Funding the Dream
Raising money and launching a business are daunting tasks. Since 2011, Richard Bliss has hosted a wide array of guests who bring their expertise in all areas of business.
With a heavy focus on the board game industry, Richard and his guests have taught thousands of people how to fund their dreams.
Join Richard and his next guest as you look to build and grow your own business.
Funding the Dream
EP 337 - From Booth Hustle To Board Game Boom: Lessons On Crowdfunding, Conventions, And Survival
A lot of people think the golden age of tabletop is behind us. We don’t. Richard sits down with longtime friend and convention owner Aldo Ghiazzi and Goodman Games founder Joe Goodman to get real about what it takes to succeed right now—when 800 new game projects launch monthly and attention is the rarest component on your bill of materials.
We trade floor-sleeping origin stories for hard-won systems: making every convention cash flow positive, measuring success beyond likes, and using the “three-channel” strategy to stabilize growth across crowdfunding, retail, and direct sales. Joe breaks down why great products still convert in 20 minutes, how a hands-on booth approach can double sales, and what he learned moving from Apple and Gap to a full-time game company. Aldo maps the fractured marketplace—Amazon, mass, cons, PDFs, bundles, social—and why seven impressions still matter more than any one ad.
Then we wade into tariffs, nearshoring, and the uncomfortable math behind printing domestically. You’ll hear exactly why card-driven designs are spiking, what U.S. printers can and can’t deliver, and how creative logistics are reshaping costs. We talk mentors, apprenticeships, and the pragmatic path for first-time creators: booth work, store ops, and relentless playtesting before pressing “launch.” The thread through it all is scrappiness redefined—not being cheap, but being precise with unit economics, timelines, and where you show up.
If you’re building a game, a booth plan, or a business that lasts the next ten years, this conversation gives you a map and a mindset. Subscribe, share with a creator who needs it, and leave a review telling us your smartest scrappy tactic—we might feature it next time.
Welcome to the show. You're listening to Funding the Dream. My name is Richard Bliss. I'm your host. It is great to have you here. And I hope that you're excited to have me here. It's been a while. We're not even going to talk about that. I'm a grandfather now. I think since the last time we all got together, but I have two very interesting people with me. They're special. I think, uh, I think they are, and I've known them for quite some time. I'm joined by my dear friend, who you have heard on the show many times, Mr. Aldo Ghiazzi. Aldo is the former president, owner, founder of Impressions, and then was acquired and bought out by Flat River Group quite some time ago and has since retired and tells me about the cruises he goes on every time we talk. And so, and we're also joined by Joe Goodman of Goodman Games. You might know Joe because of his uh spectacularly successful DCC uh Dungeon Crawl Classics. Um, so gentlemen, thank you both for being here.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks, Richard. Thank you. And don't forget, I don't just do nothing. I have KubriCon now.
SPEAKER_01:You do, and that was one of the things we want to talk about. So let's clarify that. Kubicon, tell us about Kubrickon, because it's a fairly significant um entity.
SPEAKER_03:Well, for the region, definitely. Um, Kubicon Acts me next year with Goodman Games, not to spoil Joe's surprise, not a surprise, 25th anniversary of the main Kubicon show that started in 2001. So obviously it missed a couple of two for COVID, but um I took over uh ownership of Kubicon a few years ago. Um, and I have a great staff and team that we've now grown it to a second show, Kubicon Fall. We also have a Kubla cruise as well. So basically, it's it's something for me to do local and Aldo's he's leaving out the best part.
SPEAKER_00:Kubicon's a great con in general. If you're on the West Coast, go to Kubicon. It's May of every year, San Francisco area. But the best part is I used to sleep on the floor of Aldo's mom's house. Because Aldo and me and Steve from Troll Ward would go to KubaCon when I lived, Steve and I lived elsewhere from San Francisco. And remember your mom's rental house? We got to so this is like how you make it in the gaming industry. You find a friend who lives near your con, you bring a sleeping bag, and you sleep on the floor of the empty house. And we used to, anyway, so many good stories from KubaCon.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, to save hotel expenses. That's how you didn't want it. Okay, so now Richard's gonna get mad. We're going off into tangent. Steve just texted me because he's coming to the game developers conference in March at the Muscone Center, and he's like, Hey, does your mom still have that rental? You know, I can sleep on the floor, and I'm sitting here going, Steve, my mom actually lives there now. Like it's her house that she so no, I don't have someplace you can crowd because my house is a little too far away from Muscone Center. But anyway, it's a great memory because I've roomed with Joe, I've roomed with Steve, and I've roomed with you.
SPEAKER_01:You and I have room with Richard. Oh my gosh. Okay, hey, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00:But wait, but the the crucial lesson here for new crowdfunders is you gotta be scrappy in the beginning. And then 25 years later, you will own a convention or a game company or have a really successful podcast. But in the beginning, find a friend with a free room in share band.
SPEAKER_03:You know, Joe and Richard, I always tell this other story. When I had my game company, which was awful, but I had like my Gen Con booth in like 2000, or I was just starting my distribution, but I had my game company too. And I did a seminar, and I said, Well, you know, even to be a new publisher, you have to like, you know, sacrifice lunch because you don't want to miss a sale at your booth. And somebody in the audience heard that I skip lunch because I stay at the booth. She brought me a hamburger and fries the next day at my Gen Con box. That's great.
