Trading cards that matter

Are kids invested enough in conservation that they’ll drop their hard-earned allowance to help preserve land in foreign countries? Amy Tucker, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Matter Group, is taking a gamble that they are.

Creator of Xeko, a trading card game that is based on real plants and animals in “conservation hotspots” around the world, Matter Group is currently working to extend the Xeko entertainment property into television, film and merchandise.

“Kids want playtime to be fun,” Tucker says, stressing that Xeko is an entertainment product first and foremost, not an educational product. Xeko is similar to Pokémon, the highly popular Japanese anime franchise from Kyoto-based Nintendo. Unlike Pokémon, however, Xeko’s characters are based on real plants and animals rather than fantasy characters.

With help from Conservation International (CI), Matter Group designed and launched its first installment of Xeko in early 2006, sending kids (and adults) on a “mission” to Madagascar — just after the launch of the popular DreamWorks Animation (NYSE: DWA) movie. The company launched Mission: Costa Rica in fall 2006 and recently released its third game, Mission: Indonesia. A fourth game is planned for release on Earth Day 2008. The cards and game boxes are printed on New Leaf 50 percent post-consumer paper with soy-based inks, and the cards come in a paper wrapping rather than plastic wrap.

The game is sold in over 200 independent toy stores, book stores, zoos, museums and a select number of Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFMI) grocery stores, according to Tucker. The company is pursuing a contract with a larger chain store, which Tucker could not disclose. “That’s one of the largest debates we have,” she says. “To reach the mass market, we have to be in big-box stores.”

Tucker, a panelist at the 2007 Sustainable Industries Economic Forum in Seattle this fall, founded Matter Group with investments from friends, family and angel investors. While Matter Group won’t disclose financial information, the company contributes 4 percent of net sales to CI. In 2005, CI received nearly $6.9 million in corporate donations.