>>Ryan, if you're willing, please start a thread that goes into those numbers in some more depth.  450% over discount is a pretty healthy markup.  That's 1125% over cost.  I'd love to hear how you manage that, print run sizes, and the like.  I'm able to get to 200% over discount (500% over cost) pretty easily but going higher than that is a challenge.  What kind of unit costs are you able to get down to to generate that kind of margin?<<

I started this thread so as to not hijack the other thread any more.

We basically are able to get our production costs extremely low because we produce darn near everything in house. We are bean counters. Margin is extremely important to us. Very rarely will we release a game if we can not make the desired profit margin on it. To the extent that, before a game even enters any serious stage of design here at the Guild, we will have already decided on its exact production format.

The reason we can produce products cheaply is we have spent the last few years investing profits into owning a variety of printing and finishing equipment. Presently we own two digital duplicators (one does 8 1/2" x 11" and is amazingly cost effective. $.0013 per page printed. That is counting the disposable printing plates when printing in quantities of 100, the other does 11" x 17" and costs $.0175 per full 11" x 17" sheet, counting disposable plates. The bulk of that cost is the diposable plates, so larger print runs reduces costs per impression considerably), one full color copier that can handle 12" x 18", a high speed paper folder, business card slitter, 18" laminator, book perfect binder, button maker, shrink wrapper, paper riem cutter and a few other cutting/trimming tools. There are more equipment we want to get, but presently these and warehousing our products ad our assembly area is gobbling up most of our usuable space. For instance, we still want to buy a fully loaded booklet maker, a plastic injection mold machine and, eventually a web printing press.

With our box manufacturer we generally have to order at minimum 2500 boxes to get the base pricing we are happy with. So we do not order boxes with printing on them, as we all know how challenging selling 2500 of any gaming item can often be. Instead we order boxes blank with a white exterior. We use our color copier to print box "wraps" that has all the artwork (box front, back and two sides). We tape one edge of the wrap to the box, then fold the wrap around the box and finally use a hot glue gun to clue the other edge over top the first one to seal the wrap onto the box.

We've had four different box sizes made thus far from our box manufacturer. Since we can copy the wraps off in any quantity and the boxes are blank, while we may need to order a minimum of 2500 blank boxes, but those boxes may be used to produce many different games. So our blank boxes run us in costs of $.09, $.20, $.25 and $.35 depending on their size. The wraps end up costing us just $.012, $.025, $.045 and $.14 respectively.

Generally speaking, we can only produce those things which our equipment can allow us to produce. But we are always finding new and innovative ways to do that. For instance, a while back we used to print all of our game maps with traditional printers, which meant we had to print 1,000 quantity to get a reasonable pricing. We later tried to expand upon that further by attempting in house board backing for our "board games". This we attempted by ordering blank chip boards and used glue to attach the artwork to them. This turned out to be a huge pain in the rear and very time consuming, so we gave that up. And instead we found we could use our color copier to print the "boards" in 11" x 17" sections, then simply laminate those. Its not "mounted game boards", which is the only things *some* consumers will be happy with, but the laminated game maps seem to be plenty suitable for most of our customers. Its cheap to produce, reasonable durable (and spill resistent), quick to print and laminate and the best part is, it can be done in any quantity.

Anyway, it would take a long while to explain how we do everything. So instead I'll just give you a cost break down on three of our products just to give you an idea.

1) Heroes Forever RPG Core Rules

We still haven't figured out how to produce book covers in house that we are happy with, so for bound books, we still have to outsource that printing. However, we still use gang printing to cut our costs. These means we print four covers at the same time on the largest press sheet the printer can handle, then have them cut those sheets out after printing. It costs us a little extra in bindering work, but saves a LOT over having to pay for four separate set up charges, being that is a large chunk of the cost of a small 1,000 print run. We buy 60lb offset paper from a local paper distributor and print the interiors on our digital duplicator. Sadly, we hand collate the interior pages, then can use our perfect binder to bind the book, and then the paper cutter to give it its finished trim. It is because we do not yet own a booklet maker (automated paper collation being part of what that machine can do) that we haven't been pushing our RPG lines the last couple of years, since hand collation is a lot of work. But once we do have that machine, book production becomes easy.

