Myachis That Changed the World: Number 3

by Crazy Ivan


It's been a pretty long road, working our way through the 10 most influential Myachis of all time.  We started this  countdown at the end of September and still we haven't made our way to the top spot.  A few long hiatuses and a few tangents have gotten us off course here and there, but still we're creeping ever closer to the big reveal, the number one, most earth-shattering Myachi ever made.

But we're not there yet.  We're close enough that any Myachi I mention at this point has to be a game-changer.  It would have to be something that not only achieved legendary status within the Myachi community, but also something that marked the turning of a corner; a significant step forward for Myachi.  Luckily, I know just the sack...

 #3) The Sobe '02 

Known as the "Sobe Lovebus", the "Drain the Lizard" and the "Sobe '02", this sack represented the single largest production run in Myachi history.  In many ways, it could have earned the #1 spot on this list because in so many ways, this Myachi was a "proof of concept".  To understand what that means, we have to go way back to the earliest days of Myachi.

Before he had even taken the name "Myachi Man", Steven Ochs was trying to start a crazy company with a crazy idea.  Like any company, he needed start up capital.  He was hand sewing the Myachis at that point so the costs were low, but trade show space, travel, fabric, gas, web design, marketing, shipping and office overhead all added up after a while.  And that doesn't include any of the Myachi Mobile related costs.

He was able to start the company with essentially the money in his pockets, but if he wanted it to grow, he was going to have to prove that the whole idea could be made to work.  Sure, he could show people how much fun it was to play Myachi and they would buy a Myachi from him.  But could he convince an investor to help him take things to the next level?

The short answer back in the early days was "no".  Even if they saw how fun the game was and saw the little buying frenzies that Myachi Man could whip up just by teaching a few random people to play, that wasn't enough to convince anyone to put down serious dollars or give us a chance in a truly big venue.  They wanted to see dollars and cents.  They wanted to see orders and invoices.  They wanted to see profit, and that, Myachi Man could not yet show them.

And then along came the Sobe '02.  This would be the first major production run of a promotional Myachi.  This would mark the first time a company made a serious investment in Myachis as a give-away.  This would mark the first time a company gave us some serious cash to show up at events and help promote their product.  This would also mark the largest order of Myachis in the companies brief history to that point.  To that point, Myachi Man had already fulfilled a few orders in the tens of thousands and we were already getting the manufacturing done overseas.  But this would be the first time he filled an order for over a hundred thousand sacks.

So financially, this changed everything.  But there's more earning the Sobe '02 its spot than mere accounting.  The other big difference was the venue.  Up to this point, Myachi had been focused on college students and people in their early twenties as our target market.  It made sense that the demographic that was most interested in Hacky Sack would be the one to sell the "Hand Hacky Sack" to.

But Sobe took us to a different demographic altogether.  They took us to the extreme sports crowd and while plenty of them were college aged, the majority were between 10 and 15.  We had, of course, sold to plenty of 10 to 15 year olds by then, but we'd never really focused on them as a target market before.  So at these Sobe events (which included the X-Games and Gravity Games), we saw something for the first time, and it was something that really did change the world.

We saw Myachi Mania.

This would be the birthplace of the Myachi collector.  This would be the birthplace of the Myachi cartoon character concept.  This would be the birth of virtually every marketing decision we made over the next 10 years.  This would mark the first time that Myachi figured out where it belonged.

That was the real legacy of the Sobe '02.  Sure, it proved to the pencil-pushers that Myachi could make money and it allowed us to have our first truly profitable year, but that seems like a footnote compared to introducing Myachi to the Myachi Maniacs.  We transformed as a company in light of what happened there and in a sense, we matured by getting younger.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have the sudden craving for a Sobe...