Crazy Cart: A Holiday Hit Nine Years in the Making

In October, Ali Kermani climbed behind the wheel of an electric go-kart and careened around Razor USA’s Cerritos (Calif.) warehouse, using a hand lever to engage swiveling caster wheels and make the car drift through turns. (If you’re not a gearhead or a fan of the Fast and the Furious franchise, you can see what “drifting” means here.) A week after posting a clip of the performance to YouTube, the video had been viewed 1 million times. Today the Crazy Cart, as Kermani calls his invention, is one of the hottest toys of the holiday shopping season.

The Crazy Cart’s success is a story of persistence. Kermani, 34, became enamored of the idea in 2004 while working on the product development team at Razor, the company best known for its folding scooters. A prototype was fun to ride, but Razor thought it would be hard to market, because drifting hadn’t entered the popular vernacular. Convinced that kids would love the toy, Kermani bought the idea from Razor and funded its development with savings and grants. By 2009, he’d improved the design and persuaded Razor to license Crazy Cart from him for a cut of the sales.