Breaking into Shops

If you take a look at my stockists page on my website, you'll notice that there are almost as many UK stockists of my games (that I know about) as there are American. America however is a much bigger market (I know of 600-odd games stores in the US and Alliance service 2,500 game and comic shops.

So why is my market penetration so much better in the UK despite several US distributors? There are several reasons:

1. UK shops like to carry UK publishers' games: they're local
2. It's easier for me to contact UK shops by phone and in person
3. It's easier for me to organise events in UK shops
4. My games are cheaper in the UK (less shipping)

So what can I do to improve the number of shops in the US (and Canada, Germany and the rest of Europe for that matter) that carry my games?

The first thing I did was to email all the shops I could find an email address (or web form) for, introducing my games and asking them to consider stocking them. That seemed to go pretty well, but several of the shops wanted demo copies of the games, either to see them before deciding whether or not to stock them or to allow demos of store-owned copies to help them sell the stock they have.

It costs me at least £21 to send a set of all three games to the US so it would be a very expensive effort was I to supply copies to all those who wanted them from the UK. However, my US distributors have stock on hand in the US, and can fold demo copies in with the rest of their stocking order to the shop in question, so the shipping is effectively free. So I'm trying to set up a promotion where one of my distributors allows shops in the US they service to buy my games at a reduced price. Apparently some big US publishers offer shops the chance to buy demo copies at 25% of the full retail price - so that's the deal I'm trying to set up.

One of my US distributors currently have my games on consignment: they have a decent amount of stock of all three games, and they just let me know how many they've sold each month and then I invoice them for those sales. Since they haven't already paid me for the stock they've got on hand, it's going to be easier to set up a promotion with them than someone who has already paid me full wholesale price for the stock they are offering at a reduced price.

Obviously the price I've negotiated with the distributors for the ordinary copies is based on them selling the copies at the ordinary price, so I've got to negotiate a new price for each game when sold through the promotion. Also, I don't want each shop to stock up on cheap copies - I want it limited to one copy per game per store, purely for demo purposes. Fortunately, this is something the distributor can organise.

I've gone around the houses a bit trying to find the right person at the distributor to talk to about this, but hopefully it's going to be sorted pretty quickly, now that I'm talking to the right guy. Things are also being slowed down by the time difference - it usually takes 24 hours to get an answer to my questions :(.

Building Momentum

We moved into our new house last Thursday. Thursday, Friday and the weekend were spent moving and trying to sort stuff out, Monday I was at the old house, cleaning and waiting in for three orders to be collected by the couriers.

The first was an initial stocking order for my first Canadian distributor - yeay! They were one of three new distributors who have contacted me since I ran the competition on BoardGameGeek. The second (a new US distributor) has placed an order which I'm going to ship on Friday (I've had to wait until I can go to York to get more It's Alive! stock - I've sold through the pile I was keeping at home) and the third has only recently enquired.

The second order shipping on Monday was a re-stock from one of my UK distributors. This was really gratifying, since they'd ordered less of Sumeria than they had initially ordered of It's Alive! and Carpe Astra, and three weeks later they had to ask for some more :-) I was expecting their sales to be slower since several of the larger UK shops had bought from me directly at or since the Expo, but this doesn't seem to have affected their sales much at all.

Yet another US distributor has also enquired in the last couple of weeks. This third new distributor is even better since a Danish/Norwegian distributor I've been talking to for months told me a while back that if I dealt with PHD they would buy my games from them, rather than me directly. So, if PHD also sign up, that will be two new distributors for the price of one :-). I don't know whether they will bite yet, but so far so good.

On top of all that I spoke to another distributor today on the phone. He's going to start soliciting my games. Hopefully this will lead to them picking them up, but it was effortless to get him to consider it.

I'm feeling pretty positive at the moment. The new house is lovely, and has a nice big office that I can store things in much more tidily than I could at either of our previous places. Feedback on Sumeria has been pretty good so far and June's sales will be my second-best ever (out-stripping January, the previous holder of that title, but not a patch on last October and Essen :-) ).

The only fly in the ointment is that most of my European distributors have yet to place a Sumeria order, so European availability is pretty patchy.

