Rob Reiss (R&R) - Case Study Example

(Assignment) R&R Case Rob Reiss is business minded person with extraordinary potentials and innovative concepts who established hisown national rep firm in 1959 and specialized in adult games. As he was driven by high ambitions, he sold his concern to an American Stock Exchange Company in exchange of shares. Then he built his own game manufacturing division and remained in this field for next five years so that he could acquire a better stature for his company. As a result of his expertise in the game industry, he could successfully identify the market changes and rapidly respond to those changes.

The ‘Trivial Pursuit’ was the game developed in the Canada and subsequently introduced in the U.S at the Toy Fair. This game got a very good response from the Canadian market although it had been turned out in the US Toy Fair. The familiarity of Reiss in the US game field industry taught him a fact that the sale of games in US is ten times more than that of Canada. He realized that an organized introduction of ‘Trivial Pursuit’ in US with the help of moderate designs and advertisements would bring tremendous demand for the product.

At that time, TV Guide magazine was of great renown across the US so that it had great influence among the US people. Reiss understood that the combination of his experiences and TV Guide’s popularity would make good results and thereby they decided to go on a mutual helping basis. Although Reiss was familiar with the technical sides the game development, he alone could not formulate the ‘questions to be asked’ for the game design process. In order to overcome this difficulty of forming 6000 questions, Reiss sought the help of TV Guide’s employees.

Similarly, the TV Guide was a mere licensor to the project and thereby all the responsibilities of introducing the game into the market were imposed on the shoulders of Rob Reiss. In addition, he was needed to raise another $3000, 000 to finance the production run before the first sales volumes had been realized. The strong will power of Reiss led him in that situation and he joined his friend, Sam Kaplan who had been running his advertising agency at that time. Assembly and shipping were another problems related with the market release of Reiss’s project.

Kaplan’s relationship with a Swiss colony helped Reiss to tackle this difficult problem and this deal enabled Reiss to minimize the estimated costs by 30%. Reiss also faced some problems in financing the account receivables and collecting the debts; but he efficiently solved the difficulty by appointing Heller Factoring to check credit, guarantee payment, and money collection. Likewise, selling was one of the most major issues aroused toward the introduction of his project in the US market as Canada had already developed a game almost similar to that of his design.

In order to dominate the market, Reiss fixed his product’s wholesale price as $12.50 which was $6.50 lower than that of Trivia Pursuit. Although Reiss was compelled to confront with promotion difficulties also, he could effectively beat the crisis by the thoughtful utilization of the popularity of TV Guide. 2. Though Reiss could achieve whatever he had wished with his strategies, these approaches would not have worked in the case of Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley- the largest game manufactures in the US.

The initial reason of this fact is that they would incur approximately $250,000 as cost of production which was only between $30,000 and $50,000 in case of Rob Reiss. Similarly, they would cost at least $1 million for the advertising and promotion expenses. Neither Parker Brothers nor Milton Bradley would reduce their production expenses to a smaller figure as Reiss did and it would prevent them from adopting Reiss’s techniques effectively. 3. The financial reports indicated that R&R sold 580,000 units of the TV Guide game in 1984 at a whole sale price of 12.

50 and which brought approximately $7,000,000 billings. Out of the sales of $7,000,000, $30,000 was accounted as bad debt in which $15,000 was hoped to recover. Kaplan, the partner of Trivia Inc, got over $1,000,000 net. The innovator of this venture, Rob Reiss also made over $1,000,000 net and it was the result for his hard work. 4. Any other person in the place of Reiss might abandon the venture when crises arose one after another. On the other hand, Reiss could patiently deal with the difficulties which troubled him and his power of foresightedness has eliminated some possible contingencies.

However, Reiss’s creative notions, deep experience, and hard working mentality presented him the deserved success. 5. Reiss has planned another game called WHOOZIT for the next years as a substitute for the trivia games. In my opinion, Reiss must conduct some market surveys regarding the new project since the recent seasons reflected some negative trends in sales. These surveys would also be beneficial to Reiss as it would enable him to assess the users’ requirements on the game features.