--Costs--
1) Book Cover (4/1 on 10pt cover stock, UV Coated). $.42
2) 45 sheets of 60lb offset paper (for a 90 page book) $.396
3) Printing (Plates & Ink) $.117
4) Binding (Glue + electricity to power the machine) $.03

Production Cost Per Unit: $.963

MSRP: $11.95

Wholesale Price (60% discount): $4.78

Mark Up: (wholesale / production costs): 496%

That particular RPG line is comic size in trim and hence we charge less for it, even though it carries production cost (for us) nearly identicial to a regular 8 1/2" x 11" book. A standard RPG paperback at 112 pages would cost $1.089. At a MSRP of $19.95 and hence a wholesale of $7.98 gives us a mark up of 733%

2) Our forthcoming board game: Empires of History: WWII

This game is produced entirely in house except for most of the playing units. A new method we are switching over to. Printing 2000 copies of 8 different 8 1/2" x 11" sheets in full color on chipboard sheets. Each of those 8 sheets we have layed out into quarters so they may be cut post printing and used in different games. The Units are stamped so they may be punched out by the consumer. Hence a print run of 2000 as above gives us enough unique quarters sheets of game units to produce 21 different games. Each full 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of game units (134 units) costs us $.22. This particular game uses one full 8 1/2" x 11" sheet plus an extra 1/4 sheet. Each of those gets 7 copies put into the package. Hence that 2000 print run will give us an actual inventory of 285 games (for this game anyway. Other games us different multipliers for quantity of duplicate sheets used).

1) 22" x 68" color game map. Printed in 8 11" x 17" sections. $.745
2) Lamination for game maps $.48
3) Game Units 1 1/4 sheets x 7 $1.925
4) 1 Sheet of Stickers (see explanation below) $.15
5) 9" x 11.25" x 1.5" box $.35
6) Box Wrap $.14
7) 1D10 $.14
8) Resource Chart $.015
9) Manpower Chart $.015
10) Technology Chart $.015
11) Nation Set Up Sheets (10) $.045
12) Rules Booklet 8 1/2" x 11" saddlestitch. 24 pages. $.08
13) Shrink Wrap (to shrink the box after assembly) $.03

Production Costs: $4.13

Retail: $47.95

Wholesale: $19.18

Mark Up: 464%

(item #4 above. Since our units that are printed and punchable are used in multiples, we also include one other sheet of units that we print onto an 8 1/2" x 11" sticker sheet using our color copier. This is for units that are unique and do not need multiples of. That we include along with an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of chipboard. .22 thickness. Thick enough to be playable units, still thin enough to cut with scissors or an exacto knife. So sadly, for the moment, customers have to cut these units out themselves. But its only one sheet worth. We're still looking for an in house way to cut those sheets to create punch out units, but haven't found anything suitable yet)

3) Beyond Hadrian's Wall, 2nd Edition

1) 11" x 17" color game map $.09
2) 1 1/2 sheets of stickers & chipboard (the units). $.225
3) Game Rules $.01
4) Dice $.14
5) Game Box (4.5" x 5.75" x 1.5") $.20
6) Box Wrap $.025
7) Shrink Wrap $.01

Production Costs: $.70

MSRP: $6.95

Wholesale: $2.78

Mark Up: 397%

We already know we can trim off another $.04 cost per D10 by buying them in larger quantities, so we plan to do that soon.

One thing to keep in mind is that our "production costs" as listed above are our hard costs. They do not include the cost of our labor to package and assemble. We do have those figured out, but salaries and such is private data we're not going to share. Suffice to say that once labor is factored in, our average mark ups fall about 75% per unit. Hence a 450% mark up becomes a 375% mark up, etc.

