Бразилиялық Tectoy компаниясы және ойын индустриясының дамуы

Brazilian toy and electronics company

Tec Toy S. A., trading as Tectoy since late 2007, is a Brazilian toy and electronics company headquartered in São Paulo. It is best known for producing, publishing, and distributing Sega consoles and video games in Brazil. The company was founded by Daniel Dazcal, Leo Kryss, and Abe Kryss in 1987 because Dazcal saw an opportunity to develop a market for electronic toys and video games, product categories that competitors did not sell in Brazil at the time. The company stock is traded on the Bovespa. Soon after its founding, Tectoy completed a licensing agreement with Sega allowing it to market a laser gun game based on the Japanese anime Zillion, which sold more units in Brazil than in Japan. Tectoy would later bring the Master System and Mega Drive to the region, as well as Sega's later video game consoles and the Sega Meganet service. Other products developed by Tectoy include educational toys such as the Pense Bem, karaoke machines, and original Master System and Mega Drive games released exclusively in Brazil, such as Férias Frustradas do Pica Pau and Portuguese translations and alternate versions of video games. Over its history, Tectoy has diversified to include more electronic products, such as DVD and Blu ray players and the Zeebo console. While successful at times, the company has also undergone debt restructuring in 2000 and actions to consolidate its two public stock offerings into one. Tectoy is credited with the continued success of Sega consoles in Brazil far past their lifetimes worldwide. At one point, Tectoy held an 80% market share of video games in Brazil. Tectoy continues to produce "plug and play" dedicated consoles modelled after the Master System and Genesis to this day, which continue to rival more modern systems by Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony in popularity. Tectoy has sold 8 million Master System variants

Tectoy was founded in September 1987 by Daniel Dazcal, Leo Kryss, and Abe Kryss. Dazcal was previously associated with Sharp Corporation in Brazil, while the Kryss brothers were the owners of Evadin, a Brazilian TV manufacturer associated with Mitsubishi. The new startup company sought to create "intelligent toys" designed specifically for the Brazilian market. At the time, Brazil's most dominant toy manufacturer was Estrela, which held 55% of the market share but did not have any interest in electronics. This gave Dazcal an area to focus the new company. Tectoy's revenue in 1989 was US$66 million, of which $40 million was attributed to the console. Some of this success is attributed to the company's strong advertising investments: the launch campaign, which lasted until Christmas 1989, was at an expense of $2 million. By the end of 1990, the Master System install base in Brazil was about 280,000 units. The company also introduced a telephone service with tips for games, created a Master System club, and presented the program Master Tips during commercial breaks of the television show Sessão Aventura of Rede Globo. Like the Master System, the two products were assembled by Tectoy in Manaus, and Game Gear was the first portable console manufactured in Brazil. Sega's primary competition, Nintendo, did not officially arrive in Brazil until 1993; they entered the region through Playtronic, a partnership between Gradiente and Estrela. By the time Nintendo arrived in the region, they were unable to compete with pirated NES systems already available in the region and Tectoy's established following. By 1996, Tectoy had sold 2 million video game consoles and was receiving 50,000 calls a month to their video game tip line. He was replaced as CEO by Stefano Arnhold, who had worked for Dazcal at Sharp and became one of Tectoy's earliest employees in December 1987. Arnhold continued Tectoy's partnership with Sega and released the Sega Saturn on August 30, 1995, at a price of R$899.99. With the increase in the number of commercial Internet users in Brazil, Tectoy also invested in content and Internet access by introducing a Brazilian version of Internet service provider CompuServe, at the time the second largest US subscriber. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte were the first cities to receive the service. The service officially began in April 1997 and was part of a strategy to diversify the company's interests away from being a seasonal industry.

In 1997, Tectoy saw financial losses of R$35.9 million and saw a 32% drop in revenue compared to 1996, a year in which the company also failed to meet its revenue goal. The company managed to reduce its losses in 1998, but still saw a net loss of R$10.8 million. To cut costs, the Brazilian version was released without a pack in game and a modem for Internet connection. The modem would be released months later at a price of R$49.99. By 2000, Tectoy had debts of R$55 million. The arrangement caused a number of Tectoy businesses to be restructured. CompuServe, which had opened the previous year in Brazil, was closed on April 25, 1998. Subscribers had the option of migrating to the competitor Universo Online (UOL). At the time of the closure, Arnhold stated that although the internet market was "promising", the company had not reached the number of subscribers that the company was expecting. In Tectoy's offices in São Paulo, all employees were centralized to one location. With these restructuring changes, Tectoy was able to reduce its annual costs to R$4 million in 2001, half of what it spent in 1997,

