S&B Candy and Toy Co. has built its success around the concept of the Winner-Every-Time crane and in the process has tackled nearly every aspect of the crane machine business. Now, the company stands ready to revolutionize the concept on which it built its current success.
The company, which was founded in 1991 from the garage of Brian and Diane Riggles, operates Winner-Every-Time cranes—developing, manufacturing, and selling them—as well as a new line of merchandise machines. S&B provides other operators with just the right mix of products to be successful with cranes.
Over the past quarter century, S&B has grown from a small operator with six crane machines to a fully fledged manufacturer and prize supplier, emerging from humble roots to become a dynamic player in this increasingly complex trade.
S&B was honored recently by the Amusement and Music Operators Association with its prestigious Innovator Award for the Prize Express, their patented unit that combines crane gameplay with a light-driven merchandise game to provide players with a chance to win an even bigger prize or a coupon for a wide range of promotional opportunities.
At the heart of this exciting business is Brian Riggles, a human dynamo gifted with unique insight into the nature of operating prize machines and the imagination needed to translate that vision into products designed to expand opportunity for many other operators.
Prize Express, which won the Innovator Award, was several years in development, and S&B has been granted patent protection for this new attraction. The self-merchandiser, which is comprised of a crane and two keyless prize towers, affords three levels of gameplay.
The first level of play involves the crane component in which a player may or may not win a prize. The second level of the game involves the lights on the game cabinet, where each light can be programmed to a specific value or prize offer.
The objective during the second level of gameplay is to stop the light on a jackpot light, which corresponds with one of the prize towers. The printer will then print a coupon indicating the prize and the winning combination that can be used to retrieve the prize. If a player does not land on a jackpot light, a coupon will print with another promotional offer for the player (like a discount on a product or service equal to the value of the cost to play the machine).
Today S&B has a full route with an array of locations to test their new equipment. Those six original Candy Cranes have turned into a global company with eleven partner factories (two in Taiwan and nine in China), multiple in-house divisions, and a host of products.
When S&B was first expanding, it would bring in one shipping container once every six months. Last year, S&B brought in around 35.
Riggles believes this longtime focus on harnessing forward momentum and innovation is one of the reasons for his success: “Our purchasing power and tech have radically changed; we are developing beautiful new machines now with color-changing LEDs, and the games link together so they all change color at the same time.”
S&B’s crane games have gone from quaint, colorless little games to massive, linkable, LED-infused, unmissable attractions. Though crane play has changed little in a hundred years, the machine’s look and serviceability have revolutionized the industry.
Brian Riggles and the S&B team knew they had a winner in their Prize Express machine gained a US patent, but it was certainly even better to get the recognition by the AMOA when they awarded the prestigious Innovator Award. The future looks bright for S&B with a new generation of cranes featuring linkable color-changing LED lighting.
