From the OC swap meet to ‘Shark Tank’

How would one even consider updating — maybe improving — an age-old pub game like darts? Out of boredom, sometimes innovation is born.

Irvine entrepreneur Dustin Berk, 34, and business partner Ken Haton, 30, may have developed just the right product they never set out to create. Their target board game, Ninja Cards, has been a big hit at fairs and toy conventions and was featured Oct. 3 on the ABC reality show “Shark Tank,” which has aspiring entrepreneurs pitching their ideas to a panel of potential investors.

Six years ago, Berk and Haton were a couple of bored twentysomethings traveling for work with an event marketing company. Lots of downtime and monotony on the road led to a large collection of plastic hotel key cards inspiring the game they developed.

Flinging the cards like ninja stars at various objects around the room spawned a kind of competition, with objects like spent soda cans and beer bottles as targets. Other young co-workers started crowding in wherever Berk and Haton were staying, hoping for a piece of the action. That’s when Berk had his seminal entrepreneurial moment.

“When we all started getting our own techniques, and we all started keeping score, and other people were joining in, and one person was the champion and you had to beat him, that was that moment,” he says.

Orchestrating the fun his co-workers were enjoying, Berk knew he was destined to further the idea.

“Being addicted to throwing the cards, we had to come up with a board that works with the cards,” he said, “and that revolutionized the whole card-throwing experience.”

Between road trips with the marketing company, Berk secretly went to work in his garage. He discovered a special Styrofoam material for the large, square wall-hanging target — the basic game now uses a board that is 2 feet by 2 feet.

“When I found the board, and I threw that first card and it stuck in, I went like, ‘holy, crap … this is awesome!” Berk remembers.

He then designed a scheme of colors — red, blue and yellow — and numbers allowing for several versions of different kinds of target games.

“So I kept it a secret, and then I had a revealing at my birthday party (in 2011),” Berk recalls with a wry grin. “It was like an underground revealing, and everybody was in the garage till 4 a.m., throwing it. There were cards everywhere. That was the first time I said, ‘Ninja Cards is a hit.’”

Always keeping his pal in his business plans, Berk called on Haton in Chicago to help launch the project within the toy and game industry. Relying on their event marketing experience, the two took Ninja Cards to the Orange County Market Place swap meet in Costa Mesa for a public reveal in spring 2012.

“It was the same thing,” Berk says of the day at the fairgrounds. “Our tent was just packed. People couldn’t stop throwing it.”

More than just a board game, the cards are designed with ninja characters in different color combinations and point values.

“Not only do we have the game,” Haton explained, “but we have the collector aspect of it as well.”

After the swap meet, they sold out their inventory and went back to work in the garage. Later that year, they took Ninja Cards to the Chicago Toy Fair, where their persistence was rewarded. Within an hour, they had an exclusive licensing agreement with a game distributor.

But the world of retail business is never a sure thing. Within a year, the distribution deal fell apart, and Ninja Cards was back to square one. Enter the next phase of finding investors.

Among the possibilities was the ABC hit “Shark Tank.” Producers thought the concept would make a good pitch for the panel of well-known venture capitalists, who consider a range of ideas, products and services as possibilities for investment.

Coached for their appearance, Berk and Haton slithered into the boardroom — the “Shark Tank” — in full Ninja regalia. Berk introduced himself as “The Red Dragon,” Haton, the acknowledged Ninja Card master, as “The Butcher.”

Adhering to the true ninja code of honor, and the confidentiality agreements ABC had them sign, Berk and Haton would not discuss other specifics of their appearance, although the segment has already aired and is available on YouTube.

Asking for a $60,000 investment for 30% of their company, the pair definitely drew interest, as evidenced by the good time the panelists had sampling the card-throwing game. The partner’s half-hour pitch was shaved to 5 1/2 minutes for the broadcast.

The result was not at all what Berk and Haton expected. The “sharks” did not bite.

“It was a good experience, regardless,” Haton said, “and basically we got a fantastic commercial that reached 7 million people.”

Berk added: “Once it aired, our website had a million hits, and orders were just like ding!-ding!-ding!-ding!-ding!-ding!”

The pair sold out their 400-unit inventory and had orders for 200 more games within 48 hours. More than their sales, the calls from interested investors have been pouring in.

“Obviously we have a lot of work ahead,” said Haton, who plans to relocate here from Chicago. “It’s essentially like your baby, and you want to work as hard as you can to make your dreams become a reality. `Shark Tank’ was just the first step to making that reality happen.”