After the end of bankruptcy proceedings, Tectoy announced another change to its focus. The company announced its diversification from focusing solely on toys and video games into an "entertainment company". Tectoy intended to introduce more product lines, including DVD players, with a focus on higher profitability and less seasonality to the business. Part of the continued success of the Mega Drive came from Tectoy's partnership with Brazilian television station SBT to release a game based on Show do Milhão, a popular game show. At the same time, the company began using the name "Tectoy" as one word instead of two, and introduced a new logo. Tectoy set forth four business areas of focus in the digital entertainment field: video games, DVDs, digital TV receivers, and toys. One of the first new products was a mobile TV digital receiver, MobTV, in December 2007. During the previous year, Tectoy entered the gaming market for mobile devices. Branded as a subsidiary called Tec Toy Mobile, the company partnered with Level Up! Games, responsible for games like the MMORPG Ragnarok Online. The partnership between the two companies ended in the second half of 2010, when Tectoy sold its stake in Level Up!. Tectoy also began importing the Nabaztag, a portable rabbit shaped electronic device that played music and accessed information over Wi Fi. A fire occurred in the Tectoy factory in Manaus in November 2008, which temporarily paralyzed the production lines of the company. In February 2009, Tectoy launched the first Blu ray player manufactured in Brazil. Subsequently, neither the digital TV receiver nor the Blu ray player have been financially successful. Tectoy announced a partnership with Qualcomm in 2008 for a new project, the Zeebo. Known by the codename "Jeanie", the project was originally announced as a "digital toy" that would talk to "several existing technologies." The new digital platform was publicly released at the end of the year as a new video game console dedicated to emerging markets, with no physical media and low price to minimize piracy. Zeebo was released in Brazil on May 25, 2009, but faced competition from Sony and its PlayStation 2 console, which originally sold at R$799. In turn, the Zeebo was not well received by consumers, selling only 30,000 units rather than the company's projection of 600,000. Fischer stated that Tectoy would be operating at a profit if it had not invested in and launched Zeebo. Faced with this scenario of losses, the Zeebo was discontinued in Brazil in 2011. The game purchase network, ZeeboNet, was shut down on September 30, 2011.

For a short time starting in November 2010, Tectoy produced and marketed 14 inch tube TVs with 12 games included in memory. This production came at a time when LCD and plasma screen manufacturers accounted for 70% of production in the Free Economic Zone of Manaus. Faced with the success of outsourced set top boxes for the South Korean company Humax, which produced them for Sky, Tectoy executives saw the possibility of using the company's factory in Manaus for third party products. This, the company reasoned, would be especially helpful to those who wanted to enter the Brazilian market without investing in their own structure. Tectoy's workforce rose from 200 to 400 employees as a result of the partnership with Humax, which began on December 16, 2010. In the wake of higher revenues obtained in early 2011, Tectoy attempted to auction preferred and common shares. While the company expected to gain R$9.6 million from the sale, a lack of market interest prevented the sale from happening. The company's shares were grouped in 2015. Tectoy was forced to carry out the procedure after actions of BM&F Bovespa against penny stocks. A strategy of the company has been betting on nostalgia to bring back consoles that were sold in the 1980s and 1990s. In March 2017, Tectoy released the Atari Flashback 7, a version of the Atari 2600, with 101 games in memory but without support to insert game cartridges. Additionally, by June of the same year, it was planned to relaunch the Mega Drive, with some additional features such as a microSD card slot. As of the end of 2015, Tectoy was still selling plug and play Master System derivatives. By 2016, the company had sold 8 million of these systems in Brazil.

Tectoy is known for their handling and distribution of Sega consoles in Brazil. The company has sold all of Sega's consoles since 1987, including the Master System, Mega Drive, 32X, Sega CD, despite the Mega Drive being temporarily discontinued Other variations exclusive to Tectoy's releases include the Master System Super Compact, which is a wireless system that transmits to a television, and the Master System Girl, a version of the Super Compact in a pink shell. In 2006, Tectoy released the Master System 3 Collection and the Mega Drive 3, including 120 and 71 built in games, respectively. Additionally, Tectoy built relationships with other developers, including Capcom, Acclaim Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Midway Games. Tectoy would then translate titles from these developers into Portuguese for release in Brazil, and to tie in to popular Brazilian entertainment franchises. Some examples of this include: Teddy Boy became Geraldinho, certain Wonder Boy titles became Monica's Gang games, and Ghost House became Chapolim vs. Dracula: Um Duelo Assustador, based on Mexican TV series El Chapulín Colorado. Additionally, Tectoy ported games for their Sega systems, such as Street Fighter II: Champion Edition for the Master System and Duke Nukem 3D for the Mega Drive, Another product, the Teddy Ruxpin, is a teddy bear that moves and tells stories, licensed by Tectoy for release in Brazil. The Magic Star, a plastic singing toy based on a character from Monica's Gang, was popular in the 1980s and later was rereleased in 2013. Other toys include the Mr. Show electronic question and answer game, as well as Sapo Xulé, a frog doll wearing sneakers, and toys developed for Senninha, a comic based on Ayrton Senna. More recently, Tectoy has also entered the infant care market, partnering with Fisher Price on baby monitors and with Disney on air purifiers and toothbrush sterilizers.