Las Vegas Confidential

We’re not really the gambling types, but we do enjoy some great entertainment. Nevertheless, it’s not what brought us to Sin City, although the shiny neon world in the Nevada desert kind of suits our style. At least the aspect of providing people with fun and joy…

Then again, we came to Las Vegas on business. The Las Vegas Market tradeshow beckoned, and we heeded the call as exhibitors for the second time now. Our US business had been making great strides recently, so FIFTYEIGHT PRODUCTS decided to showcase the latest products at the most important tradeshows, including New York, Chicago, and Atlanta as well as Las Vegas.

After establishing our own US-based entity and distribution in 2018, it was great to see the interest in our quirky characters and quality porcelain made in Germany take off in the United States.

After an initial focus on setting up our online business in order to make our products available to all consumers across the country, we are now directing our resources towards establishing the brand in retail, which we still believe is the best way to see our products.

As Managing Director Max Zimmermann puts it: “We exhibited in Las Vegas with a completely new design of our booth. Open, airy, transparent, with bright colors, wood tones and accessible from all sides. We showed how our products can be displayed to customers in an approachable and emotional manner. A harmonious synthesis between design and product.”

FIFTYEIGHT’s Managing Director Marc Eckart agreed: “The initial discovery, touching the products, feeling the quality, inspecting them from all sides. This full spectrum of emotions can only really be offered in retail. Those who visited our booth in Las Vegas were able to make this experience.”

The feedback from our visitors was univocally positive. The booth also featured a perfectly integrated big-screen display, showing a film reel of product highlights as well as our animated TASSEN films. But wait, aren’t the films voiced in German language, and in a heavy dialect native to the Frankfurt area at that?!

Not anymore! Because we have gone all out to bring our films to American audiences. Not just by dubbing or localizing our existing films. Instead, we created three new TASSEN films especially for the United States in close cooperation with bona fide Hollywood comedians who voiced our characters. The resulting films bring our cute products to life with a unique, audience-appropriate sense of humor.

And the occasions for those films are as American as it gets: Thanksgiving, X-Mas and the Super Bowl! Have a look on our very own US YouTube channel to check it out and have a laugh.

With that said, the outing in Las Vegas brought a lot of fun to our retail audiences. At the same time, it was also ‘tough business’. Our co-founders and CEOs Marc Eckart and Max Zimmermann manned the booth themselves, which brought a direct understanding of the market and personal connections with retailers.

Also a chance to see how customers think and what their most important requirements are.

Max and Marc worked well as a team, which is second nature at this point, since the two have known each other since kindergarten.

Since the two also share a lot of private interests, they used the opportunity to explore Las Vegas and its cultural sights in what little free time the hustle and bustle of the tradeshow allowed.

One of their personal highlights included a visit in the Las Vegas Neon Museum, the only place dedicated to preserving and showcasing the iconic neon advertisements from the Las Vegas Strip for posterity.

We highly recommend anyone with an interest in design, graphics, and typography to make a pilgrimage to this neon-colored wonderland.

With that said, our trip to Sin City was anything but a gamble, but a memorable and fun experience.

See you next time!