Student Enterprise @ Purple Door

Background

The story began in 2001 when Rachel was working part-time as a taxi driver in Portsmouth; she had the idea of a board game, which would feature cabs as pieces and the players would have to make their way around a board featuring tourists attractions trying to pick up as much fare money as possible! This is a game for children aged 8 and over called Destination.

Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise Support

Rachel then entered her idea into the Enterprise Challenge competition 2003, and won both Stage One and Stage Two (prizes of respectively £1000 and £2000).  This money helped her to secure her Intellectual Property rights as well as getting a prototype made.

In November 2003, she was able to rent one of the offices available from the Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise to set up her business RTL Games Ltd.

She also started to be an active member of the student enterprise club - a business club run weekly by students that aimed to give the basic knowledge students would need if they are thinking about starting their own business by organising various workshops and speeches from local businesses.

After, Rachel entered her company RTL Games Ltd into the Enterprise Challenge 2004, Stage One, and won a further £300 prize, and then won the £2000 prize in the Enterprise Challenge Stage Two.  Rachel took a gap year in her Law with Business Studies to fully concentrate on the launching of her game, and she benefited both from the Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise (through the mentoring service) and the Portsmouth Technopole support.

Future Projects and Developments

On October 27th 2004, Destination London was launched at Hamleys in Regents Street, and within two days Destination was in their top 10 and by 16th November it was in their top 5 and on 18th November, Destination London was Hamleys best selling game, at number 1!  Destination Portsmouth sold out within 3 weeks of being in the market place..... The launch of both editions was a huge success and RTL Games is now in a much stronger position with a very good sales record.

Rachel's game is now available at many chain stores, including Toys R Us, John Lewis, Harrods, WH smith, Ottakers and many other stores.  She has just returned from New York where Rachel attended the pre-view event of Destination New York, in preparation for the official launch at the New York Toy Fair in February 2006.  Rachel now has a roll-out programme planned for 2006 of 10 cities in the United Kingdom and 5 major capitals overseas - these include Dubai, Rome, Sydney and Toronto.

As well as all this success, RTL Games recently celebrated the 1st Anniversary of Destination London, which took place at Hamley's in October 2005.

Rachel now has 15 editions of Destination!  She has also just signed a major distribution deal with Cards Inc as part of their Master Toy Licence with Warner Bros, for a Harry Potter edition of her game, Destination Hogwarts.  An estimated 500,000 copies of Destination Hogwarts will be manufactured by Rachel's company and distributed by Cards Inc.

To top all this, she is also working with Walt Disney on her first junior edition - Destination Animation, which features characters from Disney Pixar films including Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

The success for Rachel is well deserved and she proved all this by winning the prestigious Natwest Everywoman Award and has also received recognition from Buckingham Palace.