reveal entertainment

Gday folks

Found this article on Reveal. Pretty good article (and accurate except that they state Reveal is a private company).

Cheers
Livas1

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/dec/20/abilene-business-is-fun-and-games/


Abilene business is fun and games
Saturday, December 20, 2008




Reveal Entertainment makes learning child's play

By Kelline Linton

[email protected]

Shelly Chapman enjoys playing card games with her 17-year-old son, but when they first began to play, he accused her of tricking him. The card games were not the usual blackjack, poker or hearts. These card games involved math.

Local company Reveal Entertainment, 1250 Petroleum Drive, sells more than 120 colorful and innovative products around the U.S., including learning games that involve math, geography or history.

"Each Reveal toy and design is really aimed at benefiting the mind," said Chapman, manager of Friendze and Hannah Jane Collection.

Reveal is a privately held company that produces and markets creative games and toys, including a marshmallow shooter, Candyman board game and a paper football setup.

Jeff Berndt, president of Reveal Entertainment, began the company in 1996.

Although Reveal did not begin in a garage, it had small roots.

"We started out in the old Business Innovation Center in a one-room office," Berndt said. "We only had one product--Triopoly."

Although Berndt said success was a relative term, he felt his entrepreneurial experiences were a learning curve. It taught him how business works, including how to produce products in China, how to import and export and how to finance, sale and market.

"It's been an entrepreneurial endeavor," he said. "We've gone through some of the most difficult times in the U.S. economy."

He said the company had to overcome a lot of obstacles in a strange 12-year period.

Reveal endured the typical start up stages of a business where 80 percent of companies usually fail in the first five years, according to a study done by Inc. magazine and National Business Incubator Association. As soon as Reveal began to establish itself, 9/11 occurred and shook the economy. Now the company is dealing with a potential recession.

Berndt said the game industry is somewhat recession proof.

"During recessionary economies, historically, games have done very well," Berndt said. "If you look back at the recessions in the 80s, we had Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary launched in those times. If you go back to the icon of the industry, Monopoly, it was released during the heart of the Depression."

He said people want inexpensive entertainment they can enjoy over and over at home or with friends.

"Games, video games, puzzles and books should do very well in this type of economy," Berndt said.

Reveal's sales have remained steady with its busiest months occurring right before December as retailers purchase its products to sell in their stores as Christmas presents.

From the first Triopoly game, Reveal succeeded in building its product selection over the years. Most of its products and ideas actually come from outside the company.

Runoff was brought to Reveal by a school teacher who had multiple sclerosis. She did not want her disease to stop her from teaching, so she created a game that allowed her to teach from her bed.

"She needed someone to help her sell it and take it into market, so we licensed the rights to the game and took over manufacturing for her," Berndt said. "We went out and sold it into retail."

Other games like Farkel Party are not licensed by Reveal but are owned by different companies; Reveal helps them sell their products.

"In that aspect, we are a classic distributor," he said. "We buy the games from them and resale them to our retailers, and they sale them to consumers."

Reveal's main retailers are Barnes & Noble, Go Game Stores, mail order catalogues and specialty retail stores around the country, including Hastings, Comics and Collectables and Friendze in Abilene.

Chapman said Reveal games are popular with Friendze's customers.

"We sell a lot of their firetrucks," she said. "The card games are also popular because they are very good."

Although the Abilene stores do not carry the whole Reveal selection, shoppers can purchase any of the company's items at its local offices. Its products cost between $10 and $30.

Like many of Reveal's products, the game DOA was invented outside the company by a husband and wife team from Seattle who were working in their garage.

"One of the opportunities in the game industry is the world is filled with bright and creative people who know how to create a product," Berndt said.

He said the problem is that these inventors with their one product companies have a hard time getting the attention of the retailers.

"They don't give them the time; for logistic purposes, they really have a hard time buying a one product company," Berndt said. "So we try to come alongside creative people and help them get their product to the market."

Berndt sees about 400 to 500 new game ideas a year, but a lot of them are repeats of existing products.

"Each year I probably see 10 movie trivia games; I don't need to see anymore trivia movie games," he said.

Reveal chooses to pick up game ideas based on their unique qualities or retailers' interest. The company seeks to create a target market of all ages.

"Our hope is to be broad enough to appeal to different tastes," Bendt said. "Games appeal to children from four to 104."

He said Reveal's motto is to make people laugh or make them learn, and in the best case scenario--both.


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Some of Reveal's games
Reveal's games and toys are diverse.

DOA, a game that won the Mensa award, challenges the mind with its semi-combination between chess and tic tac toe.

Commotion is like Charades on steroids.

Runoff is a trivia game based on U.S. history, geography and civics.

To play Runoff, a person must answer the trivia questions. Every correct answer earns the player five electoral votes which are then pledged into a state. The object of the game is to get enough electoral votes to capture a state and eventually become president of the United States.

Runoff sales increase every election year.

And while the marshmallow shooter, blower or bow and arrow might not aid with any learning, it does offer a fun time.