It's interesting to see how my mood varies. Entrepreneurship requires boundless enthusiasm and optimism. I try, but a dry spell like Feb-May gets me down, but a good month like June and I'm straight back up again :-)

Distribution

I've got 18 distributors now, mostly in the US and Europe, but a couple of further flung ones too. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be picking up two more in the next couple of weeks, another one in the US and one in Canada too.

In my experience (which is still pretty limited to be fair), distributors seem to conduct their business in one of two ways:

By Product Line

The distributor treats each line as a completely separate item. When you release a new product they will place a 'standard' order of a certainly number of cases (in my experience 4-15) of the game. When they start to run low they'll reorder, with the volume of the second and subsequent orders based on the rate the first order sold at.

By Supplier

The distributor groups all of a supplier's lines together. They will place orders fairly regularly (maybe monthly) ordering a mixture of all your product lines, based on current stock levels of each game.

It's definitely better when a distributor orders a multiple of full shipping boxes. I use a 52 x 41 x 42cm box which will hold either:

• 8 boxes (48 games) of It's Alive!
• 4 boxes (24 games) of any mixture of Carpe Astra and Sumeria
• 4 boxes of It's Alive! and 2 boxes of Carpe Astra/Sumeria

Having games that are the same size like Sumeria and Carpe Astra is great as it makes filling shipping boxes that little bit easier for the second class of distributor.

Strange Week

It has been a very odd week for me so far. On Monday I decided to go to York for the day, I was running low on shipping boxes, and hoping for a restocking order from the US. It would also give me a chance to do some playtesting with my friend Paul while I was there.

Tuesday started sensibly enough, I had a doctor's appointment about another MS attack I've been experiencing since the beginning of last week. The doctor made a phone call and I had an appointment at the local hospital that morning! Great. I went home grabbed a book (it can take while) and set off to the hospital. I was hoping for a few tests, and then a meeting with a neurologist who would prescribe me steroids to bring the attack to a swift conclusion (I've had the steroids a couple of times before and they've worked wonders). The tests started with blood tests (normal enough) and proceeding through ECG (seemed a little excessive) and then a chest X-Ray! By early afternoon not much had happened so I made some enquiries. The neurologist wasn't in today - I would need to stay in until tomorrow! This seemed totally excessive (I was just lying there taking up a bed, reading my book) and I'd only paid for parking until early evening, so I tried to talk them into letting me home that evening. They let me, provided I returned by 8am today to see the neurologist.

Early start this morning, and I got to the hospital at 7:40am (the traffic was better than I was expecting), I saw the neurologist (who did some basic tests, booked me in for another MRI scan and prescribed the steroids - yeay!) and then had the infusion later this morning. I managed to get home around lunchtime today, which was much better. I've got to go in for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon and Friday afternoon too. I've also got a canula in my left hand so I've got to try to avoid using that.

On the work front, I've received the first consignment purchase orders from Alliance (yeay!) and I've been struggling to get paid from some of my other distributors, for orders placed in January. It's really frustrating. We've got an agreement in place where they pay thirty days after invoicing (NET 30). Some of then are now nearly a month late. Much as I would like to cease dealing with the tardy companies, I need them, without them my games won't end up in shops and will sell far fewer copies. Still, I received two lots of payment today, and two more have told me the payment is en route. One has responded to my earlier chases, but still not paid and another hasn't responded at all.

I try to be a good customer, I try to make sure that the payment is received on or before the due date (paying early if by a bank transfer, to ensure it clears by the due date, or posting cheques to arrive by the due date), I just wish my customers were as scrupulous.

Hopefully, tomorrow will see an improvement in my symptoms and the arrival of some more money!

Time's Running Out

I've six orders that are 'coming shortly'. I'm keen to get these sorted before I move for several reasons:

• I want to get Carpe Astra in more shops as soon as possible
• The move itself is going to disrupt things, I'm going to be spending a couple of days on the move, and when we get to the other end it'll take me a few days to sort out internet access
• As part of the move I've got to pay to transport my games from my current warehouse (near my house in York) to one down south. I'll pay per pallet, so the fewer games (and hence pallets) I've got the cheaper this will be.

