Carrera Revell’s Frank Tiessen on the slot-car set that buyers had to see to believe…

Well, it’s lovely to catch up, Frank… When I saw you at New York Toy Fair, you had a product that I absolutely LOVED! If somebody hasn’t seen Speed Arena: Race in a Case, how would you describe it?
It’s very simple: it’s a slot-car racing set built into a carry case. You just unfold it and it’s ready to play – no setup required! You just plug in the controllers and you’re good to go. It really is as simple as that.

It IS as simple as that! Ha! And part of the reason I love it is that I like a really great name on a product, and Speed Arena: Race in a Case is spot on… So much so that I wondered if you had the name before you had the idea. How did it come about?
No, the product idea came first. But you know, our product development team only came up with it a little over a year ago. We started looking at it pretty quickly. As you can imagine – when you’re looking at it from the sales side – you’re always thinking, ‘This should be the price point. How can we make this?’ But sometimes the product people say, ‘No, that’s not possible!”

And was that the case here?
Oh, yes – because it was such a big product to tool in terms of manufacturing. We all had our ideas as to what the price should be, but when the development team came back and said, “The retail price has to be this’, we said okay… Because, if you’re selling, you’re never happy with a higher retail price, are you? But it is worth it.

And I guess it had to be a slightly high price because – as always – you’ve not compromised on the quality. It’s beautiful.
Correct! As a brand-name manufacturer, you cannot compromise on the quality, even if you’re always under the pressure of hitting a price point. Because – at the end of the day – if you desperately want to go to that lower price point, you do have to sacrifice quality… But that will just hurt you in the long run. But with Speed Arena: Race in a Case, I think the product really is worth the price because the play value is so big.

It also answers a lot of questions, especially from parents. We all love our regular slot tracks, but you know how long it takes to set up a full set… But with this one, the kids just unfold it when they want to play. And even better – from the parent’s perspective – when they’re done playing with it, they just fold it up. It’s done – gone! So it doesn’t sit on the kids’ floor forever; you don’t have to tell them for a week, “If you’re done playing, put it away!”

Yes, that’s the great challenge, isn’t it?! A kid never wants to play slot cars more than when they’re told to put them away: “But MUM! I’m uuuuusing it!”
Exactly! Additionally, of course – because this one is in a carry case – you can take it to your friends. You can take it to your grandparents. It’s very practical.

And price aside, Frank, what was the biggest challenge on that product?
The biggest challenge for us was the size because the item is still relatively big and the major retailers of the world – Tescos, Argos, Walmart, Target – all have their set shelf layout. They do not want to deviate from that. So if it doesn’t fit on their retail shelves, they do not compromise.

No, they’re not going to build special shelves for you, are they?! And am I right in saying that when you first showed Speed Arena: Race in a Case to potential buyers on video calls, they were a bit lukewarm?
Yes! When they saw a PowerPoint presentation of this, they didn’t really get it that much. But then when they saw it at the trade shows, it was a big hit for us. Everybody who saw it in New York gave that same feedback! Everybody was in love with it. There was not a single bad bit of feedback. Everybody was into it once they saw that case – how you flip it open and you’re done.

Does that happen a lot in your experience? Buyers can’t quite get the feel for it over a call?
It depends on the product. Things have changed in the last five, six years since the pandemic. Everything went online and a lot of sales meetings stayed that way – Zoom calls and Teams meetings; online presentations – because it’s just so much more convenient, especially for the big retail buyers. But yes, some things do get lost that way because you will not always get a feel for the functionality or the size over a video call. It’s just how it is.

This is why, despite all the expenses involved in trade shows, we still think they’re necessary to really showcase your product. Also, what we especially like now for the US are the preview shows, now running twice a year: April and September. They’re not traditional trade shows… We have our big showroom in LA, so we have a 1,200 square foot showroom there and buyers can take a little more time because they’re not dealing with the hassle of a traditional trade show.

Is that the appeal? That you get a good deal more time with the right people? Yes, you get your full 30 minutes, maybe even an hour with a buyer where you can sit down, go through the whole range and show product properly – not as a fly by!

