It’s the kind of waterboy-makes-good story that even famed Notre Dame walk-on “Rudy” Ruettiger would appreciate.
Back in 1994, Tiny was nothing more than a stick figure drawn by John Kleban, Inflatable Images’ senior vice president of sales and marketing.
Needless to say, Tiny was way too skinny for the NFL (or even a top-25 college). So a company artist transformed the sketch into a 3-D rendering of a football player with his arms raised in celebration. For almost four years, Tiny waited as Kleban shopped his skills to NFL teams until the Indianapolis Colts finally took a chance on the free agent.
Since then a 25-foot-tall version of Tiny has been to the Super Bowl five times and earned a cameo this season in the opening sequence of EA Sports’ Madden NFL 10 video game.
His 30-foot-tall cousin, Bubba, crouched in a three-point stance, toured with NFL Europe, even dotting the streets of Amsterdam during the 2001 World Bowl.
“Here’s this guy who started out as a little stick figure,” says Kleban, “and I’m in his feet at the Super Bowl. I’m walking around Amsterdam, and he’s all over the place. It’s just phenomenal.”
And now you can bring an 8-foot Tiny or 5-foot Bubba home to pump up your next backyard football party.
Though Inflatable Images had been selling to NFL teams and production companies for years (including the first inflatable tunnel that a team ever ran through for pregame introductions), the company needed a licensing agreement to sell an NFL-approved product at the retail level. The process started in summer 2008 and took almost a year. Each team design needed approval at several levels. All the while, the clock was ticking on Kleban’s hopes to get Tiny and Bubba on store shelves by August.
“As they were being approved, we were already going into production on them,” Kleban recalls. “So we were rolling the dice a little bit.”
Luckily, each design scored with the league without a single penalty flag being thrown.
The game was far from over, though. After 27 years selling business-to-business, Inflatable Images needed to develop a retail distribution model, working with online retailers such as Dick’s Sporting Goods and NFLshop.com as well as team shops, university bookstores and even mom-and-pop stores.
Ace Hardware made the product available to individual store owners via the company intranet, and in less than 24 hours Inflatable Images had 300 orders.
The inflatable Bubbas and Tinys are available for every NFL team and 29 colleges and universities. Some designs, such as the Alabama “Big Al” elephant, the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers, have almost sold out of their initial run, signaling that Inflatable Images may be first-and-goal to go in its foray into retail.
“It’s been a tremendous learning experience,” adds Kleban, “a fantastic one.”