#168: Uno – Say My Name, Say My Name

The Empire Builders Podcast

Would you remortgaging the house, driving around the country and put your home address in the public for Millions?

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Sample is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

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Dave Young:

Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Sample and we’re talking about empires and ideas that people had that turned into something big. And as Steve started the countdown for the recording, he told me that today we’re going to talk about UNO, the card game UNO. And I got to admit that I didn’t play UNO as a kid.

Stephen Sample:

Oh, you didn’t? Okay.

Dave Young:

I didn’t know anything about UNO until I got married and my wife liked UNO and we taught it to our kids.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

And I learned-

Stephen Sample:

So you played it with your daughters then, did you?

Dave Young:

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. My nephew-

Dave Young:

It’s a vicious game.

Stephen Sample:

It is a vicious game. My nephew used to love playing UNO, so I’d play it with my niece and nephew, but what would be funny is, for whatever reason, he would end up being the one getting all the cards and you have these little hands and he’d be holding-

Dave Young:

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Now the funny thing is he would think it was hilarious that he would have all these. So it was kind of fun because he would find it funny that he’d have, “Well I clearly had the advantage because I’ve got all the great cards because I have half the deck in my hand.”

Dave Young:

Yeah. How can I lose?

Stephen Sample:

How can-

Dave Young:

How could I lose? That’s like me on a golf course. I’ve got way more golf experience than you do because I hit the ball a lot more than you do.

Stephen Sample:

So as soon as I got looking into UNO, I couldn’t help but have all these really great memories of Jeffrey and Robin and playing UNO with them because it really is a great game to play with kids.

Dave Young:

Yeah. It’s fun and, like I said, I always feel bad giving somebody a card that loads their hand up. I don’t know why. That’s just-

Stephen Sample:

The way you are.

Dave Young:

I don’t have that killer instinct.

Stephen Sample:

So just to put in perspective how big UNO is, UNO is the best-selling card game in history.

Dave Young:

Really?

Stephen Sample:

Yes. Number one.

Dave Young:

Okay. By defined as a game specifically with those like that?

Stephen Sample:

With cards, like a card game.

Dave Young:

Yeah, but not-

Stephen Sample:

Selling card game.

Dave Young:

They haven’t sold more cards than Bicycle playing card company.

Stephen Sample:

No. No because-

Dave Young:

But just a specific game.

Stephen Sample:

Yes. They’ve sold 150 million packs in 80 countries.

Dave Young:

That’s a lot of UNO cards.

Stephen Sample:

That’s a lot of UNO cards. It sure is.

Dave Young:

And 80 countries?

Stephen Sample:

Yes.

Dave Young:

See, that makes sense because you don’t need to speak English to play UNO.

Stephen Sample:

Right. It’s very simple. Right. You don’t need instructions for it.

Dave Young:

It’s numbers and colors. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. So it was invented by Merle Robbins in 1971 in Cincinnati. So the 1970s-

Dave Young:

’71. Okay.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. It was 1970s. Lots of tension. Gas prices are crazy. Gas rationing, Vietnam, the stuff going on with Nixon, and really, people are yearning for a simpler, happier time. And Merle was raised during the Great Depression and in the 1960s he worked in a factory and he was laid off from that factory and he went on to become a small town barber. And he loved playing games with the family. And they love playing Crazy Eights. But what they found was there’d be all these fights while playing because people would forget the rules for the Crazy Eights.

So Merle decided to settle that. So he decided to get a blank set of cards and write the rules on the cards. And instead of suits, he used colors.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Sample:

Right? And so he created this simpler version of Crazy Eights. Now the only thing is the version he created was too simple and the game passed by too quickly. So he needed to create something, add something, that would catch people off guard. So he created the draw four card.

Dave Young:

Oh, okay.

Stephen Sample:

Right? Like the card, here, you got to take, so-

Dave Young:

Four cards, yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Which is something that allowed you to really stick it to the competitor. But this is now a new game. He’s now actually built a new game. And then the wild card was added where you’re allowed to change color. So while it started from Crazy Eights, he did create a brand new game by bringing these ideas into it. And so he wants to make the game a business, but he has no idea how to do it. He’s a small town barber. So 10 of the family members pool their money and they decide, “Well with this money, he should be able to go and print 5,000 copies. Let’s make 5,000 copies of this game.” Now one of the family members creates the name UNO.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Sample:

Now there’s some controversy here. There’s this legend that in some document somewhere it says some weird thing where it looked like UNO was a misspelling of you or something like that.

