Contacting Shops

Over the last year or so I've managed to pick up twenty distributors for my games. This is obviously a Good Thing(tm), since I can now get my games in more shops and hence more exposure and hopefully more sales to actual customers.

So far, when I bring out a new game I get initial stocking orders from my distributors, and often a restock of the others. Occasionally I get a restock order for one or more of my games out of the blue.

Over the Christmas and New Year period, with no new games released, I've not had many restock orders - most of my distributors still have stock of my games on hand. In an effort to help them sell their stock and encourage them to re-order, I've been contacting shops in the US introducing myself, my company and my games.

I've managed to build a database (read spreadsheet!) of 611 stores in the US, including their location and contact details. That's great - if I could sell two copies of each game to all those stores I'd have sold a huge percentage of my print runs in one fell swoop. Now obviously, lots of those won't want to carry my games because they're not that heavily into board games and they only want to carry the really big names. However, a few of them would want to carry my games, only they've not heard of them - they've slipped under the radar as they receive a welter of information about hundreds of new games.

I think my email marketing campaign has been remarkably successful. I've got to assume a lot of my emails will end up in a spam filter and in many cases won't even be read. However, of the stores I have contacted before today (the ones I contacted today haven't had much of a chance to respond!), 10% have responded to me via email.

That 10% includes 4% who already stock my games, and another 2.5% who have placed orders with their distributors as a result of my emails. Where I've been copied on the emails to their sales contact at the distributor they have usually picked up two or three copies of each game.

What surprised me the most though was the number of stores with no website (not even a Facebook or MySpace page) and the number who don't provide an email address on their website. I can see why they wouldn't want to expose an email address to the world (I get enough spam on mine), but there are ways around it (online email forms, possibly with captchas, obscured email addresses (e.g. jack (at) reivergames (dot) co (dot) uk). I would have thought as a store you would want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to contact you. In total, I couldn't find an email address or form for 113 of the 611 (that's 18%!).

I think this has been a pretty successful effort, I'm just kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner - especially when I had a new game coming out. I'm going to extend my efforts to Canada and then Europe, and possibly other countries where I already have a distributor.

Outreach Program

On Friday I visited a few shops in York. For once I wasn't targeting games shops, but general shops instead. Paul had suggested I contact York Dungeon, a macabre tourist site about ghosts and the less savoury aspects of York's history. Due to the gruesome theme of It's Alive! it sounded like something that would fit in well with their stock. I popped in to the shop and spoke to the manager who sounded interested, I'll chase her when the games arrive (hopefully next week!). Bizarrely, the guy behind the counter got very excited when I mentioned that I was selling board games, he's apparently designed a few abstracts, and wanted some advice on selling them or setting up a company. I left him a card, and he emailed me on the weekend :-)

I also tried a couple of the larger bookstore chains in the UK who both have a presence in York: Waterstones and Borders, both of whom sell a few board games. Neither were able to give me a phone number for the board games buyer, but I got the phone numbers for Head Office from both of them.

This morning I rang them both, I got voicemail at Borders, and Waterstones want to see a finished game when they arrive.

Breaking Into My FLGS*

*Friendly Local Gaming Store

Again, no crowbar involved. My FLGS is Travelling Man a small chain of four shops run from Leeds. To me it seems like a much bigger chain as there's one in York where I live now, one in Newcastle where I used to live, and there was even one in Bristol where my parents live. I'd met the Managing Director a few years ago and got talking to him about making my games. He gave me loads of really useful advice, and I've met him a few times since. The last time I met him, he seemed interested in stocking the professional print of It's Alive! He warned me though that he was bad at responding to emails due to the volume he received - keep hassling him was the preferred solution!

I'd sent him a email several months ago letting him know It's Alive! was on the horizon. No answer. I chased him yesterday, and he came back saying he'd like some. It's a small order compared to some I've received, but it means I can wander into my local store and see It's Alive! on the shelves. It's surprising what a boost this gives me :-)

In other news, the production sample has just just arrived from the printers. Everything is finished except the cardboard coins are only scored not die-cut - I can see where the cut line will be though. It looks really cool. The coins are much thicker than I expected - it drives up the weight, but they feel really good quality as a result. The professional run is surprisingly heavy compared to the Limited Edition. The guides, slabs and shields are a bit thicker, and hence a little heavier, but the coins are now on sheets so there's a lot of excess weight there. Plus the box is a little bigger. All in all, I'm really happy with the result - It's looking great.