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Why The Outlook For The Board Games Business Looks Great!

The consumer and trade media tend to report on the board games business with a short-term outlook i.e. what is happening this Christmas, what is happening with retail this year or reporting on quarterly results from the major stock market listed companies who have board games in their portfolios.

But bearing in mind that most games companies are not reporting sales on a quarterly basis and are typically owner managed or owned by investment companies who typically have a 2-5 year timeframe of reference, this short termism can sometimes allow us to lose sight of the woods for the trees.

The reality at the time of writing this article is that by most measures the board games business has never been in a better position. Here are several factors to justify this bold statement:

1. Market size (as per reported public domain data) suggests the market is up and has been nearly continuously up for a decade or more. This is not true for every product category.

2. Breadth of product has never been greater – going back about 10 or 15 years the board games category was a bit staid with many different versions of more or less the same thing in the market. The issue was that there weren’t as many places to sell games as now, and there wasn’t as much strength and critical mass behind online retail. But today, retailers like Amazon can support a massively broader range vs years gone by when we would be trying to shoehorn an extra game or two onto an already packed planogram in physical retail.

3. Routes to market have become far broader and easier to access and barriers to entry have come down – crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter allow nearly anyone with good ideas and execution to bring a product to market. Importantly this is direct to consumer selling, so instead of gatekeepers like publishers and retailers whittling out anything creative, new or ‘out there’ now anything goes…if you can persuade a couple of hundred other people to buy. Plus, manufacturing is easier than ever with more choices and options to manufacture in smaller quantities.

4. People are playing games – it’s weird that this is only point 4, but in the end board games offer a social connectivity play experience. As humankind become more and more addicted to tech devices and screens, board games can offer the antidote to this and allow people to enjoy each other’s company face to face.

5. Sustainability – much of the toy business faces a major risk right now from consumer plastic rejection. The board games market does not need to see this as a threat. Whilst there are some kids games which are all plastic (i.e. Connect 4), the majority of games can be primarily and mostly manufactured from sustainable and recyclable materials. Some companies are going to need to raise their game in terms of FSC certification and other environmental considerations, but the board games factory is well set to deal with a new business and consumer perspective on sustainability.

The future then for the board games business looks good, even if there are some major short-term disruptive factors in play.

We run a Consultancy business helping board games companies to grow. We have experience of most major board games markets around the world and our team has developed more than 200 board games including versions of classic games like Monopoly, Clue/do, Risk, Game of Life etc. For more information on our services (including our Export sales Consultancy) please just click here: https://www.boardgamebiz.com/index.php/board-game-business-consultancy-services/

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The Number One Marketing Factor In Selling More Board Games

There are plenty of complicated marketing plans out there for you to try to persuade people to buy your Games. There are certainly plenty of companies willing to take your money for advertising across many media.

There is however one fundamental marketing activity which nearly always works for games which are compelling to play. That primary activity is getting people to play your Games! This won’t work of course if your product is all glitz and promise but lacking in compelling gameplay – you need to have a good game for this to work.

The reason why more board game companies don’t spend as much time, energy and money as they should do in getting people playing their games is because it takes a lot of hard grind and a willingness to think laterally and not just to follow the crowd. Parts of the board games business are driven by massive toy companies who have the typical model of launching by selling as many boxes into retail as they possibly can and then spending 15-20% of their forecast revenue on mass market media campaigns.

Hasbro as the long time biggest board games company in the world tends to follow this classic toy business approach, but then they have some massive advantages that you won’t have – they have so many of the all time classic games brands that tend to sell themselves and keep performing year after year.

Hasbro’s Wizards of The Coast (WOTC) business is a better model on how a games specialist business should run marketing though. Massively under rated and under reported, WOTC was bought by Hasbro primarily for Pokemon trading cards back in the day, but came with the unexpected long term hit trading card game franchise Magic: The Gathering. There is no doubt that Magic is a great game, but when that underlying awesome gameplay is combined with structured grass roots marketing (which is all about getting people playing the game and looking to buy more cards to upgrade their deck) you get a powerful formula as follows: great gameplay x game play stimulation x building a fan community.

One of the reasons why Asmodee has built such a brilliant business over the last decade or so, when they moved from being primarily a distributor with some own brands/products in the French market and a few other toeholds around Europe to being the biggest games company which isn’t also a toy company! One of the fundamental drivers of Asmodee’s success has been the practise of gameplay demonstrations – at festivals, in stores and in other locations. We attended an outdoor music festival in the north of the UK last year, and needless to say Asmodee had a tent there getting people playing games. When Asmodee brought Dobble over from France (where it had become a top selling game), there were some who laughed at the idea that such a quirky unusual looking and unusually named game could establish a presence in the cynical, label/license and mass retail driven UK market. A few years later and Dobble is a MASSIVE success in the UK board games market.

