HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE BOARD GAMES BUSINESS

HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE BOARD GAMES BUSINESS

If you’ve ever wondered how to succeed in the Board Games business, then please read on, because we will address this directly in this article. The Global Board Games market value is measured in the $Billions. This is a large-scale opportunity for those companies who approach the Games market in the right way. There are a number of fundamentals you need to address for success:

1.      There are many, many Board Game publishers and creators out there. One of the best things about the business of Board Games is that the barriers to entry are comparatively low. You can design a game on a shoestring, outsource graphic design to Asia where the labour costs are much lower, and then manufacture in small quantities to give you a start. Asa result of the low barriers to entry though, competition is rife, so you always need to be striving for point of difference, and more importantly, point of advantage!

2.      You MUST Extensively Playtest And Tweak Your Gameplay Mechanisms. The Board Games industry is unusual in that the product is in effect an experience between people as opposed to simply a physical product. So you need to extensively test, retest and tweak the gameplay via playing over and over again with different groups of people.

3.      Sell, Sell, Sell. Because there is so much competition in this industry you need to excel at selling. You need to know the buyers, and you need them to really want to buy your products. You can get lost in the joy of creating an aesthetically perfect Game, but if you can’t sell it, it is more of a work of art than a product. If your Game is really good, then you need to get as many people playing as possible, and you do that via selling.

4.      Think About Game Marketing As Like Trying To Spread A Virus. Games grow and spread like a virus! A good game experience is shared with other people, and then shared with more people and so on. So if you make really compelling Games and get enough of them out there to start things off, a good Game should then grow organically of its own accord.

5.      Packaging Is The Primary Marketing Mechanism For New Games. With new Games, where you don’t have players yet the packaging has to do a lot of work for you. It needs to visually standout from all the other Games on the shelf/on the e-shop, and the consumer needs to be compelled to pick up the product or click on it. So make your packaging work really hard for you!

There are of course many other factors in winning in this marvellous business of Board Games, and maybe we can help you with that…for more info on our Consultancy services just click here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

Europe Toy Market: Profile & Insights

The European Toy Market represents one of the largest Toy regions in the world.

The three biggest Toy markets in Europe are: Germany, France and the UK. Over the decades, these 3 big players in the Euro Toy trade have swapped positions in terms of the pecking order, but between them they represent a sizable chunk of the Toy & Game opportunity in Europe.

Germany has a very distinct, and in some ways, unusual Toy market. With several thousand independent Toy stores across Germany, with several major chain stores buying locally on a store by store basis and with a long-term trend of being quick to adopt the internet and other technologies (meaning that Amazon has a comparatively high market share), Germany offers a distinct opportunity. The caveat though is that you will need to be aware of German Toy culture, which is more focused on high quality products and materials, and more focused on facilitating child development with high levels of parental interaction.

The UK on the other hand has far fewer independent Toy stores, a few hundred stalwarts in fact, and market share is heavily biased in terms of Smyths Toys, Argos/Sainsburys and Amazon. Toy culture is far less high brow generally speaking - the UK usually has the highest percentage of Licensed Toys across developed economies. There are some local media and cultural sources, but entertainment content and culture from the USA is also eminent.

France is a strong, if a little quirky, Toy market. Whereas the mighty hypermarché Retailers like Carrefour, Leclerc and Auchan were once the major players in the market, their share has eroded somewhat over the years due to the rise of Amazon, but also due to the presence in the French Toy market of much revered Toy specialist chains including King Jouet and Jouet Club (incorporating La Grand Récre). France has her own entertainment content industry, but is also strongly influenced by Hollywood, just like the UK.

Before we end, we should also consider the fact that there are of course other countries in Europe. Bizarrely, there is some debate over how many countries can be counted in Europe, but most agree the number is at least 44. Not all of these represent large Toy markets, but there are a number of mid-sized Toy markets in Europe that you would likely not want to miss. Spain, Italy, the countries of Scandinavia, Benelux, Poland and more all offer significant Toy opportunities.

Our business is a Europe Toy Expert Consultancy. Do find out more about how to access the Toy business in Europe, check out our Consultancy services here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

Toy Recruiters: How To Find A Good One

Check our our Toy recruiter services here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

Here's the thing - most Toy recruiters are not from the world of Toys. They may have the requisite skills to be a recruiter, but what they don't normally have is a long track record of working in the Toy business and of being both connected to plenty of other Toy people as well as having the necessary insider knowledge of how this industry works to work out which candidates should be put forward to clients and which are likely not suited to the Job.

When we help Toy companies recruit highly qualified staff we are focused on first assessing the applicants and whether they are truly qualified based on having run Toy companies ourselves and knowing a). what experience, knowledge and results really matter b). Identifying any red flags that might make a candidate unsuitable.

So for example, most recruiters will be able to look at someone's Resume/CV and figure out that the applicant has never stayed in a Job for long enough to be a good fit with a Toy company looking to recruit someone for the long term. However, what takes more specialist knowledge is to look at which Retailers a candidate has worked with and fit that to what is required for a client's customer base in the Toy business.

Toy expert recruiters can also ask more in depth and informed decisions of candidates. For example, when recruiting a General Manager for a Toy company recently, we were able to ruthlessly analyse a hypothetical P&L the candidates submitted as part of the application, and then screen out and also prioritise candidates based on the remit from our client. You just don't get that level of service or knowledge from typical Toy recruiters.

Our approach to Toy recruitment can best be summed up as 'Toy people recruiting Toy people for Toy companies.'

If you want to experience the difference in working with a Toy category specialist recruitment company, find out more here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services