LeapFrog Lows

The recession does not seem to be good for the educational gaming company LeapFrog, which announced rather depressing Q4 2008 results earlier this month. The company has been trying to do a turnaround and with its new product, Tag, the 2008 holiday season was extremely critical.

Catching Up on Readings: Hydro Alchemy

Since the last catching up list on April 26, you may have accumulated more backlog. What’s with the Yahoo-Microsoft frenzy? Here’s a quick cache of the articles since then that you may want to make sure you read:

Trend Radar 2008: Edutainment

Jeff Katz told me about the Tag when I interviewed him in the Fall, but I promised not to write about it. Well, now the announcement is out. Tag is the new reading product from Leapfrog, replacing the LeapPad franchise that took the company to heights in 2003.

Trend Radar 2008: Turnarounds

2008 seems like a year in which several major companies are positioned for turnarounds. Whether or not they would be successful is another matter, but there is enough discontinuity in each of their markets, that turnarounds could happen. Here are some to watch:

Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 11)

SM: Let’s say in 5 years you are cleaned up and you have achieved a level of credibility and stability and market power to do interesting things. How do you see yourself leveraging that brand. What are the top three things you would do? JK: I think the main thing we want to do first

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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 10)

SM: Do you work with foundations? JK: We do. We do not have what I call a structured program with any one foundation. What we have done in the past, in fact annually we do something with one or more foundations. SM: Given the strength is in the reading area, and Bill Gates is spending

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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 9)

SM: In the next 10 years, do you see LeapFrog morphing into more of an online company as opposed to a toy company? JK: I think we will be more of a content company, and by that virtue, I think we will be more online. SM: At some level these chips may not be necessary.

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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 7)

SM: Even the kids are very connected these days. JK: I was fond of saying that for whatever reasons the memo of the Internet did not make it to the company in 1999. They had that failed effort and the management team was disenchanted. We had to get our products connected so that notion of

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