Hasbro deal a feather in Gamer Graffix’ cap

WALL GRAFFIX posters stick to walls without adhesive and can be easily peeled and moved. Gamer Graffix CEO Chris White recently launched a line of laptop skins. /
WALL GRAFFIX posters stick to walls without adhesive and can be easily peeled and moved. Gamer Graffix CEO Chris White recently launched a line of laptop skins. /

Gamer Graffix is redefining the concept of “skin.” First it invited consumers to “skin” their video game consoles. Pretty soon they’ll be able to skin their laptops and their walls.
After increasing its revenue by 104 percent from 2005 to the end of 2006, the 2-year-old Cranston company, which pioneered vinyl skins to customize electronics, has reason to believe that it can make that term a part of consumers’ everyday language.
This month, Gamer Graffix signed a multimillion dollar, five-year deal with Hasbro Inc., with a three-year renewal option, to license a variation on its skin technology – Wall Graffix, which are high-resolution posters that can be applied to flat surfaces, peeled off and reused.
“We’ve had tremendous growth,” said Chris White, CEO of Gamer Graffix, which employs 20 people in Rhode Island. “With Hasbro, it’s just going to add to that.”
Gamer Graffix’ products are made with a patent-pending technology that adds a high-resolution design to premium-grade vinyl. The skins can be applied and peeled off easily without leaving an adhesive residue that would void the manufacturer’s warranty.
White said the market potential for his company’s products is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The company recently launched a new line of laptop skins, which will be sold in Staples, Office Max and Office Depot starting this summer.
The application possibilities seem endless, he said. Gamer Graffix is looking for skin applications in the automotive, home décor and cell phone industries. And Logitech recently asked Gamer Graffix to “skin” its speaker systems.
“We’re looking at this as a category,” White said. “That’s what was hard in the beginning – convincing buyers that this was not just another gamer or electronic media accessory.”
Todd Rywolt, vice president of marketing for Hasbro, called the Icons technology “the latest in pop culture innovation” and “a great new expression of Hasbro’s products and brands.”
“It’s like a billboard” for other companies’ intellectual property, White said.
Often companies, especially in the gaming industry, will ask Gamer Graffix to create a skin that showcases images from a new video game, he said. The company will then use the skin to promote the release of the new game.
Hasbro, for example, will be releasing Wall Graffix posters on June 2 to support the July 4 premiere of the “Transformers” movie. Hasbro is rebranding the product as “Flypaper,” however; in the fall, it will also issue “My Little Pony” and “Littlest Pet Shop” posters.
Wall Graffix is a next-generation poster that uses high-resolution graphics die-cut to the shape of characters such as Superman or, in Hasbro’s case, Transformers. Like the game console skins, the posters are easy to remove and reapply to walls.
Unlike Gamer Graffix’s other licensing agreements, such as with Sony and Nintendo, the deal with Hasbro gives the toy company the ability to make its own skins and Flypaper with Gamer Graffix’ technology.
In return, Gamer Graffix will be paid royalties anytime Hasbro uses the technology. Gamer Graffix also will benefit from Hasbro’s marketing and distribution to major retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart.
Also, exposing children and pre-teenagers to the product will help develop the younger consumer base for future products, White said. That’s not to say some items, especially the Transformers, won’t appeal to his company’s current customer base, whose average age is 28.
But White said it’s not the big licensing deals that drive Gamer’s success. About 60 percent of the company’s business still comes from its originally designed generic products.
“I think we hit a great product at a great price point. It was just timing,” he said. And now, “we’re so firmly entrenched in both our retailers and our fan base … that it’s been very, very difficult for any [competition] to keep up.”

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