The path from start to success was not driven by media spend, online metrics or any of those other factors – although they may have played a part – the success was driven by getting people playing a game which is simple enough that nearly anyone can play, but so compelling that nearly everyone becomes heavily immersed in the game.

That is the type of game which people will go out and encourage their friends to buy and play, and this is exactly the formula for organic growth in the board games business.

The challenge is that it takes time and effort to find ways to get people actually playing games instead of just buying them and leaving them in the shrink-wrap in a cupboard. But for long term success, building brands and organically growing Games with great gameplay away from the pressure of needing instant HIT level sales via mass market retailers becomes the only logical step.

How many Games has your company launched with the strategy of nurturing and taking years to grow sales based on the most fundamental factor of letting great gameplay speak for itself?

5 Factors In Selling More of Your Board Games Internationally

While most board games companies have an established product range that sells for them year after year, many struggle to find strong and consistent sales growth internationally. There are a number of reasons why this happens to some board games companies. This article looks at 5 ways to sell more board games internationally.

1. Develop Games Suitable For As Many Markets As Possible

One of the biggest export sales inhibitors we come across when we are Consulting with board games companies is that they primarily develop board games based on their needs and product preferences of their home market. This of course is essential if you want to succeed in your home market, but board games are cultural products. There are many forms of culture, but only a few which will apply in all countries across the world. For instance, if you are a German company, your consumer’s expectations in your home market is for in depth rules and gameplay mechanisms, whereas in some markets that type of game instantly = NICHE, because mass market gamers in many countries don’t have the patience for lots of rules. So, if you want to sell more of your games overseas, perhaps you can restructure your product development efforts to give you a better chance of success internationally. For instance, if you usually develop 10 new games each year focused primarily on your home market, perhaps you can switch to making 2 games which are primarily focused on export markets. This way you still have a core offering for your home market as per usual, but also have some gateway products which can bring export markets into your games and brand.

2. Grow & Own Your Community

Of all the marketing activities available to marketers in board games companies, community-oriented marketing will build your company the most long-term value in most instances. Those gamers who are really into your products will work wonders for you over time, especially if you nurture them. These dedicated fans of your output will spread word of mouth for you and get their friends and families playing your games. We all understand that there is a need to sell each and every box we ship into retail, and as a result we focus our spend all too often on trade marketing activities which often have poor buy-in from stores, or mass media which may shift a few boxes but doesn’t have quite as dramatic an effect on the number of people actually playing a game. If you grow your community and resource to have ongoing 2 way dialogue you will develop games that people want to buy and play, and you will build your own marketing platform which you can use time and time again to support your new product launches. This applies both in your home market and internationally. Some board games companies change overseas distributors like a fashion fan changes dresses! If your distributor does change overseas clearly it is in your best interests to own your own interaction with fans of your games in those countries instead of losing it every time you switch distributor.

3. Distribute your distributors products

If you distribute your distributors products into your home market/s then you gain deeper and stronger relationships, which in return will lead them to be more likely to push your products or to at least deepen your interactions to the point that they tell you exactly why your products are a tougher sell than you may think. You do not need to distribute products which have no chance of success in your market, but why not ‘cherry pick’ a few games which you think have a good chance in your market?

4. Build Top Selling Games In Your Home Market

There are so many products out there for distributors to chose from that they will often review 10 or even sometimes 100 products to find one to sell. That is the reality of the industry we work in. There is a veritable plethora of games out there. The simple, but nevertheless difficult way to make export distributors sit up and take notice of what you are offering is to have top selling games in your home market. If you have a game which is an established top seller in your home market you will be far more likely to sell it overseas. If you have a range of fairly low but steady performers, that is a good way to build a solid dependable repeatable business in your home market but will not necessarily help you to find success internationally. But if you have a game which has sold hundreds of thousands of units you will find placing that game overseas much easier.

5. Ask Distributors What Games They Want, Then Make Those Games

This sounds blindingly obvious, but like most blindingly obvious things it is often not integrated in the development approach of many board games companies. The best salespeople we have worked with excel in asking questions first and foremost. If you go to the trouble to find out what your distributors are actively seeking, and then you deliver what they have said they are looking for you are more likely to place the game than if you try to sell them what you already have in your product line. Of course if you take this approach you will have the frustration of taking a game to someone based on what they said they were looking for and finding that they either already got it from somewhere else, or that their needs have moved on, but regardless of that this approach is more likely overall to lead you to selling more games internationally.

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