SPEAKER_00:So, I mean, I think you know, I still remember your cheap ass peanuts, a Dumpercon. So we saw So we would always we would always eat our own, we always bring food because you gotta do that. You gotta cut costs, you gotta finish your pennies. I only eat planters' peanuts because that's the good stuff. But Otto would go to Costco and buy whatever cheap ass brand of Target. I did the generic Target or the generic safety. I can taste the difference between a good peanut and a bad peanut. But yes, we lived on like peanuts, clip bars, and like whatever that was. Dundracon, Kubicon, Gen Con, Origins, all those cons.
SPEAKER_01:Here's my story. I went to uh I used to attend uh the World Board Gaming Championships back in Pennsylvania, and uh some friends of mine founded that. And so as I went to that con, I needed a room, and so they can you can find roommates, right? You go out on the bulletin board type thing, you find a roommate. So I get a roommate, and uh he's never around, and he's only supposed to be in my roommate for a night. So that night he's gone, and so I just lock the door and I go to sleep because he's supposed to be checked out of the room. Well, middle of the night, he's pounding on the door. Let me in, let me in. I'm not letting him in because he didn't pay for the room, and it's my room now. Well, he goes to the front desk and they let him in. I was pissed because you just let someone into my room who was not on the room.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So he comes in, gets his stuff or whatever, because I was pissed in the middle of the night. Off he goes. Two or three months later, he's in the news. Uh oh. He shot and killed his roommate and then committed suicide. Yeah, that was like, I'm not sharing rooms with anybody ever again, although's the only one.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the real question, Richard, is what kind of peanuts did he eat?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, that's true. But you know, I you know, I know I know Richard wants this to get more online, but Joe's comment of scrappiness, it's come about actually with Kubicon too, which again, not a business like Impressions was for distribution stuff, but even for any size of business, this scrappiness, people call it cheap. People say, Oh, you got to make a good show or whatever. No offense. I mean, you can't be getting a booth at Gen Con or a local show and inviting six people to stay in hotel rooms and do food and drinks. And I always saw that at Gen Con with the new companies. They'd have one 10 by 10, but there'd be like four, five, or six of them with logoed shirts all cramped in the back, trying to pump the game and talk to people. And you know, you gotta be scalable, I think is a good word for that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, let's talk about that because you the three of us have been doing this for quite some time, some longer than others in the gray hair shows. But one of the things that we've got speak for yourself, but uh uh no, I'm speaking about you. Uh so one of the things we're talking about is it used to be okay on Kickstarter to be scrappy, to get in there, to have an idea. I mean, alien frontiers, right? A napkin, idea, concept, and off it went. Now that's way in the back. But in today, you can't be scrappy anymore. I mean, it's just is it possible to be scrappy like on a Kickstarter or crowdfunding? You have to have professional artwork, professional video, professional production, professional components. Marketing. You even have to market your Kickstarter.
SPEAKER_03:Like not only are you do you have to worry about marketing the actual game when it physically comes out, you actually have to do marketing campaigns for your Kickstarter in a major capacity.
SPEAKER_00:So and it used to even just be Facebook ads. I was surprised when I went to, I believe it was Essen, where I've seen these booths before where it's a booth advertising an upcoming Kickstarter, but I would say I don't know what the number is, a significant number of the booths I saw at Essen had no product to sell. They were marketing either their current or their upcoming Kickstarter, um, which is new to me, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's evolved, but part of the reason it's evolved is because the inability to cut through the noise. Yeah, right. There's just so much. Now, Joe Joe, you've had some success on Kickstarter, right?
SPEAKER_00:I I mean we've done like 50 between crowd, you know, Indiegogo Kickstarter, backer kit. Success is a everybody measures success differently. You know, one of the things I tell people when they come in is what are you really after? Some people just want the adoration of the crowd, they just want to be recognized by their peers, they just want to win an inny award, they just want to be seen as a designer. Other people want to make a living full-time, other people just want to, you know, pay for their games. Like if they can make enough money to buy new board games every month, they're happy. It really depends on your definition, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so let's go with definition of money. And that is, and I'm gonna start with I'm gonna start with you, Joe. Uh and I'm gonna a little bit of your background. When you and I met, you worked at Apple. Yes. Okay, and then you went to the gap, right? And these and in Silicon Valley.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And now you're running full-time a game company.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Some would say you lost your job and got desperate. I know. What the heck was I thinking? Yeah. What were you thinking? Because no, I I'm in Silicon Valley, Aldo's been here forever. We Joe, it's hard for any of us to understand and comprehend how you were able to successfully, and there's very few people who I feel who have been able to do this. One that we all know, Jamie Stegmeier, who was able to make that transition, right, from whatever he was doing to now um uh Stonemeyer Games. That's not easy. And why and how were you able to do that? That doesn't sound scrappy. That sounds foolish.