‘Balloon’ Firm Has World on a String as Business Booms

Less than a year after forming the company, the founders of Bigger Than Life Inc. were frantically producing 37 of their giant inflatables for the Super Bowl half-time show, and business has been booming since.

“It went bananas on us,” said Dick Dickson, president of the company he co-founded last May with Mark Bachman, executive vice president

Five months after starting, the firm needed more space and had to move. Bigger Than Life surpassed the $1-million sales mark in January.

“We anticipate reaching $2.5 million in sales by the close of 1986, and we have only begun to tap the potential market for inflatables,” Bachman said.

Wife Thought of Name

Bachman’s wife came up with the name for the company, which specializes in designing and manufacturing huge vinyl-coated nylon forms that are inflated and sold for advertising and promotion purposes.

“That name has been magic for us,” Dickson said.

Among the more than 400 inflatables the company has produced are a 20-foot Jeep for American Motors Corp., giant bottles and cans for Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Dr Pepper and Royal Crown Cola, a 20-foot purple cow and towering Popples characters for the 1986 International Toy Fair in New York City.

Other clients include Anheuser-Busch Inc., Procter & Gamble, Wendy’s, Chevron USA and General Foods Corp.

The Super Bowl order was the company’s big coup.

The 37 inflatables were part of an outer space motif for a half-time show at the January game. It included 16 planets and a giant city. The project took 67 days of round-the-clock work and had to be kept secret until the day of the event.

The company is producing 20 to 30 inflatables for the World Cup soccer event in Mexico in June and is working on a giant walk-in Honda four-wheeler inflatable that Dickson said will hold 600 people. It would be used at sales meetings and promotions.

“You could walk in and have a cocktail with the chairman of the board,” Dickson said.

Dickson said inflatables are a good marketing tool because they are innovative, eye-catching and usually cheaper than conventional large-scale advertising.

“We are the alternative means of advertising,” he said. “There’s no other medium in the world that can touch our cost.”

Cost Effective

A can or bottle, which can be mass produced, can be purchased for $2,000. The cost of the more intricate Super Bowl extravaganza was $157,000--an amount that beats the price of television commercial time for the game, Dickson said.

Dickson, 50, and Bachman, 27, previously worked for another San Diego firm making inflatables. They are equal owners in Bigger Than Life along with two investors who put up $300,000.

Dickson coordinates many of the marketing and sales efforts, while Bachman is more of an innovator and creator.

“I’m 50 going on 27, and he’s 27 going on 50,” Dickson joked.

The atmosphere at the company’s plant in El Cajon on San Diego’s eastern fringe is relaxed and open. The inflatables are manufactured there and the 46 employees include artists, seamstresses and silk screen painters.

Lots of Creativity

Dickson said the staff is bulging with creativity.

“We’re totally 100% a people company,” he said. “Our little suggestion box in back is loaded with ideas that most people could retire on.”

A humorous touch is a horn hanging down the hall from Dickson’s office that sales people can blow to announce a sale.

It all fits in with what Dickson said his philosophy is--”Smile and have fun.”

“I mean that,” he said. “You’ve got to have fun at what you’re doing or you’ve got to find something else--and this is fun.”

Dickson’s mind spins with new ideas, and one with a host of inflatable animals particularly intrigues him.

“I’m waiting for someone to say, ‘Build me a zoo’--and I can do it,” he said.