Topps Baseball Case Study

Listen to the Children

Sarah A. Dryer

Project Definition Statement

        Many articles have been written about the rapid decline of the sports card collections market. Many strategies have been implemented across the industry in an attempt to revive its glory days. All have failed.

        As the spouse of an avid collector if all things Americana- whose baseball collection spans from 1883 to present day and includes well over 100,000 individual specimens—I have sought here to both understand and explain the issues facing the industry as well as develop a strategy to move it back into profitability and relevance in the 21st century.

Background

        Though sports cards have been around since at least the mid-1800s, mainly as marketing gimmicks for sports equipment manufacturers and tobacco companies, the modern conception of “baseball cards”—a rectangular, cardboard trading card bearing the likeness of a player on the obverse with biographic and statistical information listed on the reverse—was largely brought about by the failure of one company, the American leaf Tobacco company, and its rebirth as another, the Topps Company, INC.

        In the late 1930s Morris Shorin, founder, president and CEO of American Leaf Tobacco, faced a dire problem. Though he had a vast network of distribution channels to bring his Turkish- Grown tobacco products to market, he had no supply. Due to international shipping disturbances as a byproduct of both World War I and then later the Great Depression, his imported supply dried up. This lack of supply coupled with the company’s complete lack of domestic production capabilities and the iron-clad oligopoly of the big four American companies left over from the dissolution of American Tobacco Companies under the Sherman Antitrust Act- Shorin faced sure finance ruin. That is, until he listened to his children.

        Under the advice of his four sons, Shorin left the tobacco industry behind complete. He dissolved the American Leaf Tobacco company but retained and exploited his distribution network for the purpose of moving a new (to the American market, as least) novelty confectionary product – bubble gum. Reborn as the TOPPS Company, Shorin and his sons turned their eyes to the production side of the business.

        Utilizing the all-but patented J.B Duke Monopoly making method, Shorin quickly bought up the competition. With the advent of WWII—and the sugar rationing that came with it—Shorin found himself in a peach of a position. Through his ownerships of numerous sub-companies, he was able to pool their sugar ration and was left sitting atop a pile of the main ingredient of almost every confectionary product during a time when virtually none of his remaining competition could get their hands on it in mass quantities. This “lucky” twist of fate helped the TOPPS Company emerge from the war economy controlling huge shares of both the production and distribution side of the American Confectionary industry. With that, Shorin turned his focus to marketing and again listened to the children—though this time not just his own.