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it might be a little vote. The jury's still out, Richard. Give it some time. Um, I will say that the uh I I was I was talking to actually uh Doug Kovax is one of the lead artists for Good Mean Games. So I was talking to him about it. You know, he's a DD artist. He told me once, Joe, the only two things I can do are art and DD. Thank God I found this job. And he, you know, he bought a house on his income from drawing DD pictures. I mean, that's not a career anybody ever points you to. And he phrased it really well, which is the path that he and I have gone on is not something that other people can emulate. It'll never be the exact same path. Partly because this is a creative industry and it changes radically every five to seven years. All you know, people invent new ways to sell things, people invent new categories of games. It really evolves rapidly. So, what I can tell you is what I the path I found, but it may or may not apply to listeners, you know. Um, it's maybe you can kind of generalize. Like what are the choices I made that were, you know, nobody will ever face the exact same choice, but what can they do in similar circumstances and so on? Some of it is what Aldo just said, which is I pay attention to the nuts and bolts and whether I'm making money at something. Give me games is going to attend over a hundred cons next year. We have a network of con reps who go to cons. Every con has to be cash flow positive. And for many of them, I all and that alone is a threat, right? After your hotel, after your booth, after shipping in all the merchandise, it's got to be in the black. Then paying for cost of goods, actually manufacturing costs, believe it or not, that's another hurdle. And my rule is overall the con experience has to be profitable. And a lot of that's funded by the big cons because a lot of the small regional ones, it's really it's it's it's harder. But that is not a criteria. KubeCon, I mean, you make bank at KubaCon, but there's other cons. But uh, that's a criteria that not everybody has. You'd be surprised how many people tell me I go to cons because it's marketing. And I'm like, you there's only so many pennies you can throw down the marketing well, you know? Um so so yeah, I mean, the short version more more to your question. In 2020 was great for games and terrible for everything else. So there's a period around 2020 between DD 5th edition, Stranger Things, everybody staying home for COVID, where the streams crossed and I was making more money offcoming games than I was at my day job. Um, and I don't want to make that much money because I was stressed out and could never find the time. So I hired a staff to do it. And and you know, that was part of the answer. Uh but yeah, it's not easy. And it's it's always a challenge. This year's been hard, you know.
SPEAKER_01:And we're gonna go back to Aldo because you've got a similar story kind of in the fact that you stuck with yes, yes, but you stuck with it for so long in your niche until it became something much bigger.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, to go back even farther with Joe, Joe, you talk about him going at Apple and why would he leave? I come from the video game industry. I worked in Silicon Valley in the video game side. I worked for the predecessor of what is now IGN.com. I actually was the manager that launched IGN before it was called IGN and sold two or three times. So I was in the video game industry. Everybody was like, why would you leave video games to make tabletop games? But it was for me, it wasn't because Joe's answer like I was making more, it's because I just wanted the independence. So that was my choice. Yes, that matters. You know, I was making six figures back in the 90s, uh, you know, doing my video game stuff, and I absolutely did not go start making six figures, you know, for mine. And then on top of it, Joe says his was a creative thing. Mine was a business B2B thing, a service thing. I tried the creative and I failed, but I said to myself, and this is what I say to anybody looking for a job in the game industry, because I do panels at Kubicon and I used to do them at the Gamma Expo, is how to get a job in the game industry. And really, there are more jobs in the game industry than you can even imagine, besides running a publisher or doing distribution. There's obviously art and writing and copyright and working at events, working as a retailer coordinator. There's there's business, B2B, consumer tech, obviously, all the Shopify work the website type stuff. But we always tell people if you want to start getting into the game industry, find out working at somebody's booth at a Gen Con or a Pass.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, this is a time honored strategy known as the apprenticeship, right? In the 1300s, you'd be the blacksmith's assistant and he'd like beat you and tell you to go feed the horses or whatever. You know, nowadays maybe not. Maybe maybe that was just my blacksmith experience. But I mean, you beat them when they pick up boxes for the booth. Move that box, sell that product. No, but I think it's been forgotten this idea that you learn from people who are more wise than you. I learned Bob Watts was my first boss in the gaming industry. He owned a miniatures company called Heartbreaker Hobbies. I learned so much from him. And I think a lot of people now think they can jump right in. But when is the last time you did anything in your life and hit a home run on your first pitch? Like it just doesn't happen. So I think there's a lot of value to work in the game store, working for a game company, working cons. Just doing anything really before thinking you're gonna be, you know, your first three Kickstarters aren't gonna work. That's fine. That's how it goes. You learn and you get more successful, you know?
SPEAKER_01:I just want to make sure we're not talking about my marriages. Okay. Oh, dang.
SPEAKER_03:You know, I you know, Joe had Bob Watts. I have to tell you one the thing that parallels Joe and I, I had Don Rentz. I still have Don. I still have Don Rentz. And I still have Don Rentz on her because I just spoke to Don yesterday because it's publicly known that he's he's wanting to sell Chessex, he's talking to people about it. It's difficult to talk about selling a giant company because his company is much bigger than mine was, and he's a legacy brand here. So he's got so much more, and he's he's older than me, too. He was my mentor.
SPEAKER_00:So, you know, it's harder for him to like to say something on that too, which is there's a generation that precedes us that were frankly hustlers, right? When you think about how Luzaki made it, how Don Rentz made it, how Bob Watts made it, uh they were, for lack of a better word, hustlers. I mean, Luzaki sold DD out of the back of his station wagon. Steve Jackson. Yes, Steve Jackson. That's how Luzaki started a large distribution firm selling DD out of the back of a station wagon and outside a con. If you watch these people operate at cons, they hustle, hustle, hustle. So I recently, uh, how do I say this politely? I'll just say it. I went to Essen and I stood at the booth of my German translator, Daniel, if you're watching this. Hi, they're excellent. They do fantastic work. Their books are fantastic, but they all stood behind the booth and they were very polite. When I work a con booth, I don't tell anybody who I am, but I go into the aisle and I say, hey man, have you heard of my game? It's pretty cool. You should play it. Come on in. And I generated more sales, like in between doing other things. I'd spend an hour working the booth and I would pull in all these customers. And I don't know, now I call it hustle for lack of a better word, but you gotta get out there and you are your own and only salesman, your best salesman. You gotta hustle, man. You can't stay at home by a computer screen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, hustling to a future gener uh previous generation implies card shark hustling and scams.