Dave Young:

Or UNO. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Sample:

But whatever it is, here’s the brilliance of the name UNO because UNO is one, right?

Dave Young:

Yeah. It’s Spanish for one.

Stephen Sample:

In Crazy Eights you would say, “I’m down to my last card. Last card.”

Dave Young:

Ah.

Stephen Sample:

What do you do in UNO? UNO.

Dave Young:

UNO. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

You yell the name of the game in excitement while you’re playing the game. Talk about an anchor.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

And in some games, UNO’s yelled four or five times.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Then you’re-

Stephen Sample:

Right because you may not be able to put that card down now you pick one up and then you put it, “UNO.” “UNO again.” “UNO again.” Right? But the name of the game is yelled in excitement while playing the game. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Dave Young:

Especially if it’s being played in public somewhere with a group of people. Let’s say you’re sitting in a ski lodge-

Stephen Sample:

Yes.

Dave Young:

And there’s a group of eight or so people playing this game over by the fireplace.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

And every now and then one of them’s yelling, “UNO,” and they all seem to be having a good time.

Stephen Sample:

Right. Oh yeah. I hadn’t even thought about that. So it’s a brilliant, brilliant name for a game. So basically, they want to create this and Merle goes out and he finds this young designer to design the cards. And one of the things that is really important on this, that this designer caught onto is the game is fast and simple. So he needed a design that reflected that. So we take a look at the design of the cards, quick to see, very fast, very simple. The original color was not the red and black that we see today. The back of the cards was avocado green. Remember that color? Well it was being used a lot in the ’70s.

Dave Young:

Yeah it was. Appliances.

Stephen Sample:

So Merle goes to find out how much it’s going to cost to get these 5,000 packs made. Turns out it’s $8,000, not five that had been raised amongst family. Most of the family members dropped out and now he only has $2,000. They say, “Look, we’re not putting more money in.” So it’s 1971 and he literally bets the house on this. He takes out a mortgage.

Dave Young:

Wow.

Stephen Sample:

Merle bets the house. The first run of UNO, but he has no connection to the game business, he has these 5,000 decks, and he starts selling them out of the barber shop.

Dave Young:

Wow. Okay.

Stephen Sample:

So he makes a few sales, but not a lot as you can imagine. It’s not like you’re going to sell a lot of cards out of the barber shop. So he decides to go on the road to sell the game at campsites. He said, “This is a family game. People will play this at campsites. So I’m just going to-

Dave Young:

In campsites?

Stephen Sample:

“I’m going to play this game with people in campsites. I’m going to create word of mouth. I’m going to sell the game at campsites.” So he goes on the road. So he would literally play the game with people and they would buy it. Eventually he sells all the games, but it’s months on the road.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Months on the road. So he returns home with a small profit, but he’s 60 years old. That’s a lot of work. It takes a toll.

Dave Young:

No kidding.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. One day, there’s a knock on his door, Bob Tezak shows up. Bob Tezak is a mortician, owns a funeral home and has a flower shop. But he had stumbled on the game and he loved it so much because somebody brought it to family thing and he loved it so much he decided to buy the product. And he realized the product was from this guy in Ohio. Merle’s address was printed on the cards.

Dave Young:

Nice. That’s smart.

Stephen Sample:

Right? So Bob hops into the car, goes and drives to see Merle, and offers him $50,000 over five years plus royalty.

Dave Young:

Wow.

Stephen Sample:

And Merle takes the deal because Merle’s like, “I’m tired, I’m 60. You know what? This gives me enough money. I can close the shop and retire.” So Merle closes-

Dave Young:

And royalties.

Stephen Sample:

“And I’m going to get the royalties.” Tezak forms a company called International Games and they work out of an empty room in the flower shop next to the funeral home. They change the avocado green to that now iconic black and red.

Dave Young:

And that black and red has that swirl. I mean, it looks like action. Those cards look like they’re moving.

Stephen Sample:

Yes and that was the whole idea, right? Sales are slow. They sell 500 games, 500 sets of cards in the first year. And the 1970s was really wild in the toy business. It was really all about electronics and futurism and all of those other things. So he was really struggling to find a retailer to pick up the game. Really, really struggling. But he notices that there’s this new retailer that’s up and coming called Walmart.

