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.

Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 8)

SM: Does this include the kids chatting with each other? JK: At launch we will not do that, and we are targeting that age range where today it is delicate. We have another product that is an expansion of our gaming line, where we are getting old enough kids that we will be able to

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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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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 5)

SM: How did LeapFrog miss the Internet? JK: This is an interesting question, one that I used to ask a lot. The company was, in 2001, very active with a product called MindStation which was a dial up hub where customers would subscribe and get learning applets from LeapFrog. It was a flop because it

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Leapfrog’s Turnaround Strategy May Yield Success in ’08

LeapFrog Enterprises (LF) was last left off in this blog with the March 2007 analysis of a possible turnaround strategy. Unfortunately, if you compare the stock charts then and now, they are eerily similar. To understand what is going on over at its Emeryville headquarters, I sat down with CEO Jeff Katz (great guy) last

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