SPEAKER_00:But you gotta be able to sell and willing to sell and willing to I mean and the software industry, you know.
SPEAKER_03:If you build it, they won't come. Right, right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03:No, they that yeah, that was always what everybody with Kickstarter to, I just made a Kickstarter, so they'll come. But uh you know, I I I think this is kind of a uh this is a boring slash fun conversation for me because it's business stuff, and a lot of people want to want to hear about Joe's next adventure he's gonna create. But the parallel with what Joe's saying in terms of hustling, Joe's at his booth and not just sitting there. I went to Gen Con and Gemma Expo and all that other stuff. I went from booth to booth going, my name's Aldo, I do distribution, I help, boom, boom. I just hand out business cards. And a lot of people, of course, said I'm busy selling. I go, get that, whatever. But either way, that hustle dynamic, I I really like what Joe's saying about that. It's it's a good, it's a good way to say what we were without and us being the you know, growing older, without us sounding like get off my lawn type stuff, I think.
SPEAKER_01:You know who Ned Ryerson is? Yeah, Ned. I don't know that name. Sure you do. You've heard that Ned Flanders. Who's that? Ned Ryerson. He he dated your sister in high school. He was the dancing belly button. Ned, needle-nose Ned? Groundhog deck.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, okay. Right play. Right. The hustler.
SPEAKER_01:The shell.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, there's well, so you're making me think of another story. My first book was called Broncos Horse Rex. It's a long story. 25 years ago, first D20 book. And back then I had a day job. And back then, oh, by the way, in the olden days, there was no Kickstarter, there was no PDF, there was no drive-through RPG, there was no Patreon, there was no online stores, there was no Amazon. The only way you sold stuff, 96% of your sales went through stores and 4% went through conventions. That was a stat from Watsey in 2001. So I remember on my launch break, this is back when I worked at the Gap Corporate Office, I had a printout of all the stores in America according to Gamma. When you signed up for the Gamma Trade Show, you got a PDF of like, yeah, remember that? They did a list of like all the game stores that had signed up. I'm gonna give you my story when you're okay. I called 400 game stores over the course of like three months, an hour a day, eating my sandwich. That was a peanut butter and jelly year. Speaking of scrappy, odd years, I believe, were peanut butter and jelly, even ears were peanut butter and banana for lunch. And I would just call stores during my lunch break. And I called 400 stores, and that's how I sold, I don't know how many books I sold, probably another 500 or something. Oh, your manager's not there. Well, here's my name. I'll call back tomorrow. Wednesday back. Oh, Tuesday. I'll call back on Tuesday. And uh that's what you had to do. And I think nowadays people don't think of the sheer amount of grunt work that you have to do.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's all about mass marketing. And I'm sure Aldo has a story here, but I need to ask you guys now. Okay, this is great. We've we've tripped down memory lane, and yet here I am. I've got a game idea. Do I just throw up my hands? Because you guys went through the golden age. It it'd be like the Bill Gates of the world who suddenly were there at the right time. The the Mark Zuckerberg.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, I missed the golden age. I was a year and a half past the D20 boom. No, I started after the golden age.
SPEAKER_01:But now here we sit, and Aldo has heard me use this term, a tsunami of games that are out there.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Very true. If the Kickstarter is flooded, it's not going to get you any traction, right? You don't put the Kickstarter up to give the traction to your game. You have to do the marketing. And so, what is the possible hope today, or is there hope that things are gonna change or get better? Or should what should I do?
SPEAKER_03:Well, okay, so the first thing that I've always said, no matter what, that is not age older, tiresome, is obviously the preface is you gotta jump higher than everybody else. You gotta think of those ways. There's the old school marketing concept, marketing 101, that it takes an average of seven impressions to get somebody to buy slash see slash whatever your product. Impressions, my company was named because of that from an original marketing company. And I kept it for the game side. And it's an average of seven, whether it's hearing it on a podcast or seeing an ad or whatever age you're in, it doesn't matter back when radio was around. You heard a radio ad. But we the concept is still the same today. There's just so many more spokes in the wheel right now for both revenue, for revenue for publishers and marketing. Because you could find your place on TikTok or conventions, or just Jamie at Stonemaier, he had great success actually with his online presence and not going to conventions. Days of Wonder back in the day had their super success with the getting an app version of their games. Now, Spiel Dejar didn't hurt. But um, but yeah, I mean, everybody has their different ways. You know, Don Renscoes dub gazillion conventions too for Chessex. But the point is that there are so many different spokes in the wheel right now for revenue, for marketing, where you can go, what you could do. People say, Oh my God, I can't do it all. But you still can do some of them. And that still goes back to the scrappiness, which I I hate to say it, but I'm like, I'm I'm in Joe's court. People don't want to be as scrappy anymore.
