Case Study
Britannia Games Ltd
Company
Britannia Games Ltd was founded in 1995 by London-based Mehmet Hussein, a graphic designer by profession.
Mehmet was very keen on football and in 1995 invented an interesting card game involving strikers, midfield players and defenders.
The first samples were linked to his local north London teams, Arsenal and Tottenham and sold in their shops. Sales were slow so Mehmet began working with Albert Wright, now of MCA. During a business review meeting they explored the idea of a more generic product to go alongside the idea of individual club games. Soccer Master was born.
Mehmet continued to invent new products including a whole new niche market with the creation of Supermarket Sweep, based on the daytime TV programme hosted by Dale Winton. This lead to further products based on TV shows such as Family Fortunes, Play Your Cards Right, Catch Phrase, I’M a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, right up to 2008 with Eggheads and Hell’s Kitchen.
This company took around 10 years from start up to achieve sales of just under £1 million in 2005.
Challenges
The first was to market Soccer Master and the company. Mehmet invested in a license to sell Soccer Master as a Euro 96 licensed and endorsed product. The main route to market was via retailers. After desk research Mehmet paid for a stand at Olympia for the International Toy Fair exhibition and Albert helped Mehmet man the stand and deal with enquiries.
Perseverance led to John Lewis agreeing to take Soccer Master as part of their Christmas range and was an important breakthrough. However, sales failed to cover the cost of the license, production and promotion and some new thinking was needed.
Acquiring customers via exhibitions was not cost effective but at one show Mehmet visited the stand of another Games developer and manufacturer called Upstarts, who also acted as agents and distributors for independent games companies. John and Tom, who ran the business, had been involved with the invention of Trivial Pursuits and went on to develop and sell the I Want to Be a Millionaire board game.
Mehmet realised he was unlikely to succeed on his own so teamed up with Upstarts. Upstarts became Britannia’s agent, taking much of the sales, storage and administrative work off Mehmet’s shoulders allowing him to concentrate on product development.
Coaching
In the early years Albert provided Britannia with advice and information, especially around marketing and finance.
With the opportunity to work through Upstarts, Albert accompanied Mehmet to Ipswich to help negotiate terms and continued to support him at exhibitions, but now as part of the larger Upstarts family.
This relationship lasted over 6 years until Upstarts encountered difficulties and eventually stopped trading. Without the ‘back office’ support from Upstarts Mehmet would never have succeeded.
Albert also helped raise the profile of the company and applied for business awards, which led Britannia to winning the National Westminster Bank north London Business Enterprise Award 1995 at a gala dinner event.
Albert also helped conceive the idea of featuring real branded products to make Supermarket Sweep more realistic. By working with a marketing company, Britannia negotiated financial support from the manufacturers for featuring brands in the game.
While sales were rising through retail outlets, the business needed another boost. During an exhibition, Mehmet noticed a stand for Sales Partnership, who dealt with catalogue companies such as Grattan and Littlewoods.
Albert helped negotiate new contracts with Sales Partnership and this second route to market saw the products into the Argos catalogue too.
Comment
Albert Wright, Millionaire Mentor with MCA says: “We helped Britannia grow by acting as a sounding board for ideas, raising their business profile by entering and winning awards, assisting with partnership negotiations, clarifying objectives and producing business plans and financial forecasts”.
We also helped through advising Mehmet on such things as finance, costings, employment law, disputes with suppliers, correspondence and administration.
Business owner Mehmet comments “Without the help of Albert Wright as our business adviser we would never have grown to have sales of almost £1 million. He helped build my confidence, as well as giving the advice and support we needed. He became a virtual and vital member of the company.”
Postscript
By December 2007, Britannia Games Ltd was in financial difficulty after Mr Hussein got into profitability and cash flow challenges and had made an unsuccessful diversification into Medicare. By March 2009 the company had ceased to trade.