Producing everything in house also brings with it some serious learning curves. I wouldn't expect to get everything right the first time around. An efficiency of that print and assembly work will be slow until you get a process down that really works for you. What I like most about the system is we can often launch products with a zero cash outlay, considering we the paper, ink, lamination, etc, in stock all the time (yes, I know it does not "really" cost us zero, but its a zero cash flow hit to produce new products that don't have any outsource element). We can typically produce things 100 at a time. Sometimes we print componants 200 at a time, but then only assemble 50 units in a batch and put the rest of the componants into storage to wait when we need to restock. Having a larger catalog of titles available doesn't cost us all that much in carrying cost on inventory. Our break even threshholds for new game publications are very low. For instance, referring to our WWII game list above, with all elements of the production excepting the playing units being made of items which are standard stock materials we keep around the office (and hence are used on many different game productions) our realistic cash sink for that game is only $548.62. After costs of goods sold, we are into gross profits after selling just 12 units of the game direct. Or 33 units sold at wholesale.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

two digital duplicators
one full color copier
high speed paper folder,
business card slitter,
18" laminator,
book perfect binder,
button maker,
shrink wrapper,
paper riem cutter
fully loaded booklet maker,
a plastic injection mold machine
web printing press.

At Hamster Press I've been pursuing a similar inhouse production model and I have a very similar line up of equipment.

Digital Duplicator (Thanks for the clue on these machines Ryan - It's cool!)
B/W and Color laser printers
Folding machine
Electric staplers
Smyth sewing machine
Book chopper (though I want a larger one)
25" laminator
Shrink wrap machine
Matt cutter
Picture frame chopper (Which I inherited from my Dad - the etcher)
A hand collator
A variety of clamps, boards and hot glue guns
Storage shelves for book boards and paper (this stuff is heavy!)
And all is in an outbuilding on my farm so I don't have rent.

I also price out my books so I can be in profit quickly and since there is little cost in getting a new book done - I have not barriers to putting out new titles. The big costs now are for editing and art work. That is where I need to build up. But that means money I don't have quite yet.

As Ryan said there is a bit of bean counting that goes with this but it isn't that bad. I don't want anyone to choke on accounting but it is required. I taught myself from reading so it can be learned.

Guild of Blades has a lot more experience at putting out games and making profit than I do but I'm confident that that will come.

Where this thread probably diverges from where most indie game designers is at is that this involves setting up a business. I could stop tomorrow if I wanted an let my machines rust but since they are there I can also figure out how to make them work better and make a lot of books on the way.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

that's pretty impressive, but isn't there a major expense missing? How much time does it take you to print a run of books? To manage the shop? What are your labor costs per piece or even monthy/annually? Do you pay yourselves a salary?

just curious,
-Luke

Thank you for the window into the world of brick-and-mortar publishing.

>>that's pretty impressive, but isn't there a major expense missing?<<

Well, the biggest expense is, of course, the machinery itself and the learning curve you have figuring out how to best use it.

>>How much time does it take you to print a run of books?<<

Right now it takes about 1 hour for two guys (2 manpower hours) to hand collate a book (200 units), about 60 minutes to bind 60 books and another 30 minutes to trim the books. Printing takes maybe an hour to print 200. So each book has a labor time of about 2 minutes per book. Since half the labor is in the hand collating, that is why we don't produce many books yet and have been concentrating on board games instead. Less labor. That will change after we get the chance to acquire a booklet maker, which can eliminate most of the labor in the collating side by doing automated collating.

>> To manage the shop?<<

Not much work involved here. Occasionally have to make a trim to pick up paper supplies for our local paper distributor. Most other supplies are shipped directly to us. Like any work inviornment, you'll spend a little time keeping it clean and organized. Occassionally we'll be forced to spend a little time looking at one of the machines and doing a small fix, or having to call one of our local repair persons to arrange for them to come look at them. However, in being able to print most everything in house, one area of MAJOR time savings is we rarely have to make a bunch of phone calls to get printer quotes, we don't have to take extra measures to prep the files for the printer nor have the cost or delays of shipping cds or camera ready art, etc. We don't have truck loads of product that has to be unloaded when a larger traditional print run is delievered from the printer. So yes, there is a bit of labor in running printing and assembly in house, but you make up more of it than you might think.