Of course while I'm keen to get these orders done as soon as possible, I can't progress them until I've actually received the order. Distributors are obviously very busy in the run up to Christmas, so it's no surprise these orders are taking a while. Still, it's damn frustrating.

I've had a chance to play one of the Bruno Faidutti prototypes a few times over the last weeks. It's got real potential (it's a fairly light, fun game with plenty of screwage), I've suggested some changes and Bruno seems ok with them. I've got to make a couple of changes to the prototype over the next couple of days in time for my last York playtesting night tomorrow. I'll try them out and see if they improve things or make them worse...

Distributors

Until I started manufacturing games professionally, I'd never dealt with a distributor. A couple of shops carried my hand-made games (which felt great!) but I couldn't get them made cheap enough for the manufacturer, me, the distributor and the shop to all take a cut from the price.

Now that I am getting the games professional manufactured, distributors are the key to succeeding. Very few shops have a high enough turnover to order from me directly, and those that do often don't want the hassle of dealing with each manufacturer separately, they'd much rather place a consolidated order with a distributor for games from several publishers. Also, a lot of them just want one or two copies, at least to begin with, and that's a lot of hassle for me, much less for a distributor who can just pop into the warehouse, pick the odd copy of a few different games, box them up and send them off.

So distributors are vital. So far so good. Now I need to deal with them. The first hurdle is getting through the door. In most cases I've tried to email the email address on their website. This sometimes works, but often doesn't. Publishing an email address on your website is a recipe for spam (I know from experience), so it may be that they aren't interested, it may be that they don't even see my email - hoovered up by some over-zealous spam filter. The next stage is to try ringing them, but as these are often international phone calls this is a last resort for me - due to the expense and, for some places, time difference (if I want to call an Australian distributor during their office hours I've got to make the call between 10:30pm and 6am UK time!). If I do get through to the right person, then I briefly discuss what I'm offering and take an email address (unpublished so less spammed) to send more details to.

So, now I've got a contact. The next step is to get them to place an order. This can be like getting blood from a stone. Distributors are very busy - especially at this time of year. I seem to spend a good deal of my time chasing distributors who are 'just about to place an order'. Because my supply chain is somewhat less than optimal (I've got to drive over to the warehouse to collect some stock, drive to the box-maker and collect the shipping boxes bring it all home and arrange a courier collection) there are good times for an order to come in (just before I go to the warehouse) and bad times (late on a Tuesday evening, when they need the stock on Friday and I've got to be in from 10am on the Wednesday - i.e. yesterday!).

This isn't always the case, some times it's remarkably easy. Two examples are Brown Box, Inc. who contacted me after one of their large online customers asked them to stock It's Alive! and VINCIT, AB in Sweden, who placed a joint order with Lautapelit that was all arranged by Lautapelit. I like these ones!

Once they've placed the order and I've shipped, you'd think the hassle was all over, but no. All my distributors (except the consignment ones!) are on NET30 terms, i.e. they have thirty days to pay. At the moment, about 60% of payments are late, sometimes two weeks or more, so I have to spend a decent chunk of time chasing late payments.

Those distributors that place an order swiftly are great. I want my games in shops as soon as possible - they are not going to sell sat in my warehouse. Similarly, those that pay swiftly are great - hassle free. Sadly, neither are the majority.

Still, for all the hard work, distributors are vital to my success. There's nothing that feels quite as good as a distributor who has previously placed an order for something coming back for more stock - it's selling!

Time Off!

I usually work weekdays and at least some of the weekend. This weekend I had both Saturday and Monday off! Friday night we went up to Newcastle to see some friends up there before we move. Saturday we spent the day hanging out with them before coming home that evening. I did a little 'work' on Saturday, trying out a couple of prototypes along with a game of Carpe Astra. Mal (who we were staying with) has the sort of games collection I like, Rio Grande Games 25% (Carcassonne), Reiver Games 75% :-)

Sunday I did a little work, mostly emailing new distributors in the hope I can pick up more business. No replies as yet... Still the good news was that of the two flat viewings we had on Friday and Saturday we got an offer, which after a small amount of negotiation, we accepted. Fingers crossed the sale will all go smoothly, in which case that's one less thing to worry about.

