Stepping Up

It's a busy few days in the Reiver Games camp. Yesterday I was on the radio, tonight I've been constructing games and tomorrow I'm seeing a small business advisor.

It was fun being interviewed on the radio, I was on the air for about twenty minutes and The Wife said I came across well. I did however make a few mistakes that I've learnt from. They asked me to bring along some games so that the interviewer could describe them on air and having something tangible to discuss. I took my copies of Border Reivers and It's Alive! The interviewer concentrated on Border Reivers, even going so far to ask 'If any of my listeners would like a copy how would they go about getting one?', to which I had to reply 'It's sold out.' The moral of this tale: only take the product you're promoting, old ones are best left at home. I also mentioned that my core audience was hardcore gamers, which The Wife rightly pointed out may have put off casual gamers who were listening in. Still, apparently I came across well, it was good experience, and I'll learn from my mistakes and be better prepared next time.

This evening I've finished off a batch of eight It's Alive! boxes. Hopefully they are the last I'll have to do for quite a while as over one hundred and forty professionally made boxes are turning up tomorrow. This will allow me to dramatically reduce the construction time, and hopefully burn through my waiting list a bit quicker. I'm really looking forward to having stock again, and being able to promote the game properly.

Tomorrow I've got the day off work. I've a trip to my neurologist at lunchtime, the boxes are due to arrive and in the morning I'm meeting with a small business advisor to discuss the next step for Reiver Games. The small business advisors are a free service provided by the government. I saw one last March, before I set about launching Reiver Games and Border Reivers and it was really helpful. They gave me loads of useful advice. I'm going to be asking them about how to progress to professionally made games and selling to shops and distributors. I need to think about whether to continue as a sole trader or make the leap to Limited company, and also what to do about VAT. In the UK you don't have to be VAT-registered until your turnover crosses £50,000. But if I'm selling to other companies rather than end-users it might be advantageous. I'll let you know how it goes...