Ben Preiss
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Peter D. Adkison, the guy responsible for the Magic, The Gathering and the Pokémon card crazes, is betting on the Bella Sara card game to become the next tween sensation. The first two were targeted at boys, and nobody has ever scored a hit selling cards targeted just at girls. The Bella Sara card feature mostly horses and unicorns and don’t have a cartoon or video game to back them up (not yet anyway). Sounds like a losing proposal, right? Not so fast. The cards have a code that unlocks the horses stable on a website, where they can groom their horse. The card also contain positive messages that moms love. Bottom line, 30 million sold worldwide 10 million in the US with Toys “R” Us, Target and Wal-Mart now taking them nationally.  Mr. Adkison said he had wondered for many years if it would be possible to introduce a card game that would appeal to girls. In Bella Sara, he said, he believes he has found it.
“It matched my instincts, the idea that each horse had a code to unlock part of a Web site, this virtual world strategy,” he said. “It was a combination of elements, plus I liked the positive messages on the cards.”
He persuaded Toys “R” Us, Target and Wal-Mart to test Bella Sara in Seattle and San Diego for the last three months of 2006. Sales were strong enough to persuade those chains to take the cards national in March 2007.
Hidden City Games started running national television ads for Bella Sara that month on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. The company plans to run a new ad with the release of each new series, every four months. The third series, called Ancient Lights, was introduced last month.
The Web site had one million registered users by last month, a rise of 200,000 users from September, Mr. Adkison said. Hidden City Games said it had sold 30 million Bella Sara cards worldwide, 10 million in the United States. The company has raised $15 million in venture capital from Rustic Canyon Partners and Trinity Ventures for marketing and Web site enhancement.
Lena Michaud, a Target spokeswoman, said the chain bought the cards hoping that they would appeal to the girls’ mothers: professional women with children are Target’s “core guest,” she said.
“The mothers are purchasing the cards for their daughters, so it’s a good way for us to connect with those mothers as they come through the door,” Ms. Michaud said.
(nytimes)References: hiddencitygames, nytimes Filed In: |
