By: Larry Seidman & Morgan Ward, Dimensional Branding Group

DBG is a proud member of Bay Tek Entertainment family and your internal brand building, or licensing division. Many Bay Tekkers have asked us, “What do you do? How do you benefit the company”? Simply put, we work with Bay Tek to build our own core brands and revenues, along with various other fun brands such as King Kong.

We build these brands by expanding their presence at retail, increasing loyalty among fans and creating new fans with fun new products. The way we do this is through licensing deals. These work kind of like rental agreements. Companies pay us to use our brands to make new and innovative products.

For example, we have worked with Bay Tek and the Skee-Ball brand team to create new products, such as toys, that Bay Tek does not make on its own. Why? Because we’re not set up to make tee shirts. Because we don’t sell games at Target or Walmart. It would take time and money to get into these businesses. So, DBG works with category manufacturing experts in all the various industries which allows us to increase Skee-Ball’s revenues, equity & value. These manufacturers are called “licensees,” while we, the owner of the Skee-Ball brand, are the “licensor.”

So, through licensing we take the key features of our Skee-Ball game alleys into table top or floor or outdoor games, lotto tickets, or apps. Many of these have been successful to date. In fact, that Skee-Ball floor game continues to be a top seller at Target. We feel good because it brings joy to fans who can now enjoy Skee-Ball in their own homes. And, it introduces the game to new players who may otherwise never experience the thrill of landing the ball into the 100-point hole.

The other half of what we do is avoid hurting brands by stopping manufacturers from using them without our permission. And we don’t license brands onto products that don’t make sense. For example:

  • Skee-Ball Yogurt. Even if Skee-Ball yogurt tastes great and we all love it, why would anyone want to buy it?
  • Skee-Ball cosmetics and age defying crèmes. I mean, we all love Skee-Ball, but would we really want to put the brand essence on our faces?

As concepts each of these may sound like winners, but, because they don’t really make sense, they might make people laugh at us and damage the Skee-Ball brand.

How do we do all this?

We take what makes each brand special and unique and place it within the context of the things you see at the mall, online, in magazines, and even in homes. From there, the product innovation cycle begins. As we go through this process, we continue to ask these questions:

  • What is the strength of the property?
  • Who is the brand loyalist? The target consumer?
  • Is the property graphically rich with a compelling story? Will new products help build this story?
  • Will these new the products appeal to the brand loyalist? Or will they alienate them?
  • Will they sell? Where will they sell?

Building successful brands is the name of the game. Working with Bay Tek gives us the opportunity to bring the fun of redemption arcade games outside of Family Entertainment Centers to fans worldwide. And we get to work with R&D to bring fun brands into our world like Connect 4 Hoops.

Written by Larry Seidman, Managing Director, and Morgan Ward, Licensing Director.