Sunday, August 22, 1999

Card company reaches for younger generations

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BY MIKE BOYER
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Chris Reilly, United States Playing Card Co. pressman, inspects the color reproduction of Pokemon cards. (Yoni Pozner photo) | ZOOM |

        United States Playing Card Co. hopes its efforts to renew interest in playing cards come up aces. Concerned that members of generations X and Y aren't playing cards as often as their parents and grandparents, the Norwood playing card manufacturer is shuffling the deck a bit.

        Their strategy: an aggressive effort to position card playing as an inexpensive way to have fun and foster interaction between children and their parents.

        “Card play is still very strong with older demographics. People 40 and over have a history of card play,” said Allen McCormick, marketing manager for the 132-year-old company.

        “All our research has shown when people see the Bicycle playing card name, it brings back memories linked to the family. Usually as a child, playing cards with their grandparents,” he said. “But there's a U in the demographics. People in the 19-to-30-year-old age group don't play cards any more for fun.”

COMPANY MILESTONES

• 1867: Founded in Norwood as Rusell, Morgan & Co.   • 1881: Begins printing playing cards.   • 1894: Name changed to United States Playing Card Co. Vintage brands include Bee, Bicycle and Aviator playing cards.   • 1993: Company begins signing licensing agreements for card decks to expand sales and tap new markets.   • 1994: Company bought by President Ronald Rule and other corporate officers in a leveraged buyout, following a bidding war with the New York investment firm of Forstmann-Little.

        Privately held U.S. Playing Card has the dominant share of the playing card market, with sales estimated at more than $100 million. The company, which employs about 600 in Norwood, annually produces more than 100 million decks of cards for such brands as Bee, Bicycle and Aviator.

        But Mr. McCormick said other playing card manufacturers aren't the only competition any more.

        “When we look at the competition, it's not just other playing card companies, but makers of other games, CD-ROMS and other companies that create fun things for people to do,” he said. “What we want to do is bring back the awareness of the social interaction you get by playing cards.

        “When you spend a couple hours playing cards, the game is just a vehicle for the social interaction that's going on. You talk, share your views. The cards become secondary to the social interaction. You don't get that renting a video or going to a movie.”

        As part of that effort, U.S. Playing Card launched several initiatives this year.

        • It sponsored the Bicycle Wild Cards Collegiate Championships, to foster interest in card games among college students.

        The championship held in June at Paradise Island in the Bahamas brought together 50 college students, who won local and regional competitions at more than a dozen colleges and universities to compete in national championships for hearts, spades and euchre. Euchre champions were Quinn Parks and Jeffrey Gardner, students at Wright State University in Dayton.

        Mr. McCormick said the company is trying to position playing cards as “cool again” for college students. “Where else can you spend $2.99 (for a deck of cards) and have a night of entertainment with your friends?” he said.

        Plans are under way for a bigger college tournament this coming year.

        • A month ago, the company introduced its first children's card game featuring its well-known Bicycle brand.

        The Bicycle Kids is a series of four games — See The World, W3, Total It and Scramble Jamble — designed to enhance the learning ability in ages 4-8.

        The games created by Mr. McCormick and David May, a game designer for U.S. Playing Card, include story lines involving the games' characters — Ace, PJ, Max, Jade and Jester — while developing math, memory, storytelling and visualization skills.

        Each deck, designed to look like a computer game package, includes Bicycle Kids collectible stickers and information on joining the Bicycle Kids club.

        “We started work on these games about a year ago. We knew we wanted a card game that was unique and tied into the cognitive development of kids,” said Mr. McCormick, who tested the games with his own children and students in Norwood schools.

        The card games, which sell for about $5 at mass merchandisers such as Kmart and Wal-Mart, are designed to compete with more expensive learning games sold by toy specialty retailers, he said.

        The response “has been overwhelming.”

        Bicycle Kids brand games is competing in an estimated $171 million U.S. market for card games, according to NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y. market research firm.

        Ed Roth, an analyst with NPD Group, said U.S. Playing Card may face a challenge cracking that market with its Bicycle Kids games.

        “The games category in total has been pretty flat,” he said. “The general feeling is that category is facing a lot of competition from all types of computer games.”

        • Sponsoring a series of radio and magazine ads to rekindle interest in playing cards.

        The radio spots, featuring the sounds of a deck being shuffled and people talking, ran this spring in eight major U.S. cities, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

        “Sales of our Bicycle brand jumped 35 percent in those markets after the spots aired. That's phenomenal for a radio spot,” he said.

        This fall, the company will run a series of ads in magazines such as McCall's, Parents and People promoting the Bicycle Kids card games.

        Mr. McCormick said the company doesn't have any specific sales targets in mind from its marketing efforts. But he's optimistic: “If we get people aware of playing cards, the sales will happen.”

Big winner in Pokemon card game

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