>>What are your labor costs per piece or even monthy/annually?<<

Well, we do all the labor ourselves, except for a part time we bring around on weekends to help us with some of the larger assembly tasks. It is difficult to quantify an exact cost for our salaries, in relation to the portion of the time we spend doing printing and assembly. That time often serves a dual purpose, as we talk and chat as we work and do much of the company strategizing, setting of production schedules, new marketing plans, etc, etc. Think of our assembly time also serving as conference time. Generally speaking, we have done the numbers and come up with rough estimates of how many units of individual products we can produce in an hour. Since we have many different products of varying sizes and complexity, it would take a long time to list production times for each one. A while ago we ran all those numbers together and came up with our "labor" costing us 75% of our markup. Hence, if we produce a game for $1 (costs of goods sold, less labor) and sold it at wholesale for $4 (giving us a 400% markup), then after labor costs are factored, we end up with a 325% mark up. I would have to go back and do some serious number crunching to give you an "average" cost per unit in dollar figures. But its certainly less than $.75 per unit with our average unit (among the various product we produce) probably having a retail value of $20 (hence wholesale of $8 and production costs, prior to labor, of $1.50 to $2.00)

>> Do you pay yourselves a salary?<<

We did not for over five years of running the company part time. We paid back our initial investments, bought out two minor investors, and otherwise invested ongoing profits into the acquisition of more machines, new product releases and other things neccessary to grow our business and total revenues. Now we do draw salaries and have enough profit left over to slowly save towards other future growth plans (saving up to buy a warehouse right now...not a small nugget to have to drop).

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Well, if you wanted to make a valid commercial calculation, you would have to include the overhead costs. What's the depreciation on the equipment? What's the rent for (or depreciation on) the space it occupies? What's the calculatory employer's salary? How much of the overhead costs account for each single product? Then you'd have a real margin.

Don't get me wrong, I think you guys really rock. But if you want to really compare inhouse to outhouse, you can't do that without calculating the overhead costs.

- Frank

Hey Ryan,
Thanks for taking the time to share the numbers.  I'd forgotten when I asked you that you guys do pretty much everything in house.

Since those of us who outsource are contributing to the profit margins of other parties, no surprise that our margins are slimmer.  Of course I also put far less actual labor into production issues, so that will balance out a little.

Boils down to paying for convenience.

I would assume that for accounting purposes you've capitalized the purchase cost for all of those machines.  I don't know whether you'd mind making such a number public, but I'd love to know how big a capital investment all of those machines and gadgets are and what your annual maintenance expenses look like.

abzu wrote:
that's pretty impressive, but isn't there a major expense missing? How much time does it take you to print a run of books? To manage the shop? What are your labor costs per piece or even monthy/annually? Do you pay yourselves a salary?

just curious,
-Luke

>>Well, if you wanted to make a valid commercial calculation, you would have to include the overhead costs. What's the depreciation on the equipment? What's the rent for (or depreciation on) the space it occupies? What's the calculatory employer's salary? How much of the overhead costs account for each single product? Then you'd have a real margin.

Don't get me wrong, I think you guys really rock. But if you want to really compare inhouse to outhouse, you can't do that without calculating the overhead costs.<<

Thats true Frank. Its not a truely fair comparison yet. Sadly, we really don't get much depreciation on our equipment, as we have almost always bought used machines to begin with. I personally LOVE depreciation because while it might "seem" to be lowering our asset value, in practical terms all it is doing is allowing us another write off so we don't pay as much taxes on profits. I realize depreciation is basically an accounting methodology to track "replacement" costs for capital equipment. And yes, the numbers I presented above have not yet included replacement costs for the equipment. But then, so far we've only had to replace one machine in all the time that we've been doing in house productions and that was just a $100 shrink wrapper.

As for "rent" technically we presently have none. Unfortunately, we have yet to buy a building to operate the company out of. So it is currently being run out of the two principle partners' houses. I realize we "could" put a price tag on that space, based on a portion of its total square footage vs the costs of those properties and then get a deductable on our taxes for it...however, as much as I like another tax write of (we generally use every single obscure one available to us), we do not seek the tax break on that space. In general, it usually a VERY good idea to keep as much a separation of company vs personal finiances as possible. Also, we have been told on good authority that seeking that write off is a red flag for the IRS to consider your company for an audit. While I am confident our accountant is doing a great job and we'll have no difficulties with an audit, simply having to go through one would be a real pain in the rear and will reduce our productivity during its process. I would just assume avoid that. 10 years so far and no audit yet. :)