SPEAKER_01:They think and scrappy is a name, uh word that goes well with you, although people would assume, and I don't mean that tongue in cheek or facetious. No, it's something that you have been focused on, but both of you are business savvy. Thank you. And oftentimes business and board gamers aren't.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I have to say something. I have to say two things. First, this is a really interesting discussion. So, Richard, thanks for bringing us on. Um, you know, well, something that Aldo and Aldo, by the way, I don't think you were a failure on the creative side. I still remember buying battle cattle from my brother for his birthday, and I think it was 1998, 1999. I think it was a big one.
SPEAKER_01:I remember moving battle cattle and picking it up in the store thinking I wanted to buy it.
SPEAKER_00:We got in the attic somewhere. Um, but first, you gotta have a great product. So I think a lot of people honestly haven't play tested their game enough and haven't perfected it enough. If you have a great, I think the reason DCC RPG hit so well, I spent so much time on that, and it's just fun. I can't tell you how many people objected to I gotta buy weird dice. Oh, your character dies in the first game. So many objections. I'd be like, look, man, just play 20 minutes. And 20 minutes in, they're like, this is great, let's play some more. So I think really you just gotta have a really fun game to start with. That's gotta be the foundation of anything. Um, but although another way to say you called it spokes. Lately I've been using the word marketplaces. Like I feel like the industry has fractured into a thousand marketplaces. I've been looking a lot at yeah, so like Amazon is its own marketplace. There are game companies that focus just on Amazon and aren't in other channels.
SPEAKER_03:Remember that great that that um Excel file you showed me where your sales were and you broke it down. There was like 12 spots or something at the time, and I was like, whoa, 12 revenue streams? There used to be three, you know, and now of course you can just get revenue from TikTok. I mean, but you but you your Amazon or something was so big it had its own category or was significant enough to have its own category.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and there's marketplaces or channels or spokes, whatever you want to call them, that have were non-existent five years ago, are now really important and will probably fade in favor of something else. So I'd say, like, I'm not gonna name names. There's this one company that basically owners sell their stuff on Amazon and they collaborate with YouTube influencers, and that's their stick, you know. I mean, we're here talking about crowdfunding, but if you're gonna do crowdfunding, pick maybe one other channel, TikTok, Amazon, YouTube, I don't know what it is. Um, and and find out how to excel in that one place because it's often different than how you excel in other places.
SPEAKER_03:Well, this goes back to my marketing 101 lecture. There's always three that stands the chair to make it stand up. You can't stand up with one, you can't stand up with two. You got to have three to not fall over. So picking three of those spokes are marketplaces or whatever, whether it's conventions, social media, you know, online only or whatever, Amazon, whatever it may be, pick pick three.
SPEAKER_01:So let's let's shift a little bit. Uh in my business, um, which is uh with professionals, usually tech, I do a lot of speaking at conventions, but this is where they're paying me money to speak, um, which is nice.
SPEAKER_03:Do you just make up things?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they always ask, where do we get this data? I said, I just made it up. You can't prove me wrong. Um and they laugh. And then my team says, Stop saying that. They believe you. I was just recently in Iceland, okay, speaking at an event in Iceland. And it was that the one that's now a US state. No, that's Greenland. That's the other one. That's Greenland. Sorry, sorry. So we go. No, no, I think whatever. I was somewhere up. They spoke English. That's uh okay.
SPEAKER_03:Half of viewership just dropped this shit anyway.
SPEAKER_01:But during the event, um that night at dinner, you're getting to know everybody, and and it's a small event, and so we're all at dinner, and all of a sudden board games come up. And all they want to do, everybody at the table, all they want to do is talk about board games. Now, these are chief information officers of companies like Procter and Gamble. These are folks from Google. These are people name brands we know, and all they want to do is talk about board games. One, all of a sudden, I board game. Somebody the head guy said, Richard, so what other things do you do other than your LinkedIn? And I said, Oh, well, I kind of do the board game thing. Boom. All of a sudden, everybody and they started telling stories and that type of thing. Um, and then they asked me, hey, maybe we should create a board game for our convention, right? This business convention of CIOs of major international companies. Would you create us a board game? Well, here's why this is interesting. Because the previous week I had been in another convention in another city, and they said the exact same thing. When board games came up, all they wanted to do was talk about board games. And then they wanted to say, hey, could we do that for our convention? Now, here's the thing. I left early because I was only there for the day for my presentation. I got an email back that said for the rest of the convention in Iceland, the topic of conversation was board games. That's all they talked about. Now, not a single person in that room was what we would call a traditional gamer. Right? Very few of them have ever probably ever been into a local game store. But they had Ticket to Ride, they had Pandemic, they had uh Carcassonne, they had Catan, they had Wingspan, they had as soon as I started naming some games, because at first I said, Well, do you have you always have to clarify, do you play games? They're like, Well, yeah, Monopoly. I'm like, Well, that's not a game. Do you have actually real games? But my point here is that I'm seeing, and it's being echoed by many of my colleagues who are way outside the board game industry, saying, Richard, we're seeing gaming, not video gaming, yeah, but gaming face-to-face, in-person concept of some type of game starting to creep into the general population beyond what we would consider family games or game conventions that you speak of. Are you seeing something similar? Are we feeling that there's an untapped market, even though we feel saturated by the industry right now with so many games? Is there an untapped market out there that's still discovering this power of gaming?
