200,000 Foam Tomahawks: That's Not Chopped Liver

When a record 750,000 Atlanta Braves fans turned out for a parade to celebrate their team's near-victory in the World Series that ended Oct. 27, thousands of them were chopping the air with little foam tomahawks. Thanks to the Braves' spectacular season, the now-ubiquitous--and increasingly controversial--souvenir has made one local entrepreneur rich and showed just how quickly Major League Baseball can hop on a trend. Braves fans began their trademark chop--dreamed up in the early 1980s by the fans of the Florida State University Seminoles--late in the summer when the Braves were closing in on the National League Western Div. title. That's when foam-bedding salesman Paul Braddy had his inspiration. Driving from Nashville to Chattanooga, Tenn., on a sales call, Braddy was listening to a Braves game when radio announcer Skip Carey suggested fans needed some tomahawks to help them do their chopping. Braddy stayed up all night fashioning a foam tomahawk that looked like the Braves' logo. Then he showed it to executives of ARA Leisure Services, the concessionaire at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium. They ordered 5,000, and a craze was born. On Aug. 15, Braddy, 37, quit his $60,000-a-year job and started selling tomahawks full-time.

SOFT GOODS. Now, Braddy has 23 employees and a 20-state distribution network. Customers such as Kmart Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have ordered from Braddy's company, Soft Novelties Inc. So far, Braddy estimates, he has sold about 200,000 tomahawks at an average wholesale price of $3 each.