Monday was spent in Bedfordshire looking for a place to rent while The Wife starts her new job. We found somewhere and started the ball rolling on that too. That's something else ticked off our list.

Today I'm back at work. This morning, I had to go to the bank to pay in some money, and pop to the Post Office to collect a parcel (the Bruno Faidutti submissions). I've been chasing my distributors and reviewing some submissions in the mean time. What I really need to do now is nail some of the ephemeral 'orders' that I've got in the pipeline and get the shipped. The few games I have left when we move the fewer pallets of games I have to cart down South.

Distributors Out the Wazoo

Last weekend a Spanish distributor signed up to take some It's Alive! and Carpe Astra. Yesterday I heard back from a Finnish distributor I'd been talking to. They wanted to take some of both games, but the distributor minimum I have was too high for them. So they contacted a Swedish distributor I wasn't aware of, and they're going to place a joint order! Yeay! Scandinavian distribution :-)

I've a few collections to wait in for today, which is ok, because other than that I don't have much time for work today. I've got to spend the day frantically tidying, cleaning and hiding junk in preparation for a couple of visits by potential buyers tomorrow and Saturday. I have to do it during the day today as tonight we're out for The Wife's work Christmas do.

Stuff seems to be going pretty well at the moment, what with several new distributors and a re-order of Carpe Astra already (they've only had it a week!). If I can keep this up I might be able to make a living at this!

Emptying The Flat

Yesterday I brought home a load more boxes of Carpe Astra and It's Alive! Unfortunately, by the time I'd been to the warehouse and collected them and then been to the box-makers for shipping boxes it was too late to arrange a collection that day. As a result, the first order of business today was to arrange collections for the two orders before the 10am cut-off time. That's done, so I'm just waiting now for the collections, which should happen at some point within the next five hours. No going out to play in the snow for me :-(

One of the two orders is an initial stocking order for my new Spanish distributor, that's four European distributors I've got now, with another three interested but as yet not bitten.

At the moment, I'm having to collect the games, bring them home, carry them up two flights of stairs to our second floor flat, box them up, then carry them down two flights of stairs to the courier. One of my selection criteria for our next place to live gives a lot more weight to houses with a garage. Carting the boxes up two flights of stairs, just to leave them in my living room for a day and then cart them back down seems a little unnecessary!

Ideally, some of the potential new distributors will bite soon, so they get the games into shops in their jurisdiction before Christmas. I'll probably chase them again today. See if I can get some definite orders...

We've got some viewings for the flat this weekend, so I need to get all my stuff tidied away so the place looks appealing to potential buyers. Getting rid of the stock I've got at home is the first step, then I need to do my books and tidy all of that away. Another selection criteria for the new place is a second bedroom I can use as an office, having all this stuff in the living room makes our current flat very messy.

Awesome Day

Yesterday was a great day. Not only did I get serious interest from four new distributors (covering the US, Asia and Scandinavia) I had a couple of interesting sales (more on that later).

The distributors are all companies I've previously contacted before, but for some reason they all seem to finally be interested. Hopefully this interest will translate into actual orders, we shall see. I'm still waiting on payment from four distributors, with another due over the weekend. It's really annoying to have to chase them up, I've given them thirty days to pay, going over that is taking the piss a bit - certainly frustrating. Still, four more distributors. Warm glow. And relax.

In other news, Bruno Faidutti (designer of among others: Citadels, Diamant and Mission: Red Planet) wanted a copy of his friend Ted Cheatham's Carpe Astra. So he bought one from me. And an It's Alive! Spotting an opportunity (I'm nothing if not opportunitistic ;-) ) I told him I was always on the lookout for new games. Cue some submissions. First Reiner Knizia, now Bruno Faidutti. I've arrived!

Ding! Ding! Change Ends.