SPEAKER_03:No. I mean, no, I want to say no-ish, because when I started Impressions doing distribution, it was just really hobby focused. Mass Market was barely in there. A little bit of RPG books like DD were in Barnes and Nobles and Borders and things like that. I have to give my competitor of 20 plus years, PSI, who's still around. They created getting games into Barnes and Noble. They pretty much led the charge into Mass Market way pre-COVID. And they helped blaze that trail. And then COVID hit. Well, what's his name? Uh Will Wheinton's show really kind of accelerated that mass market. Then we got another bump with COVID. Mass all over. Now mass is just part of any conversation. It's one of the spokes. I mean, you really, it's a it's a spoke, just like Joe's dealt with Diamond on the book side.
SPEAKER_01:But although I'm talking about people who one Barnes and Noble, they probably haven't been in one forever. But no, how when was last time you were in a Target of Walmart? Their game section is gigantic. It is, but they're not walking over to those games. These are these are people who are in their 50s. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Their kids are college students, and so I don't I don't my impression is there are now untapped groups that were unaware of the subculture of gaming, who are now being exposed to it through the Will Wheatons and through Well, well, this is what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_03:The the the untapped market is now ending up being those 20 somethings, those out of college, because those people whose parents might have played, but they're discovering what they want to discover now. That's a huge untapped market, those 20 somethings, because we see it in my little convention world now is that all the grognards, the old guys are dying off, and we desperately need young people to not only lift boxes but to be a part of it and to be excited to play these games versus the old guys sitting down and playing push now.
SPEAKER_01:Now you're pushing you it's interesting your language because so far your whole conversation has been male language, old guys, guys, all of this.
SPEAKER_03:I'm not criticizing what I'm saying is the female market's huge right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I already know. But in the past, you were right, it was mostly a bunch of guys sitting around playing games.
SPEAKER_03:But now the big the old guys are all passing away, and the younger generation, and I mean generation, men, men, women, everything. And but the older generation is older generation of men is what's being lost right now.
SPEAKER_01:And there is a huge amount of younger group that of And I've seen it sitting in your booth at one of the cons. I remember an individual came by and bought almost everything you had. And it uh a little exaggeration, but he was just buying stuff. Yeah, come to find out, he'd never been to a con before, he'd never been in a game store before.
SPEAKER_00:He'd be like, I took some people to KoopaCon younger, like friends of my son, and it like blew their mind, you know, because they they'd maybe gone to the game store in San Rafael once or twice, but never seen anything like Koopa Con, you know. Um, Richard, I think you're right. There it I remember my dad falling in love with trivial pursuit in the 80s when that was like the thing, you know, and we played Monopoly, Uno, Scrabble, all these games. Trivial Pursuit, I I feel like it was the breakout ahead of the mid-80s, and now it's become instead of one trivial pursuit, it's become 50 games that have hit mass consciousness. Um, but yeah, Gym Cod's bigger than ever before, gamma's bigger than ever before. Kickstarter has somebody quoted me 800 new game projects a month, which is insane. Like there's evidence that the overall pie has grown, but there's so many slices of that pie now, it is hard to make your mark and hard to dive in and hard to so let's wrap up in our last conversation, and let's shift a little bit here.
SPEAKER_01:Um China tariffs the future of the board game industry. Is it going to survive this economic dis upheaval because it's so closely tied to and here's why I'm asking the other day, um I was looking at a bunch of new games. I don't know, I was on board game geek hot, and so many of the new games were all card driven. They were card games. And my wife asked me, Why so many card games? My suspicion was is because you can get cards printed in the US and it's easy because there are card manufacturers in the US that have been doing it, but start to go to components, boards, printing, shipping, all the stuff.
SPEAKER_03:You're offshore, all of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, offshore. So what's happening? What are we gonna see? Efficiency. What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00:What does efficiency see? Well, actually, to Aldo's point, there's nothing wrong with a barrier to entry. I feel like in the last five years, 10 years, there's been no barriers to entry in this industry. To your point, anybody can throw up an idea and see if it sticks. And you can almost always get something that may print on demand. So I think in a way it's actually gonna uh what's the right word? Winnow the field or put up a little bit of a filter, you know, to have it takes a little bit of effort now to navigate tariffs. It takes a little bit of effort now to navigate Kickstarter in 800 projects a month. Like it takes more effort. Um, and I think you're seeing a little bit, Richard. I agree it's reaction to tariffs, but to Aldo's point, it is also some amount of just people having to work. So people are getting you know, people are getting forced to be scrappy to succeed. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01:Hang on, hang on. Let me flip that. Is there an opportunity for someone not to be scrappy to take some of their money, invest it in manufacturing? Is it worth it? Is it is it worth it to try to establish manufacturing here in the U.S.? That's not scrappy. That's like, hey, I'm seeing the next 10 years.
