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Out of the Box Makes Its Own Rules Working Without Reps or Offices Brought Success
President Mark Osterhaus always had a passion for games, and in 1998 he left his career running a graphics shop to start Out of the Box Publishing. Matt Mariani, director of marketing since 2003, told TDmonthly Magazine how Mark turned his hobby into a successful business:  Families are our biggest market. All of our games are different, but we have one general rule — a low barrier to entry. If you’ve never played one of our games before and you’re about to sit down and play, you don’t have to memorize a lot of rules. RETAILERS TALK If we’re successful in making games that people like to play, word of mouth will spread to the retail, consumer and press levels. We’ve found that retailers are willing to exchange information about products as long as they’re not in competition with each other. The biggest obstacle Out of the Box faced when starting out was the standard industry format for selling games — you hire reps and have them do the selling for you. We didn’t think the reps brought enough value relative to their commissions. Our challenge was to build a customer base without reps, and this took an enormous amount of phone time and mailings. About two people were doing what an entire rep group would have done. The funny thing is that there are still retailers who are so used to dealing with reps that they don’t know how to reach us.  KEEP SPREADING THE WORDWe went to a lot of conventions in order to make initial contacts. It’s face-to-face where we have our best chance. We rely on GAMA, Toy Fair, Educational Expo, NFSA — that’s our core base. We do print ads with one trade magazine that reaches everybody, just to remind retailers that we exist. [Editor’s note: They work with ToyDirectory, too.] Our website is used a lot by the retailers, although I can’t say that it’s generated significant numbers — they’re still faxing. WORKING, OFFICE-FREE  Out of the Box was set up so that everyone could work from home. The significant amount of programming and software needed for everyone to access all the information from their homes was a big expense. A team of 14 sales, production, design and accounting people work for the company. We have daily conference calls, and we get together every two or three months for R & D. CREATING, INVESTOR-FREE Out of the Box is self-funded. If we took an average, sales have basically doubled every year. We’ve added plants so we’re using both China and the U.S. for printing. Growth is difficult. It turns out that every year we sell more than we project, and every year we think about producing over our projections. But we’re taking a conservative approach. Company policy is that we’d rather be out of stock than be overstocked in December. If you’re sold out, it really makes the retailers go, “Wow.”  FIND A CRITICMy advice to anyone who wants to get into the business is to not show your ideas to your friends and family. They tend to be polite. A lot of people come to us and say, “Everybody I showed this to loved it.” Instead, go where you don’t know anybody and try to sell your idea. Get feedback from strangers. Then you’ll know if it’s worth pursuing. Start small, and don’t bring your ideas to friends and family. Here’s what’s Out of the Box lately:
 Writer's Bio: Elizabeth Greenspan edits and writes for trade and technical publications. She has interviewed and collaborated with some of the top practitioners in their fields. She lives in Philadelphia and travels extensively for her work. Read more articles by this author |
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