It's all change at Reiver Towers. The games to the other UK distributor were collected yesterday, so our bedroom feels palatial all of a sudden, now the space has been freed up. I heard back from the US distributor last night, the pallet deal may have fallen through, though they are interested in collecting some stock at Essen. I'm going to ring them later to see if I can save it, if nothing else it's one less pallet to ship down South.

Down South? Why would I be shipping my pallets to the South I hear you ask? The Wife has just got a job down there, so we'll be moving towards the end of this year, beginning of next. I'll need to arrange a new warehouse down there and then ship my games to it. The more I can sell before then (and hence the less I have to ship) the better.

I'm starting to feel on top of my Essen preparations. I've got a few things left to do, but nothing too onerous. The German lessons have suffered, but at least things will be under control at the fair (I hope!).

An Expensive Day

Yesterday I paid the second half of my Essen stand (400 Euro) and then the second half of the It's Alive! print run. Apparently I'll not be getting the two finished copies I was told about, the almost finished one I received last week will do that job instead. This means I'll not see the punched coins until I go to the warehouse to collect the pre-orders for shipping. But the latest update is that they should be ready to ship next Wednesday or Thursday. I didn't have to pay until they were ready, but they won't ship until the games are ready (obviously) and they have received my payment (which takes three days to clear). So paying them now means that as soon as the games are ready they will be able to ship them. I'm desperate to begin selling them (several customers have been chasing me), so the sooner the better.

Yesterday was rounded off with another of my playtesting nights. It was Lisa, Jon and I, and we played a couple of games of Carpe Astra and one of Codename: Backyard. Carpe Astra went well, with both Lisa and Jon saying it was the best version they'd played (they've played a lot!) and wanting a second game straight after the first to improve their strategy. I'd played several games with these new rules solo over the last week, and though both Lisa and Jon have played the game a lot, neither of them had played this particular version. The scores were ideal for this. I won both games, but they both scored better in the second game than the first (so there's a learning curve, the most experienced player won, with more plays leading to higher scores). In the first game I was the start player, in the second game I went last, but I won both, so there's not a strong first or last player bias.

This morning Paul and I did some playtesting too. We played Carpe Astra and then a new prototype: Codename: Aces. Paul also liked the new Carpe Astra (and again I won) and he also really enjoyed Aces. It's a sports game, more mainstream than my other games. I need to play it more to get a better feeling for it.

In other news, one of the two prototypes I sent to US distributors last week has arrived, so hopefully I'll hear something from them soon.

Full Day!

It was nice to get to spend a full day on the company today. My first task was to respond to a bunch of pre-orders for Carpe Astra that resulted from yesterday's newsletter. I also had a couple of It's Alive! sales to prepare and dispatch.

Most of the morning was spent on a few changes to the website suggested by my Dad on the weekend. I had a couple of CSS bugs to fix, and I wanted to make the page a bit more resilient to font size changes in a user's browser. I've got them done, but I've not posted them yet, I'm going to have The Wife have a look at them first.

This afternoon was spent contacting distributors and shops to start the ball rolling on Carpe Astra, and also preparing the flavour text for Carpe Astra. I need some flavour text on each of the 97 cards, plus a little blurb for each of the characters to go on the player guides. I'm about halfway through the cards at the moment. The flavour text serves a dual purpose, it's there to get players into the mood of the game, but also to provide a suggested narration for the game. An optional rule is to describe how you've made the connection with the Guilds, the flavour text give you an example if you're not confident making one up. Tomorrow I hope to finish the flavour text, and come up with some example layouts to show the artist next week when I meet him. I'm going to leave the layouts with him (just pieces of card showing where I want all the components of the artwork) so that I can start laying things out up here, knowing that they'll fit the artwork.

Here's a couple of flavour text examples:

• Network card: Connect yourself with The Military, Traders and Politicians. I lobby the Senate for reduced trade tariffs for military purchases.
• Slander card: Connect an opponent with The Military and Politicians. They are using Marines to coerce Senators to vote in their favour.
• Event Card: Pirate Attacks. Get an extra credit every time you score The Military or Traders. Piracy is on the increase, freighters are vulnerable without military escorts.

Of course, you can make up a story that describes how you're taking advantage of the event to gain additional power.