Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro, answered questions about the company's recent layoffs and also addressed issues with overproduction of Magic: The Gathering and the company's overall pivot from toys to games.
The comments came during an interview with the NPR podcast Here & Now Anytime where he talked about the strong position the company is in going forward.
“We've got one of the best game portfolios in the world,” says Cocks. “I think when you talk to Hasbro’s CEO on our second 100th anniversary 99 years from now, I think they'll be talking about how we're still in toys and how we're still in games and how we're talking about the next generation of exciting technologies or play patterns that we can be innovating on. That's certainly what we're trying to build for now, and I think I'm confident we’ll be building for it in the future as well.”
These comments come just months after the company laid off some 1,100 jobs nationwide. That's roughly one fifth of the company at the time.
“We've been going through a turnaround for the last couple of years, particularly in our toy business, making these tough trade-offs around how we preserve our cost base, drive our growth and think about where we want to go in the future of the company," Cocks explained. "They're always hard, especially when they affect people we work with who are friends and colleagues and loyal to the company."
As for Magic: The Gathering, which as seen a dramatic increase in releases and card printings and a seemingly overreliance on Commander and other casual-focused products in recent years, Cocks, who has been a Magic player since 1995, is proud of how the company has been able to expand the brand despite the fact that Bank of America said the company was "killing the golden goose."
"I think it's also important to say a couple of months after Bank of America gave us that rating, they actually raised us back up to a buy," he claims. "I think what we've done with ‘Magic’ over the last five or six years is we've tripled the size of the game. We significantly expanded the overall player base. And we've done that by thinking expansively about who plays it or who could play it."
He continues, "“We've tried very hard to figure out different modes to play it, making it more social and make it more casual in nature while still offering a great depth of play for competitive and highly strategic players. And then we've also done a really good job of thinking through how we can make it more collectible. And as a result, our hobby stores, who are the primary people who sell the game, there's about 10,000 of them around the world who sell it. They've never been more successful with that. And those are small and medium-sized businesses that usually are doing [$200,000] or $300,000 of business a year. And our larger vendors have also done really well, like we've grown across the board and grown both players as well as their engagement."
All-in-all, Cocks believes that he (and Hasbro at large) is in a good place with consumer and with fans of its products such as Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons.
"If you look at customer satisfaction ratings, the generally are up and to the right," he states.
But that's not to say the company hasn't made mistakes under his leadership. It's an admission that Cocks gives freely.
"We have made some decisions that we've had, in some cases, quickly walked back," confesses Cocks. "And I believe it's the strength of the game that we are as connected to the community as we are."
In the end, for Cocks, it simply comes down to the numbers.
"More people are playing our games than ever before," he comments. "They're playing them longer and are more satisfied with the games than ever before."