SPEAKER_00:I have to share stories on this. So the tariffs were announced at Gamma earlier this year in March. I remember from like the Monday to Friday. Expo. It's now called Expo. Gamma's the organization, former board member. My apologies, Mr. Board member. Uh so the Gamma Expo in March, whatever it was. From like Monday to Friday, the tariffs unrolled and we all were panicking. Uh the next week I got back and I went through my phone and I called all the U.S. printers that I used to do business with. I currently do business mostly with Regent, which is based in China, and Wallsworth, which is based in Missouri. Wallsworth does a lot of what I call floppy books, the floppy adventures, but most of the other stuff I send overseas. Um did did you say Missouri or Missouri? Missouri. That's how my dad's from Missouri. That's how he always said it. He's from the boot field, by the way. I just want to check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah. So uh anyway, prior to maybe five or ten years ago, I worked with Bang Printing, Sheridan Printing, Central Plains, the Marion Box Company, all these companies that I hadn't talked to in years. So that week after Gamma, I called them after Gamma Expo, sorry. I called them all. And I remember this conversation. I won't even name which one it was, but I talked to one of them and I was like, hey, you know, I want to get something quoted. And she was like, Yeah, I guess we could do that for you. And I remember thinking, like, where is the sense of urgency? And I I said on the phone call, I was like, you know, have you been following the tariff announcements of the last week? And this woman said, Yeah, I guess we did get a lot more calls than usual on Monday. And I and I just remember thinking, like, how out of touch are you? Like, this is an incredible opportunity to go out and gather business. And instead, every printer I called was basically unaware of what was happening. Then on top of that, I got the quotes back after a while, and most of the quotes were more than it would be to go to China with tariffs. Like it was still a cheaper option to go to China and pay tariffs. And remember, I'm doing books, I'm not doing components, so it's much harder with components. But for books and paper and printed materials, it was still more affordable to go to China, even with the tariffs. And I remember talking to the one of them saying, like, well, listen, tariffs, lots of volatility. You know, I can't be the only one calling you. Are you planning to build new, you know, are you gonna invest? Are you gonna buy new machines, build new lines? Because the trouble with American print manufacturers is they can mostly do one kind of printing. So I do casebound, I do saddle stitch, I do perfect bound, I do setup boxes, I do tuck boxes, I do, you know, I do die cut, I do a lot of different kinds of print, you know, paper stuff. And they can all do two of these or three of these. None of them can do all of them. Um, and each printer I called and I said, like, like so you can't do perfect bound, you're gonna put in a perfect bind machine. Oh, you can't do case bound, you're gonna put in a case binding machine. They all said, Well, we'll wait and see how these tariffs go. You know, nobody's willing to spend three million dollars setting up a new print line when Trump might change his mind tomorrow, or the Supreme Court might strike it down. So, my guess is virtually nobody's invested in manufacturing, at least when it comes to games, and they're all waiting to see how this shakes out.
SPEAKER_03:It's uh So I can add to the board game side of that answer. So I've spoken to people about that same exact thing. Now, LudoFact out of Germany has been around for decades as a manufacturer for board games. They bought that box company in Indiana, what the one you talked to, and their initial idea way long ago was we're gonna start manufacturing not only boxes, but do the whole game manufacturing out of this plant in Indiana. Well, obviously that didn't, they realized they didn't. So they actually were getting around pre-tariff situations, taxes, import fees, by bringing in plastics or doing whatever and bringing it through different countries and areas because they had China, they had Germany in America. So they were efficient to make it more efficient so they could do things in America and all that. Well, now I've heard, and I'm not saying who, but some of these friends of mine who are working with these Chinese printers, these Chinese printers are now looking at other countries to do pass-through. That's one. Vietnam was one answer. Let's just make a company in Vietnam and print in China, but pass through Vietnam and Vietnam to America. Now Vietnam is a problem. But either way, there's even a conversation where the Chinese manufacturer says, hey, I'm gonna convince somebody to start a business in America. And to get around the tariffs, we're gonna be the Chinese printer making it for a dollar, and we're just going to import it at our cost of goods into America to our other company and pay the tariff off the dollar versus the dollar that they made it at versus the two dollars that they sold to Joe Goodman for or board game publisher, and then the tariffs on the two dollars. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Tariff only goes on the$1, the cost of actual goods from the printer, and it gets slipped into America. And in the end, that Chinese printer can sell it to the publisher for still cheaper than the tariff on the cost of goods to the publisher, if I'm making sense. So people are getting creative and getting back to scrappy.
SPEAKER_01:What you are, but you're also uh touching on something that we saw in the automotive industry. How do you get around the tariffs of the automotive industry? You invest in the plants in America, in the US. So the BM, I was living in South Carolina when the BMW plant was built there. And now it's now that's where BMW makes the US BMW, the cars for the US are made in South Carolina for BMW. You're seeing the exact same Toyota is down in uh Plano, Texas, right? This is where so many of these plants, and so you might see there's a possibility that an investment opportunity is like, hey, let's uh let's take our money and go uh invest if we're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, so it's Richard, what's fun. I totally agree with you, right? Our our friend, we're all friends with Steve from Troller Game. He prints as much as possible USA. And I remember conversations with Steve where where he told me like he wanted to do slipcases at one point, and he just could not find a USA factory that would do it in an affordable manner. And I think we all want the US to succeed. The trouble is the formula requires uh stability, interest and investment, uh well-educated, technically skilled labor force. Like there's certain things you need for this to happen, and just all the pieces aren't coming together in the right way.
SPEAKER_03:But you're not, but you're not telling Richard, you're not telling Richard the key about Steve's scrappiness. I'm gonna keep using it now. He bought a piece of land already to build a manufacturing plant to make printing books and everything in America. He's in the process of putting his money where his mouth is so he can do it all himself.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and so he already had some sort of binding. He could do one, but the challenge is for Steve, he can do, I forget exactly, I might have this problem. He can do like saddle stitch and perfect binding, but he couldn't do case binding or vice versa. It's still this thing where if you want the full range of foil and ribbon bookmarks and all the fancy stuff, it's really expensive to build on those.
