I started Eurydice Games in Sept 2017 with £1,000 of our family savings. I promptly spent almost all of that on the materials to make 200 copies of Zombology by hand.
Paul joined in August 2018 and we ran a Kickstarter which raised £12,127, which we promptly spent on a laser cutter and the raw materials for 400 copies of FlickFleet. The few thousand pounds left over only just covered the cost of shipping the rewards.
Before running our second Kickstarter in late 2019 I had to lend the company another £500 to cover advertising the campaign (which raised £13,164). Again that money was ploughed into materials for another 400 copies of FlickFleet and 400 expansions. After the campaign was fulfilled we had a few hundred pounds left.
This campaign was supposed to be a little thing, hence the crazy low target, little preparation and lack of planned advertising (when we saw it take off we did run some Facebook ads). It did way better than we expected. Way better.
We ended up selling 112 games and 76 expansions through the campaign. Those are things we have already made and are currently sat in their boxes behind Paul’s sofa. We’ve already paid for them.
Ready to go to a loving home!
We also had backers for 160 all add-ons pledges, which we need to buy materials for and obviously there’s a load of shipping to pay for too, but once the campaign is fulfilled we will have cash in the bank for the first time. Thousands of pounds of it.
Until now we’ve been doing almost everything ourselves - because we couldn’t afford to do otherwise. I’ve done the books, the website, social media, marketing, advertising, run the Kickstarters, pledge manager and the graphic design/product development. Paul has spent countless (more than me!) hours cranking out games in his garage.
We now have options. Is it worth paying a professional to do some of those things? They would certainly do a better job than me at many of them. Paul and I are making a shopping list to prioritise! :-)
As an aside, those of you who have been reading this blog for the last 14 years will know Eurydice Games is not my first publishing company. Reiver Games ran from 2006-2011 and for a couple of years I tried to do it professionally. My games were made in factories and were sold through 21 distributors on three different continents.
Assuming we fulfill the latest Kickstarter fairly quickly, then Eurydice Games will have a higher turnover this year than Reiver Games ever managed!
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