Then the mother of a newborn and 6-year-old, Joya Lyons remembers all that 3 a.m. crying during one particularly sleepless and stressful night six years ago.
The tears were hers.
Her oldest child, Brielle, had lost her first baby tooth. “I’m thinking, I get to be the Tooth Fairy for the first time! This is going to be exciting! That’s what everybody tells you.”
The moment of tooth wasn’t the kind of excitement she envisioned. “My daughter sleeps like a crazy person, for one. She also slept with all the lights on because at the time she was scared of the dark.
“And so all the time I’m thinking, ‘How am I going to get this tooth from under the pillow?’ And I have to wait till she falls asleep because she’s going to see me in the light.”
Lyons returned to Brielle’s room several times, waiting for the right moment during a strategic ordeal that lasted half the night. She grew up in a family that cherishes traditions and family bonds. There could be no mistakes.
Her patience and persistence were ultimately rewarded when she finally got the tooth from under the pillow and exchanged it for the money without waking her daughter.
Sitting on a couch and crying a few hours before the sun came up, she thought, “I don’t want to do that again. But I don’t want her to not have a magical experience again for the second time.”
A story is born
Lyons talked to her husband, Drew, later that morning. She told him that if any kind of automatic device existed to prevent this kind of frustration and stress, she would buy it.
The notion was consistent with how Joya Lyons’ mind works. Always interested in working with her hands and the mechanics of things, she grew up in the Detroit area thinking she would become an engineer.
“Whenever I went to the dentist, I loved all the tools,” said the co-owner of Charlotte-based Smile Savvy Cosmetic Dentistry with her husband since 2014. Dentistry was the best fit for her skills and dreams because she could have her own business, work with her hands and make her own hours while raising a family and honoring the traditions associated with it.
Her husband has always been enthusiastically supportive of her innovative mindset. “I’ve told her she was going to invent something(s) since the beginning of our relationship, during our dental school years,” he said. “I was convinced in that belief.”
So his reaction to her automated Tooth Fairy idea was as unsurprising as it was immediate:
“That is genius.”
Two years after her light bulb moment, Joya Lyons turned on the switch for Enchanted Traditions. The company’s mission is to promote family connections by creating children’s picture storybooks, keepsakes and merchandise that celebrate and preserve traditions.
Enchanted Traditions’ signature product is the Enchanted Tooth Fairy Box®, which enables kids waiting for the Tooth Fairy to keep that tradition alive—with a twist.
Instead of putting a tooth under his or her pillow that Mom or Dad have to search for without waking anybody, the child puts a tooth in an elegant box on a table before bedtime. The box has a revolving compartment that automatically and quietly switches out the tooth for money during the night—6 hours after the box has been preset.
The box is part of a kit launched in January 2023 that includes the Enchanted Tooth Fairy Children’s Book. It’s a story about Brielle, who discovers a magical tooth box that helps the Tooth Fairy complete her nightly mission despite obstacles. Stickers and letters are included for active playtime.
Now 12, the real-life Brielle loves the book for all its “details and action that make it fun for whoever loses their tooth and makes them excited every time they read the book. I like the box because it’s an amazing way for the Tooth Fairy to collect the tooth, and the colors are pretty.”
Steep learning curve
Getting the Enchanted Tooth Fairy Box to market was no simple fairy tale.
Like many fledgling inventors, the polished but affable Lyons said she generally had “no clue” how to execute a brilliant concept. She remembered thinking, “It has to be simple. It has to work. It has to be quiet.”
And she had to protect her idea. She enlisted the help of a patent attorney to search for similar products—“Google is insufficient”—and when that yielded nothing became confident she would not be stealing someone else’s idea. After the attorney helped her write a provisional patent application, “I could go ahead and make all the details and figure out how it was actually going to work.”
She got a big boost from the Chicago Inventors Organization, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting inventors and entrepreneurs through resources, education and networking opportunities. Lyons called the CIO’s owner, who recommended an engineer who could 3D-design what she described to him for not too much money (he charged her nothing).
“He helped me draw out 3D so I could take the design to a manufacturer,” she said. Not knowing how to proceed next, she went back to CIO, which helped her find a manufacturing company in Tampa. She and an engineer came up with a design, and she excitedly submitted a patent application.
She should have waited. “When I went to the manufacturers, they said, ‘That’s a great design, but we need to refine this and get something that’s going to be more repeatable because it’s going to be something that’s going to be a mechanism that’s done often—and we don’t want it to fail.’”
She had to apply for a patent on the refined mechanism. “They were able to draw another design, and this process took from 2020 to 2022, coming up with the prototypes,” she said.
“The first prototype was horrible, but at least it proved it could work. And it was too big; it sounded like a lawnmower. They had to put so many things in there to make it sound like a mosquito.”
Cost was a factor, as always, but for Lyons that was second to quality. “They said, ‘We have to make sure it doesn’t cost too much.’ I’m like, I’ll price it the way it needs to be priced. And I want it to look like a nice toy, not like it’s going to break after you pick it up.
“I was very, very adamant about the quality and making sure it was quiet and beautiful.”
There is still patent work to be done on the current mechanism, but Lyons is confident and thankful for the help she has gotten throughout the experience.
Unique distinction
A crucial bonus of the Enchanted Tooth Fairy Box is the expertise that comes with it—a product from a mother who understands dental health as well as child development. This isn’t some automated toy from a toy company.
Now, Enchanted Traditions has two U.S. patents and a unique distinction: the only company with intellectual property for an automated childhood tradition device. This means Enchanted Traditions is what Lyons refers to as a “tech-enabled family traditions” company, not just another toy manufacturer.
With sales strong, Lyons’ next goals are to wholesale, get more colors for the box and write other books—all part of the company’s enduring mission to “make life easier and make childhood more magical.”
Black Enterprise magazine and People of Color in Tech (POCIT) have featured Lyons and the Enchanted Tooth Fairy Box, also citing her community efforts as founder of the nonprofit S.C.O.R.E. with her sister to encourage girls to pursue S.T.E.M. careers.
Drew Lyons’ comments revealed the same kind of larger vision and the energy the two get from one another—their own real-life fairy tale.
“Every day, I get a front-row seat to her genius, dedication and perseverance, but this is bigger than having successful traits. It hit my soul in a deep way that this is the most authentic version of her, and I wanted to do my part to see that come to fruition.
“I prefer to be on the right side of history!”
Details
The magical story of the Tooth Fairy and the Enchanted Tooth Fairy Box: youtube.com/watch?v=ii5StTY4wVw