Interesting! And if I remember correctly, when we first spoke for Mojo Nation – a piece which people can still see here – you used to be a buyer, didn’t you?
Right. I was on the other side of the table for 30 years of my career… So I know that buyers are always pressed for time. If you spend even a little more time in one booth, you can’t catch up before the next meeting – and you miss things.

You’re absolutely right, of course! But now that people have really seen Speed Arena: Race in a Case, how’s it selling?
It’s phenomenal! At the moment, we’re sold out from our warehouse. We’re waiting to get the first product back in stock; that should be in about four weeks. And although we started with just the Disney: Cars Race in a Case back in March, we’ll also be getting the Mario version too.

Oh! You have the Mario license for that as well?
It’s a Mario Kart World product for the new Switch game. And then we’ll also do a version for our in-house IP, Formula Kids. So it’s little Formula One-ish cars; nice characters.

So three different versions of that? Since March?! Sounds like you’ve got quite a quick product development on that!
Really, really quick. Normally, it takes a little longer for us, but these we did at speed. We’re really happy with the results and the feedback. Even if some of the major retailers aren’t in yet, there are a lot of mid-tier retailers which completely jumped on it. And we will sell a few this year.

Brilliant. Well, I think it’s wonderful; easily one of the most interesting things I saw in New York. What else is going on for Carrera Revell?
On the Carrera side, we’re developing things that I really cannot talk about! But there will soon be some technical innovation on the Carrera side. For Revell, our traditional model kits continue, but we’re also branching into other areas. We have our book nooks, which are also doing also phenomenally well. We have the Harry Potter license for that, and we have Game of Thrones. We also have Lord of the Rings out now, and some more great licenses coming next year which we cannot talk about just at the moment.

Fantastic! You mentioned the book looks. They’re licensed book nooks that you build yourself?
You build those, yes. They’re really easily built though… I do have to admit that I’m not the Revell model-kit guy! When I was a kid, I never built these things because I never had patience, but even I can build the book nooks! You normally have somewhere between 80 and 100 pieces that easily fit together.

Even the light fixture is easy to install. And they really look great, especially for those fandoms. I mean: if you have all your Harry Potter books, or Lord of the Rings books or whatever, and put them onto your shelf with the book nook in the mix, they just really look good.

They do! You also made a step did you not, into construction brick play? What were you thinking there?
Mainly that we like that market, but that we don’t want to compete with the leading brand in this category because, let’s be fair, they will always be the number one brand there – and they earned that reputation. Fortunately, we can do other things in that space because there are areas that the big brand would never touch… They don’t do anything military related, for example.

And that’s quite rich pickings?
Yes. We know what’s good in the military market, of course, through our model-kit history. And demographically, we know that a lot of kids that grew up with construction-brick kits are now 40, 50, sometimes 60 years old… So maybe they want to revisit that play pattern with a military theme, decent-sized sets and the quality that people expect from the Revell brand.

What was your first product in that line, Frank?
This year, we released a submarine; the U-boat that was made famous in the 1984 movie Das Boot. It’s a replica of a U-96 made with about six and a half thousand pieces. It’s one meter and 20 centimetres long, and has a very detailed interior: torpedo launchers, the captain’s bunk and all of that. So that was our first item… Then we followed it up with a tilt-rotor aircraft, the Bell Boeing Osprey. That’s about 3,700 pieces. Because of its wingspan, that model is enormous. The next one coming is a F-14 Tomcat with the Top Gun license, because it’s Maverick’s plane.

You do get some great licenses, don’t you?!
We do! We have some wonderful partners. Of which, something else that really blew up a couple of weeks ago in Germany was our model of a World War II Spitfire, but with the Iron Maiden license. It has a little Eddie figure inside the cockpit and the Iron Maiden design on it. Our German office put an image of that on Instagram – just to say it’s coming – and Iron Maiden picked up the post. It got over a million views within a day!

Amazing! Well, thank you, Frank, for making time to chat… Your product range looked amazing on the stand this year and I hugely enjoyed talking to you about them.

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