CH. 11 DEVELOPING AND MANAGING PRODUCTS.
A key part of what FUHU does to this point is maintaining sales during their present growth stage in the Product Life Cycle for the Nabi 2.Below is an excerpt from INC magazine dated September 2013, which details the companies moves in the growth stage.
Because the company makes only $5 or $10 profit on the Nabi devices themselves, this is where the money is. Later, Mitchell shows me removable stickers, called Nabi Frames, that retail for $5.99. "These are awesome," he says, his eyes gleaming like Christmas morning. "It's like printing money, right?"
September will be a big month for Fuhu, if everything goes as planned. The company will release an audio dock attachment that converts the Nabi into a karaoke machine. There will be a special-edition Disney Nabi, preloaded with Disney videos, that will sell exclusively at Best Buy, and a special-edition Nickelodeon Nabi that will sell exclusively at Walmart. There will be a Dream Tablet, designed especially for DreamWorks. DreamWorks Animation, which committed $5 million to Fuhu's latest $65 million round of funding (putting the company's value at $280 million), now has an executive on Fuhu's board.
Mitchell and Fujioka believe this is just the beginning. Mitchell sees the Nabi as a distribution channel for children's content of all kinds. "At the end of the year, I'm going to have four million screens out there," says Mitchell. "That's like a whole TV network." Fuhu has a partnership with Japanese mobile provider KDDI to produce a Japanese version of Fooz Kids, and later this year Fuhu will launch in China--looking to use the Huis and their Foxconn connections to help the company sell not just to affluent Chinese consumers but to the whole education system. Fuhu is also taking another crack at Pinq, this time with a line of home audio products."