STORE TO STORE.(Yottoy Productions sells toys door-to-door to businesses)

Kate Karcher Clark, president and founder of the seven-year-old Yottoy Productions, and Peter Doodeheefver, vice-president and creative director of same, set out one recent morning to sell their wares to toy stores, lugging a twenty-pound royal-blue canvas bag that was filled with their idiosyncratic stuffed toys. Clark is thirty-six; Doodeheefver is forty. She is five feet two, with the voice and manner of a child; he is a foot taller, and exceedingly calm and benevolent. She is married to a real-estate lawyer, lives on the Upper East Side, and has a four-month-old baby named Grace Olivia. He is a bachelor, lives on the Lower East Side, refuses to have a TV set, and, according to Clark, "reads all the time."One of their first stops was Kidding Around, a store on West Fifteenth Street.

"The lady there will be tough,"Clark said. "Buyers are so opinionated. They find something wrong with everything."Clark snatched one of her favorite toys from the bag and held it close--Harry the Dirty Dog, based on the 1956 picture book of that name.

"We've got to hold on to the integrity of our toys,"she said. "We want them to be affordable--twenty dollars or less. But we don't want to sacrifice any of the quality. Some big companies have tried to buy us, but we've been saying no.”

Inside Kidding Around, they were met by the owner, Christina Clark, a tall, big-boned woman.

"I've got to leave almost immediately,"the owner said. "What have you got there? The Ugly Duckling?"Doodeheefver handed her a seven-inch version of the fairy-tale duck. It had a purple chenille body and wings, a silk chest, and red-orange webbed feet. He also gave her a gold-crowned frog. "I never liked the Frog Prince,"the buyer said. Clark looked distraught. Doodeheefver patiently smoothed the Frog Prince's chest. He said, "Each fairy-tale toy comes with a mini-book attached.”

"I'd rather have a full-fledged book with pictures,"the owner said. "You need pictures, lots of pictures, to hold a kid's attention.”

"And here's our Harry,"Doodeheefver went on, handing her a ten-inch toy dog, in white chenille plush. "Soft and cuddly. With the black spots sewn on, just the way he looks in the book.”