NVision moved in on posters with a high-visibility sales strategy and a profit margin to drool over. The plan: to sell its Holusion Art Prints in shopping malls, first from freestanding carts and kiosks, and later in mall arts-and-crafts and frame shops like Deck the Walls. The mall carts and kiosks were a brilliant stroke: they made the 3-D posters self-advertising, like hula hoops or Frisbees. Each mall cart, to borrow Baccei's conceit, was like a breeder reactor. Excited shouts of "I see it!" fetched crowds. Local newspapers and TV stations picked up the craze. Sales shot up higher.
The posters retail for $19.95 to $24.95. Figuring in a keystone markup for the kiosk vendor or store owner, that means NVision receives around $10 for a poster it probably pays about a quarter to have printed. "It's been lucrative," admits Bielinski, whose headquarters staff now totals 25, including computer artists who labor as long as two months per poster. "What we did shrewdly in 1993 was take the time to set up a good nationwide distribution system: 10 reps with warehouses across the country. By doing everything ourselves, we created more overhead, but we also get the lion's share of the profit."
And Baccei, odd as it sounds, is grateful for every nickel of NVision's success. Not only did NVision help fan the fad, but its ample profits helped lock it into a poster-dominated strategy that enabled Baccei to counterattack by launching his long-term vision for N.E. Thing Enterprises. Fate dealt him another helping hand in the person of Mark Gregorek. Gregorek, a veteran licensing agent, acknowledges the frequency of the megahit in the very name of his company, Blue Moon Licensing. Like a prospector knee-deep in a mountain stream, he pans for gold in dusty flea markets, boardwalk T-shirt stands, and trendy urban gift shops. When a friend faxed him a copy of Baccei's Pentica ad, Gregorek tried to see into the picture but couldn't -- until one day in February of last year, when he was leaning back in his chair, talking to someone on the phone, and, bingo -- seeing was believing. "I knew this was it, the mother lode." Gregorek pressed on.
Baccei, who was ready to learn about licensing anyway, agreed to a meeting the day after Gregorek called. One indication of how well they hit it off: their only contract, more than a year and many millions of dollars in the pipeline later, is an oral one. Not only did Gregorek's contacts prove invaluable, he became a key sounding board and strategic adviser.
One of the first things Gregorek and Baccei discussed was the importance of creating not just a brand name, but the brand name in the emerging field of 3-D illusions, which at last check showed at least a half dozen companies pushing products. In his (yes, out-of-print) book How to Create Your Own Fad and Make a Million Dollars, Ken "Wacky Wallwalker" Hakuta begins chapter 4, "Name That Fad," by writing: "Think if I had kept the name of the creature that arrived by mail that day: 'Octopus.' . . . As a book is judged by its cover, so a fad is judged by its name." The name Stare-e-os, Baccei and Gregorek realized, was hampered by audio implications and simply wasn't powerful enough. They brainstormed: Inner Eye, Deep Vision -- and then agreed on Magic Eye, the name Baccei's Japanese publisher had used.
Next they made what was a tough decision, especially with a short-life-cycle fad product: to forgo a good chunk of short-term profit in the hopes of longer-term gains. The thinking: Let NVision have the big profits in posters. How many posters are people going to buy, anyway? N.E. Thing would make it look as if it were trying to wrestle posters away from NVision by simultaneously licensing images to several poster companies. Meanwhile, by getting into books, comics, school supplies, clothing, computer screen savers, and greeting cards -- a whole universe of other licensing deals -- N.E. Thing would fan out quickly, capturing markets, earning royalty payments, and simultaneously reinforcing the Magic Eye brand name.
The strategy worked as planned. "When Tom licensed his images to poster companies, it scared us. We were afraid of lower-priced products," admits Bielinski, who has maintained his prices by emphasizing art-print quality and by himself licensing images, such as Bugs Bunny and Marilyn Monroe, for his prints. Although N.E. Thing's $2 million in sales last year (a quantum leap from $150,000 in 1992, when Baccei was still president of Pentica) didn't come close to the $13 million in revenues NVision claims for 1993, Baccei expects 1994 licensing royalties to exceed $10 million. He's confident he'll gain the upper hand in what he pegs "the fad year" for his product. That, from the start, was one of his goals.
Another was to leverage the fad, so that after its inevitable peak and diminishing public interest, he'd not only be "set for life" financially but also be set up for the next line on his rÉsumÉ. This, according to Baccei's plan, will involve a character named Wizzy Nodwig, an adolescent wizard with his hat pulled down over his eyes. The name is a playful twist on computer jargon WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). With Wizzy, what you see is "nod" (not) what you get. Wizzy first appeared as part of the Magic Eye logo on the cover of the second book and, only at Baccei's insistence, was added a few weeks after the debut of the Universal Press Syndicate feature as a two-dimensional prop for hints to its hidden image.
