’s identity, and in order to do it, he decided to build manufacturing and logistical connections by networking abroad. The company uses Amazon as a test market for its products, and after initially focusing on big-box distributors such as Walmart and Toys "R" Us, Mills is now expanding to independent retailers as a way to earn smaller amounts of money more frequently than the up to 36-month turnaround rate he has come to expect from major distributors.

“We figure with our contacts and with the relationships we have formed, and going into independent retail, that we will surpass the $1.5 million we invested and probably be at $2 million in revenue. Our retail goal this year is $15 million,” Mills said. Assuming things go as planned, not a bad take.

Mills and over 1,100 other toy companies are exhibiting their products at the Javits Center in New York City until Wednesday, February 15, but don’t head straight over yet. You must preregister for the event, and over 30,000 buyers have already done so.