Dave Young:

Ah. Okay.

Stephen Sample:

So he goes to Bentonville to meet a buyer who gave him an almost immediate no. Now here’s where Tezak got lucky. Who’s he bump into in the hallway when he’s walking out?

Dave Young:

Sam Walton?

Stephen Sample:

Sam Walton.

Dave Young:

No kidding.

Stephen Sample:

And Sam says to him, “Well what are you doing here?” “Oh I’m pitching this idea.” Shares it with Sam. Sam’s like, “Love that idea.” Turns to the buyer, “We should buy this.” So it is Sam Walton who put UNO into Walmart. And at the time, it was also great because Walmart was exploding. Between 1976 and 1981 UNO sales tripled every year, boom, boom, boom. By 1981, they’re selling 11 million decks in a year. Guess what Merle’s commission was on that, his royalty. A million cool dollars.

Dave Young:

Nice.

Stephen Sample:

Right? Bob has this big jet, big headquarters, fancy cars. They start selling UNO overseas. There’s this whole thing where they try to renegotiate Merle’s commission. Merle holds his own. Merle keeps the deal, which is all great. And in 1992, Tezak sells International Games to Mattel for a cool $40 million.

Dave Young:

Nice.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. So look, everybody does well. But here’s the thing I admire about Merle.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

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Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Sample:

So he creates this game. They create this game, they love playing games, create this game, he’s selling it out of the barbershop, and he could have stopped there, right? “Well it’s not selling.” And he went, “Well it’s a family game and I don’t have money.” And here’s the thing is, when you don’t have money and you got to promote something, you got to spend shoe leather. I’m amazed at the number of times people come to me, “Well I’m trying to build this idea and I don’t have money for marketing and I don’t have time to put into it.”

Dave Young:

Right.

Stephen Sample:

You can’t build something without time or money.

Dave Young:

They’re interchangeable, especially at that point.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. When you’re a startup, if you don’t have time, you better have money and if you don’t have money, you better have time. There’s not a magic formula where you can sprinkle pixie dust and it takes off. Haven’t come across any that’s done that. So he puts in shoe leather, the camp, and I get it. Families play games at campgrounds. “I’ll take this to campgrounds. I’ll play the games.” Now what we all know is, in some ways you could sit there and say that, “Well the Bob Tezak thing was lucky.” But on the other hand, it was kind of inevitable because what he was doing is he was putting the cards out there. And what we all know, and again, we see this all the time in marketing, things don’t always connect A straight to B. Right. Bob Tezak came across that game somehow because somebody came across it in a campground and Bob Tezak was not at the campground, but from that campground experience, made it to Bob’s home. From Bob’s experience, Bob made it to Merle.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

And that is how things work, more times than not. But-

Dave Young:

And if nothing else where he put it, he put his address on the cards.

Stephen Sample:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

So he was seeding. That was his ad for, “Hey, if you want more of these games, I’m your guy.”

Stephen Sample:

I’m your guy.

Dave Young:

Because you can’t get them in a store.

Stephen Sample:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Contact me. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

Contact me. Yeah. And he did the leg work. And I still believe, even if Tezak didn’t happen, if he did a little bit more of that, eventually that word of mouth would build up. Like we saw that in Yahtzee, right? Yahtzee was like, “Get it out there, get it out there, get it out there,” and eventually it created its own momentum.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

So in the end, Merle did really well for himself. Merle did really, really well for himself and created the best-selling card game in history.

Dave Young:

That’s awesome. What a great story.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

And a couple of people had nice, happy exits from it.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah. Well Tezak did well, but then he didn’t do well because Tezak lost his mind and eventually did some stuff that landed him in jail for 13 years and all this other crap. But if Tezak did well because he got the financial rewards, it’s just he didn’t know how to handle the thing.

Dave Young:

Just didn’t. Yeah.

Stephen Sample:

But the other part that I do like is I don’t like that at one point Tezak tried to renegotiate the deal with Merle, but I do like the fact that Merle held his own and Tezak backed down and look, they all profited and did well.

Dave Young:

All right. UNO.

Stephen Sample:

And what a brilliant name hey.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Yeah. Well what a cool story about a cool game.

Stephen Sample:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Thank you for sharing that on the Empire Builder, Stephen.

Stephen Sample:

All right. Thanks David.

Dave Young:

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute empire building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.