We are currently are saving up money for a warehouse to move the business into. It is hard to say how much that will cost us. We do know that between basic utilities and general (low budget upkeep) that most places will run us about $7k annually to keep the doors open, the lights on, the water running and otherwise not let the building fall apart. Upgrades and modifications will cost extra. But where and how much we'll spend on the building will depend a lot on the type of deal we can get. Realestate values in our area can vary a great deal, from slum locations in nearly abandoned industrial parks (cheap, cheap, cheap, but often in disrepair and security issues), a more modern faccility in the city and in a good area (more expensive up front, but less in ongoig maintenance and less on security systems) or all kinds of buildings out in the stix; otherwise known as small towns in farm country (possible great deals on square footage, but real iffy if the place will be tied into city sewers and water and if not, that bears an extra cost and it will mean a longer commute for everyone). We have been eyeballing an old school building out in a smalll town. Its been vacant for years and we could get 95,000 sq ft for a total purchase price of only $95K. Thats an amazing deal. But we have not yet determined if there is an aspestess (sp?) issue. I can see why it has proven difficult to sell, as most businesses can not easily convert a school building. But it would provide us a huge amount of expansion room. For any LARGE equipment we use in the future, it would be easy to set up the gym and the cafeteria (really the only two large rooms in the place) as our primary manufacturing centers, leaving us dozens of smaller rooms to be used for everything else. Offices, warehousing, supplies & storage, printing, bindering work, etc, etc. I could even see plenty of space left open for lots of play testing and gaming rooms and how we could host semi regular open game nights. Maybe even set up personal lounges with overnight potential if we get temporarily swamped with work, as this location is a bit over an hour commute for everyone. That seems to be its only real downside....but I'm sure some others will poke their ugly little heads up once we take a serious look at the place.

In any case, until we actually plunk down the money for a building and figure out how much of that space ultimately ends up dedicated to in house productions (vs office space and warehousing, which we would still need if we were outsourcing all production), it will be impossible to break that costs down as a percentage of total margin, much less on a per unit basis. We can only realistically shop for buildings based on its costs and overhead vs our total net margin presently and see if the added overhead will still leave us with a large enough margin that we'll be happy with, and which will allow us to continue to grow.

>>What's the calculatory employer's salary?<<

Um, I am not familiar with that term. Please explain.

Thanks,
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

>>I would assume that for accounting purposes you've capitalized the purchase cost for all of those machines.  I don't know whether you'd mind making such a number public, but I'd love to know how big a capital investment all of those machines and gadgets are and what your annual maintenance expenses look like.<<

I have no problems sharing those figures. I really do not mind sharing our current business model with anyone besides the big guys. And I generally wouldn't share it with them because I would be afraid they would dulplicate it, but rather because I would be highly concerned why they wanted to know so much of how we did business, as I might distrust their intentions. As for smaller companies, I know our business model is not for everyone, but its proving a viable one. And I feel if more companies venture down the path we have, we'll also get to learn from the differences they employ in setting up their own in house system and have the chance to better our own operation and become more profitable yet (and maybe figure out ways to produce some titles we've always wanted to, but to date not had a realistic means of doing so). I should also say that the Guild of Blades DID NOT originally arrive at the concept of in house developement. We actually learned the concept and basics (at least with regards to book production) from our good friends at Inner City Game Designs. We just loved the idea so much and saw some of its potential that we really ran with it and have spent the last several years experimenting and expanding on our options. I also believe we'll see a whole lot more innovation within our industry if more companies innovated on production rather than just game rules. Right now I think part of what ails the industry is much of production of all the larger companies has become boiler plate (and even worse, so have their rules) and the total lack of originality is showing in waning consumer interest. Now grant, this just makes for good opportunities for us little guys...

Anyway, below is a run down list of approximately what we have paid for various machines so far. This is based off my recollection, so understand it may not be exact. Also, only our shrink wrap machines and our business card slitter were bought new (though also at a great discount), the rest were bought used through various sources.

