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INVENTING A STREAM OF B2B RECURRING MONTHLY REVENUE FROM A B2C LEADER

How do you take a luxury consumer product for households and create a stream of recurring monthly revenue from corporate clients?  

For KillerSpin, the world leader in premium table tennis, the business opportunity didn’t seem possible. Afterall, ping pong tables are typically one-time purchases, and paddles and balls don’t make-or-break growth goals

The Challenge

Hundreds of millions of people play table tennis. They play in their basements, clubs, even on their dining table. It brings people together, creates experiences and relationships. That’s what the KillerSpin brand is all about — but translating that message from B2C to a B2B market meant expanding the business model and inventing a new product that had no prior sales from a buyer pool that did not yet exist, with no proof of concept.

The Solution

KillerSpin tapped ParadigmNEXT to help invent a recurring sales model by extending the brand and the celebrated experience it provides, with new positioning as a service for employee engagement, workplace culture and more.  

The team conducted extensive market research, tasked first with validating the concept, modifying it to fit the needs of the widest possible audience, and then developing and executing a go-to-market strategy. While the new offering was still table tennis, it was repackaged to support the creation of ping pong rooms within offices, provide a mobile app, and even host visits and demos from ping pong pros, delivering a turnkey workplace benefit to drive employee engagement, collaboration, and bonding experience in the office.

ParadigmNEXT clarified the value proposition and refined the narrative with new messaging and collateral to support it. A new website was created to showcase the sub-brand, UnPlugNPlay. The team also activated a content pipeline with compelling conversations to make the case for table tennis, with landing pages for individual audiences and an active blog filled with articles, press releases and graphics. Traffic was delivered from social media and automated email marketing, among other organic visitors driven by press and word of mouth. 

The most successful of all were 10 live experiential activations and storytelling collaborations with the initial corporate clients that created mutually beneficial exposure and naturally led to a video series, which was syndicated by multiple media partners (including Forbes, Entrepreneur and Chicago Innovation). Various success stories, marketing activations events, and interviews with satisfied subscribers brought the story to life through shareable videos to be used as a KillerSpin sales tools, as well as recruitment assets for the companies benefiting from the tables.

 

In addition to HR executives and decision makers at leading corporations, ParadigmNEXT also targeted property managers of commercial buildings seeking more thoughtful amenities with activations that ranged from on-site tenant appreciation day at Willis Tower and events at the Metropolitan Club to success from expert panels at BisNow and The Real Deal forums that trickled down to residential applications in condo and rental building community rooms.

The Result

The UnPlugNPlay program delivered an incredible way to revamp one space in a workplace and underused amenity space in commercial and residential buildings. The newly created structure provided a more distinct focus with a clear divide between audiences, with early wins that drove custom table sales to almost 3X of marketing spend in the first month, with 5X ROI inside of six months. Post launch, sales grew by 300% in the first half of the year, more than 15,000 leads were generated, and awareness exploded among the Chicago business community, and throughout the country. Best of all, KillerSpin had an efficient model for a new offering that satisfied their request for recurring monthly revenue and exceed their expectations for exposure.