SPEAKER_03:And then don't forget, Richard, you're talking about all those manufacturing plants. Still know that there is no U.S. auto location that is 100% making a car in America. There's parts coming and engine pieces from Mexico and other places where it could be assembled in America, but it's not all made. All the parts aren't made in the United States, but the manufacturing, of course, putting it together, which is exactly what LudoFact, what I was saying, LudoFact does. Let's get everything. And put it to America, then we'll make it in America and save some money for whatever.
SPEAKER_00:And back to your original question, Richard, if you're a new crowdfunder coming in and just don't even know where to start and you're scared of tariffs, there are companies that will help you navigate, right? Panda, LunaFact. I work for the Regents. Like they're that's all they do is printing and they'll try to help you. But it's not easy. It's harder than it used to be, you know?
SPEAKER_01:And Panda's interesting because I remember when they started off, just the two brothers there and out of British Columbia, right? Vancouver, yeah. Right? Vancouver. And then it's just like, yes, they figured out the need and the demand. Now that was 14 years ago. 14 years ago is when this whole thing kicked off. Um, that's when I started funding the dream. It's been 14 years. It was 2011. Wow. I know, right? Kickstarter, that's really the first year that the Kickstarter on the board game side really kicked kicked off. I think the largest game at that time raised a hundred thousand dollars, and everybody was shocked.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So if I made the investment now, 14 years from now, would I be in a position of where the people who made the investment 14 years ago are today?
SPEAKER_00:Well, so obviously there's a lot of variables, but I think it's worth pointing out uh 25 years ago when Game Game started, Amazon didn't exist, no drive-thru, no PDF sales, no online stores. This industry, game specifically, reinvents itself once every seven to ten years. Like it's a creative industry with creative people, you know.
SPEAKER_01:It it reinvents itself recently every seven to ten years, because before 14, before Kickstarter came along, most people were still mortgaging their house and had 2,000 copies of the game in their right? It was in the garage, yes, in their garage. But that and that went on that was 30 to 40 years of that was the model.
SPEAKER_00:Well, there was that, but like even like PDF sales. I still remember getting an email from James Matthew, who founded RPG now that became drive through RPT. And I was like, who's gonna buy a PDF? That's weird. It sounds like a piracy. This has got to be piracy. I'm not gonna sign this deal. Like I remember thinking how weird it was, and I met him because he owned a game store in Wisconsin. I was like, oh, maybe this guy's for real, you know? Um, and now PDFs have become this whole thing of humble bundle, and it you know, there's this whole other a new way to sell PDFs, which has evolved in the last five years. Humble bundle was nothing five years ago.
SPEAKER_01:And even we haven't even took well, we haven't even talked about AI. Don't. Don't we're not we're done. We're done with this episode. Yeah, good. Because that's a whole okay. Anyway, we'll talk about that on another show. I hey, gentlemen, thank you for joining me on the call. It's gone a lot longer than we normally do, but there was just so much to cap up catch up with. And obviously, we're gonna come back and talk about some other topics, right?
SPEAKER_00:This was fun. Let's do it again. Yeah, let's talk about we we didn't even really talk about crowdfunding. Let's come back and actually talk about crowdfunding.
SPEAKER_01:We're gonna talk about conventions because next week. We'll be able to talk about that. Well, because everything's so digital, we covet shook us up so much. This desire, deep desire to come back and see each other face to face. And game actually, I have tricks for conventions.
SPEAKER_00:We do things that nobody else does, and our sales are substantially higher at cons. And half these tricks I learned from like going back to old men, and old men for whom conventions were only that was it. Luzaki taught me so much. And our sales at cons, I've learned over the years, or routine I was in a con and I knew some friends from the cephalo fair, and they said we did blank today. And I was like, I did a lot more than that today. And I remember thinking, like, wow, I all sold the cephalo fair. And I think we do things that other people just don't even think about because it is a to all this point, it is a whole different uh bag of tricks, you know. Yeah, beast. You gotta learn the techniques. So we're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01:And Aldo with his insight into the convention, owning one that's uh continues to grow and and expand with your Kubla Cruz, your and just so we know, so for we started the call, but we really didn't identify it. KublaCon is held at the Hyatt, San Francisco Hyatt, outside the airport on Memorial Day weekend, right, Aldo?
SPEAKER_03:In addition to Cuba Fall, which is held the same Hyatt around Veterans Day uh in November. And Kubla Cruz. The Cuba Cruz varies, it's whatever we can get the right one out of San Francisco. So for next year in August of 26, we're doing uh 10-day Alaska round trip San Francisco.
SPEAKER_00:And the main Kubicon in May every year is awesome for kids because they have this dude who dresses up like Kubicon and leads a parade. So if you have kids, Kubicon is the place to go. It's a great con for kids.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So the kids' room, it's great.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks. Yeah, this has been great. You've been listening to Funding the Dream. I've had Aldo Ghiazzi, who uh runs Kubicon, uh a San Francisco based game convention every Memorial Day weekend, and Joe Goodman from Goodman Games and myself, Richard Bliss. We hope you've enjoyed and been inspired or discouraged this time, but some of the stuff that you've heard from the group. We'll join you next time. Thanks for listening. Take care. Thanks.