Trio Hopes to Hit a Home Run With Inflatable Bat

Although Len Hall, Henry Einhorn and Greg Patus scored big locally with their first sports novelty item, success on a national level of their business “ballgame” remains a long shot.

The inventors of the San Diego Padre “Fan Clubs”--the inflatable baseball bats that are being sold by vendors at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium--are among the hundreds of would-be entrepreneurs who each year approach big-league sports teams with what they hope are get-rich-quick schemes.

“We usually get a couple guys a week who have some kind of idea,” said Charles Sinnen, novelties manager for Service America Corp., which operates vendor stands at the stadium. “Everybody’s got a product, but very few of them actually pull through as a winner. It’s a tough market to break.”

Not surprisingly, many of those would-be success stories are hatched in garages and basements across the country.

Greg Patus had tinkered with his Fan Club idea for more than a year before linking up with Hall and Einhorn, who brought along some basic marketing and manufacturing ideas. Hall, who has “been in several types of businesses, mostly in marketing,” described Patus’ original design as “Neanderthal, a caveman-shaped club made out of flat polyfoam. Greg comes up with great ideas, but he’s no businessman.”

With Patus’ design and Hall and Einhorn’s business connections, the trio formed a company, Fan Flaire, to market the clubs. They linked with a Taiwanese manufacturer, developed some prototypes and worked out licensing agreements with the Padres, the California Angels and the New York Yankees.

That’s more than most garage entrepreneurs ever accomplish.

Hall, Einhorn and Patus have a “strong item,” according to Sinnen, who decides what novelties are sold during Padres games. “We sold four gross the first night and should do about 6,000 this season.”

That’s enough to put Fan Clubs into the top 25% of Sinnen’s novelty product lineup and move Fan Flaire, the trio’s company, out of their garage and into an office. But Fan Flaire still trails the Padres’ heavy hitters. Service America vendors will sell about 30,000 hats and 20,000 pennants this year.

The inflatable baseball bats with San Diego Padres logos on them sell for between $3 and $5 at the stadium.

Fan Flaire Inc. hopes to sell a million of the inflatable clubs next year if financing, marketing, licensing, production and distribution plans fall into place.

That admittedly optimistic estimate is based on signing licensing agreements with professional baseball and football teams across the country, an expensive and time-consuming task.

But the logos are essential. “Without (them) the Fan Clubs are just novelty items,” said Marshall Lucas, who has been in the licensing business for 27 years. “With the right logos, though, they could sell several million.”

The Fan Clubs also might share in the growing college athletic team novelty market, Lucas said.

Fan Flaire’s success in the ballpark, giveaway and retail markets, however, depends on how quickly Hall, Einhorn and Patus can generate capital.

“Very rarely does a mom-and-pop company working out of its garage make it,” said Ralph Irizarry, an account executive with New York-based Licensing Corporation of America, which has been handling retail product licensing for Major League Baseball.

Because major league teams grant licenses that are national in scope, Irizarry is looking for “companies with true national capabilities, and that’s generally not a garage operation.”

“If someone walks in our door, we want to make sure their ‘good idea’ is consistent with our client’s wishes,” Irizarry said. “There are occasions when either the product is in poor taste or of poor quality. There are obvious occasions when the product is inferior, and it’s clearly an attempt to rip off the public because a (major league) license adds a premium to (the price).”

Fan Flaire’s founders acknowledge that they need professional help to survive in that marketing and distribution chain. Although they are handling negotiations with a Taiwan company that produces the Fan Clubs and prints the logos, Fan Flaire is now advertising in Southern California newspapers for the financial backing needed to retain Lucas and others who know more about the business.

“Tons and tons of people approach (the professional teams) each year, and they turn most of them down,” Lucas said. “I do get approached by people from San Diego, but most don’t have the(up front) money to hire me, or they don’t understand marketing, which is the key to it all.”

The bottom line, of course, is how competitive a start-up company is.

“Mom and pop always have a great idea that they want to sell to the world,” said Szabo Concessions and Foods’ Sam Maida, who handles California Angels novelty sales. “But it usually gets too expensive for them to go to the manufacturer when I can bypass the middleman and buy direct from a manufacturer.”

Maida, who is already buying an inflated baseball bat from a Boston, Mass., manufacturer, won’t add the Fan Clubs this season. “I decide on what the price is and how good delivery is,” Maida said. “If Fan Flaire can do it for less than (the Boston company), I might do business with them.”

Baseball club novelty buyers will make their novelty selections for the 1986 season as soon as this season ends. “We’re working on plans right now with our marketing people,” Einhorn said. “We hope to have it lined out by mid-September so that by October, we’ll have everything in gear.”

Fan Flaire learned the hard way about that season’s end buying policy. “We didn’t know that they made all their decisions during the previous October,” Einhorn said. “We lost a lot of good accounts (for this season).”

Consequently, even though Fan Flaire has developed a Fan Club that is shaped like a football, they will ignore the football market this year.

In the premium or giveaway market, they are working with their Taiwan manufacturer to develop a Fan Club that bears the logo of a major cola drink, and are negotiating a contract to supply the Fan Clubs to a local radio station.

In the process they are trying to deal with a capital shortfall. “We know we need to do the trade shows, have money for licensing and advanced fees and royalties, and even though there’s not a million-dollar start-up cost, getting funding has been our biggest delay,” Hall said.