Vol. 38, No. 18

1-31-2007
By: Julia Harris

Sweet smell of success

Game inventors not just playing around

Most people would be discouraged if someone told them their product stunk. To Dale Harris, a resource planning analyst for Ohio State’s traffic and parking services, it’s music to his ears.

Harris has spent two years and $51,000 developing a children’s board game called “P.U.: The Guessing Game of Smells.”

“I’ve always wanted to make toys and write children’s books,” says the soft-spoken father of six. “Growing up, everybody told me I had to get a real job and do something useful.”

It was the drive to be “useful” that propelled Harris through the marketing M.B.A. program at Fisher College of Business. He earned his M.B.A. while working at Olive Garden, holding down a position as a teaching assistant, raising a family and nurturing a persistent dream of creating children’s games.

Harris and Russell Pinto, who also was employed at Olive Garden, came up with the game while working on ideas for restaurant marketing.

Their marketing scheme included the use of food scent cards, similar to the scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers many children enjoy, as a way to lure customers back for a meal. They contacted a number of vendors, including Print-A-Scent in Chattanooga, Tenn., which prints stickers, labels and cards smelling of anything from chili and popcorn to ashtrays and suntan oil.

“They had done work for the University Extension office, which used the cards to let students know what it smells like living near a farm,” Harris said.

A funny thing happened after they ordered some sample cards from the company.

“My kids destroyed them,” Harris said. “They loved them. They couldn’t stop scratching and smelling them. The same with Russell’s daughter. We figured we were onto something.”

Harris started researching whether or not a scratch ‘n’ sniff game already existed and found nothing like it at any of the major retailers. After that, it was just a matter of figuring out what scents to use in the game (there are 30 different scents), what the board would look like, who the characters would be and — of course — financing the whole process.

“I almost mortgaged my house,” Harris confesses, “but my wife wouldn’t let me.”

Instead, he and Pinto entered the Fisher Business Plan Competition twice and got connected with some investors.

“I had a hand drawing of the game that I e-mailed to different buyers and they really liked the concept,” said Pinto, who ended up quitting his job at Olive Garden to focus full time on contacting buyers and working on licensing issues.

After making the rounds of potential investors, giving presentations and watching grown men and women giggle as they pressed foot-odor-scented cards to their noses, Pinto and Harris ended up with $320,000 to launch their business, which they named Unknown Games LLC. More than two years, 13 focus groups and countless iterations of artwork later, they produced 5,000 games and have sold or given away more than 1,000 of them.

They even found a venue for selling the game in privately owned Larson’s Toys and Games at the Shops on Lane Avenue. After a cautious initial order of six games, the store ended up selling more than 300 copies at $19.99 a box.

Since the game’s release, Harris has already started work on modifications to future versions, such as providing air-tight bags or containers for the scent cards so the smells don’t cross-contaminate the whole box.

The men want to create more games — some that feature the same cast of characters in their first game. To realize their dream of getting into retailers like Target or Wal-Mart, they need to have seven or eight viable products.

“I have lots of games in my head, and I’d like to do storybooks about these characters,” Harris said. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do.”

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