Shrink Wrapper $100-$120
Digital Duplicator 8 1/2" x 14". (with shipping) $540
Paper Reim Cutter $335
Digital Duplicator 11" x 17" (with shipping) $780
Color Copier 12" x 18" (with shipping) $770  (by far our best bargain so far)
Business Card Slitter $800
24" Paper Cutter $50
18" Art Trimmer/Roll Cutter $70
Book Perfect Binder (with cost of picking it up.) $1,400
Heat Laminator $200
Paper Folder $125
Button Stamper & Round Cutter $250
Hot Glue Gun $3
Generator $550

I know when the time comes we can get a good bookletmaker for $3k or under and an ideal plastic injection mold machine for $5k or under.

These don't count supplies some of these machines require. Many of these were bought at really reduced prices since they were used. For instance, our Book Perfect Binder is a $25K machine, but we got it for about $800 on ebay because no one else wanted to pay for a specialized rigging company (the machine weighs about 1,500 ponds) to actually move it from the basement print ship where it sat (in downtown DC where big trucks are not allowed without some sort of special work order, which I gather can be a pain to get and costly). Myself, I used to be a furniture mover when I was younger and learned how to move all sorts of equipment. So we rented the largest pick up truck possible, paid extra to insure it to the max, brought some moving equipment with us and picked the machine up ourselves. Also, we have been patient. We have known what machines we wanted for future operations well before we really needed them. And rather than running out and buying those machines right away at where we could find them, we waited and watched for deals and have snatched them up when the right deal came along. We bought our business card slitter well over a year ago and have not yet used it to produce game cards with, but we have several product lines that will be using it in the future and having it cuts the costs of those cards down by a factor of 10. So when a paper supplier offered us a rediculously good discount on a new unit when we bought a paerticularly large order of paper and supplies from them, we snatched it up.

Patience is definately a virture in business...

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

an ideal plastic injection mold machine for $5k or under.

>>an ideal plastic injection mold machine for $5k or under.<<

>What will that sucker be capable of?<

Well, that would be a more basic machine of lower tonage (pressure). So the molds it could support would be smaller. Maybe 15-20 cavities in total, each able to hold little miniatures or other casts of a 15 to 25mm in size. Or a few less cavities of slightly larger sizes.

In truth I am hardly an expert on plastic injection molding. Just done a little reading so far.

Also, understand, the injection mold machine is just one element. Other things you would need are:

1) The Injection Mold. $2k to $5 each.
2) The ability to order plastic granuals (little bee bee sized balls of plastic) in sufficiently large enough quantity to get decent pricing. As I understand it, the way these are delivered are by trucks that specialize in hauling them and are fed through feed shoots into bins. So you would need a faccility with the specific set up required to recieve delieveries for the plastic.
3) Color dyes
4) A whole lot of room. The one machine we were looing at weighs 3 tons and is 10' wide by 16' long. That is the machine itself and does not include an area around it for work space, a storage area to hold the plastic trees the machine spits out (ideally large enough to hold multiple bins which can be rolled into position to load up then rolled out of the way to it storage area), and a nearby area to hold the granuals and dyes. All in all, probably looking at a 20' x 30' area at a minimum.
5) Lots and lots of sculptors at your beck and call, as you will need sculpted originals in order to initially get those injection molds made in the first place.

Injected plastic can output little plastic game pieces at an amazingly cheap price per piece, but its a fairly expensive thing to get set up. And with having to pay scultors anywhere from $100 to $500 per individual sculpt (in theory up to 20 different sculpts per mold), then up to $5k to create the injection mold, you are looking at having to sell a fair bit of whatever you produce to recover those costs. Now, it gets a lot easier if those same pieces can then be used in a whole bunch of games rather than just one game, which is basically our plan.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Hey Ryan,

I don’t know if „calculatory employer’s salary“ really is the correct English term, I put that together from a dictionary. Anyway, it’s a calculatory item if you run a personal undertaking, as opposed to a corporation. Since you don’t pay yourself a salary, you need to somehow calculate how much profit you will need for yourself in order to make a living. You don’t put that into your accounting records, but you’d include it for calculating a margin.

