Suzie(left), Terry(center) and Mickie(right) debuting Game Savers at the New York Toy Fair Show in February 2004

OUR STORY

We'll call it Game Savers. One night early in 2003, after enjoying a wonderful family birthday dinner, we were all sitting around the dining room table chatting. At some point the conversation turned to entreprenurial ideas, and a major brainstorming session was quickly underway. Suzie, the youngest sister, threw out the idea of plastic containers for board game storage, and Terry, the middle sister, immediately resonated with the idea, having just cleaned our her children's game closet and thrown away many of the broken down games. What a great idea! Mickie, the oldest, loved the idea too. The concept stuck with us and after a few months of deciding if it was worth the risk to persue, we decided to take the next steps.

We began to familiarize ourselves with mass-market games; their board sizes and playing pieces, and quickly came up with a family of six container designs that would neatly store and organize most of these games. The design was further refined as we researched how these plastic containers could be made, a process called injection molding. During our journey into the world of injection molding, we met so many wonderful people that were eager and willing to donate their time and share their expereince and knowlege to help us learn about the process and the costs involved in a project like ours. Without them we would have never made it this far!

Once we had working designs and a good working knowlege of the process, we found a manufacturer in the USA and raised our required initial investment. In addition to our own personal financial stakes, we found that many of our friends, upon hearing about the concept, believed enough in its success to invest in our little company. OBH Enterprises was born, and we had enough capitial to produce two of the six molds. We chose our Juicy Orange and Electric Blue Game Saver styles to launch with.

Our first version of Game Savers™, was on the market by the middle of 2004, but had some cosmetic issues. With a little more investment capital and some jazzy design enhancements (adding texture and graphics), the current version of the product was created and released in early 2005. With our new and improved product in hand, we continued to exhibit Game Savers at trade shows and were able to secure a product placement on the popular HGTV show "Mission Organization". Following that great, national exposure we quickly had a buzz going. Game Savers were featured in Good Housekeeping, Real Simple and shown on Good Morning America! Now we were starting to see some sales!

By August of 2006, with some really creative engineering, we were able to introduce the third container, Snazzy Purple, by making some modications to the existing Juicy Orange Mold. We also became aware of a demand for a container to store older board games, since these older games had boards that were longer and narrower than their more modern counterparts. We added the concept of "Retro" Game Savers to our designs, and placed it next in the pipeline for Game Savers mold production.

BeachPack Exhibit at the Virgina Beach Gift Show Jan 2009. Inset: Terry (left) and Suzie exhibiting BeachPack at the Dilworthtown Inn Wine Festival in Sep 2012.

How about BeachPack? At this point in our venture, we turned our focus on a new product. Still in the 'organization' family, this new product line grew out of enduring 14 yrs of pain and frustration carting two young children, and all their stuff, 5 blocks to the beach with an inferior Beach Bag. Hating the tote design that slips off the shoulder, hating bags that have none or only one small pocket, and frustrated with backpacks that were just not big enough, Terry came up the brilliant design concept of a Beach Bag that's a backpack with a square bottom and lots of great pockets customized for all the 'stuff' one needs at the beach. With some more detailed design work, and fabric and color selections, the original BeachPack was ready for its debut in the Fall of 2007, with the mini version to follow in May of 2008.

Of course, if you remember, this is when the US economy had its major down turn; unfortunate timing for the BeachPack launch. In spite of this reality, we've had success placing BeachPack in many small beach town shops and in online stores through trade shows in Virginia Beach, Orlando Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Since its launch, we have jazzed up the Original BeachPack with the addition of colorful and charming, beach-themed embroidered embellishments and personalization options on our e-commerce site. Customers can now choose their bag decoration and opt to have a family, business or team name added to the front pocket. We have dedicated customers who believe in the bag as much as we do and we continue to enjoy repeat sales!