- Frank

Hi Frank,

Ah, it basicly means salary. Or in the case of a non corporate run business, it means profits taken out of the company by the owners, in an effect being a salary.

Yes, we have those. Two full timers and two very, very part timers.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Hey Ryan,
Couple of quick follow up questions re: injection molding-

I see that your games use multiple different types of plastic pieces, and that in the case of your WW1 Risk variant that you'd been order pieces from a manufacturer in China. Given the estimated cost of the production of a single usable mold, where do you see the savings coming in? I mean, I understand that you are planning to use pieces across multiple games, but at a cost of $2-5k per mold ( not counting any other costs) that seems to be an awful lot of dough. The reason I ask is because I've seen a couple of small toy soldier manufacturers ( Like Armies in Plastic) that have multiple different products available for sale ( say a couple dozen). It just seems like the costs of production would preclude their existence at just a mold cost level. What is it that I'm missing in this equation? Even considering loans and building up a catalog/buying new molds over time, it seems like this process would never pay itself off...

Thanks,
Robert

Hi Robert,

Well, actually, for our Over the Trenches game, we buy the figures locally...at a dollar store. But that dollar store only buys the figures in about once a year on one gigantic buy in and the moment we see them in stock, we go around and buy 5-10 of those stores completely out of their inventory. Done that twice now and each time our inventory has lasted about a year.

Right now our historical games don't include unique plastic figures. They are more wargamish, using plastic tokens (tiddlywinks) that we print round stickers for. Most of those games are going to full color, pre cut chit board units. But other games in our historical line will, eventually, get a plastic figures edition, as will a number of other product lines once we have the injection mold set up.

For historicals, rather than trying to make figures for an exacting period or conflict, instead we intend to make figures for an entire era. Such an "ancients", "medieval", and "nepoleonic", etc. This way we can ultimately use the same molds to create upwards of 5-10 games covering different conflicts during that "era". If I can ultimately produce 10 different games on a $2500 mold that also had $2000 in sculpting costs, then each game only has a $450 cost that I have to build into its margins. The plastic pieces themselves are pretty cheap (as low as $.005 or even lower), so a game with 300 plastic pieces might only cost $1.50 on the production side.

How to the small toy soldier manufacturers do it? Well, first, many of them use smaller plastic molding processes. Not injection molding, but more likely hand poured. For those who do have an injection mold process, take a hard look at their retail prices. A set of just 10-15 plastic figures can be priced anywhere from $12 to $30 or more. So 10 figures, each with a production cost of maybe 3 cents selling for $30. I think you can see where they are recovering those mold costs. But costs like that will never be practical for use of those figures inside a board game.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Right now our historical games don't include unique plastic figures. They are more wargamish, using plastic tokens (tiddlywinks) that we print round stickers for.

Hi Ralph,

Nice to know we are so memorable. :)

Seriously though, we run into this kind of thing all the time. We very quietly do better and better every year, almost regardless of any stumbling blocks like the failure of distribution and such. The last couple of years we have began the long process of categorizing retail shops and then soliciting the ones we're interested in doing business with. Many of the stores we do initiate contact with have stocked our games in the past through the distribution tier.

Many stores tell us, "Oh, I stocked your products in the past but it does not sell. I have a bunch of it still on my shelves". Our response is always, "oh, well if you have a bunch of our older product those are probably the old editions of our current offerings. We have new editions. If you want to take an inventory of what you have left and ship it back to us, we'll give you full wholesale credit on that inventory toward stocking the current products we offer". Almost universally the retailer thinks this is great and say put together that inventory list.

Of those that do do that, 99% of the time they come back to us with an "Oh, it seems we sold it all". So far this year, in making this offer we have given a credit on exactly 1 copy of 1 SKU. That's it. Once they realize this, it is usually what we need to get them set up on our current retailing programs.

Yet it frustrates me that among many retailers they have that this perception that our products have failed in their store, when clearly they have not. And I am at a loss as to how to combat this perception. My only though is to get feedback from some of our best selling stores and get statements from them and then release those statements into a retailer newletter where the other stores can hear about the products' successes, ideally prompting them to take a closer look at its performance in their own store and arrive at a true impression of its actual sales.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com