Getting stores to sell your game

Why is your wholesale cost $3.25 for a pack of 10 cards? Even using a POD site your cost for 10 cards should be $1 or less...

$5 retail for 10 cards seems very high even for the best game.

Is there a starter pack? If not how do they get the rules?

I think there are a lot more details you need to provide to get a good answer back.

As a retailer and a publisher of games, I can comment on a couple of things.

1) Getting a retailer to invest in a new trading card game is very difficult. Most of them are dead upon release, never achieving enough critical mass in attention to drive the sales of a collectible game. Retailers with any experience in trading card games know this and avoid new trading card games like the plague.

2) $5 per pack for 10 cards in pretty darn expensive. Much more so than any other trading card game I am aware of. Its another warning sign to me as a retailer that if I stocked the product, it would be very hard to sell.

3) A wholesale cost of $3.25 a pack is leaving the retailer with a much shorter margin than we get on most other games. Typical discounts for a store with our volume for most games from our distributors are 48-49% off the suggested retail price. Anything less than that better have a great publisher behind it with a huge fan following and be capable of driving sales through the store en mass. And still yet, if you drop the discount below 43-44%, no matter even if you are wizards of the coast or Konami, we still don't touch it. Passed on carrying the newest trading card game from Spinmasters because their wholesale discount was lower than that. Most retailers I know pass on it for the same reason.

So basically, trading card game from small publisher, high suggested retail price, low trade discount is three strikes....

Some ideas on how to mitigate some of those negatives:

1) Figure out how to lower your suggested retail price.

2) Figure out how to offer better trade discounts. in the 47-50% range.

3) If you are going to sell them by the booster box, figure out how to have much smaller booster displays, so stores can buy in much smaller quantities to test the game out. For instance, instead of 100 boosters, maybe have a display of say 12 or so. Its a packaging size other trading card game publishers have done to try and make it easier for retailers to take a chance on a new trading card game.

4) Product returnability. The simple fact is that new trading card games are often just a bad investment for retailers. Many sit never selling a single booster at suggested retail. And that is even true of games backed by weekday cartoons and major publishers. A retailer is taking a long shot whenever they stock and sell a new one. Most retailers I know just wait until its already proven some market sustainability. If you take more of the risk away for trying it, more of them will. That could be done with a returnability window on some to all of what they have brought in.

5) Product support. Fliers, posters, stickers, etc, things the retailer can get in with their shipment of product to better help them promote it to new walk ins to their store.

Yes, I do realize that many of the suggestions are neither cheap or easy to implement. But its just where the market is for trading card games right now. Even most such games published and backed by multi million and billion dollar companies fail to attain market traction. Just a difficult type of game to be publishing right now. The upside for a successful game can be in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, but the hurdles to attain even sustainability are huge.

Ryan S. Johnson
GOB Retail - http://www.gobretail.com
GOB Publishing - http://www.guildofblades.com

You cannot compare your product to Pokemon. Pokemon has video games, TV shows, and international marketing campaigns.
Your game may be as big someday, but not now.
You need to understand that the retailers are used to paying half of MSRP for a product. If you are selling something to them that they would try to sell for $5, then the wholesale price needs to be $2.50 or less. BTW, I'm still not convinced that you should charge $5, maybe $4 is a better starting price for your product because you will not be able to compete with Pokemon on brand or perceived quality, so you need a draw and price may be it. Look at Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition, this is a full color perfect bound RPG book they sell for $10. In all likelihood, they take a loss on production that they will make up in setting sales. Often publishers will take a loss on initial offerings to create a market they can sell to in the future.
Your production costs seem way out of line, so you may need to find new production partners.
No one would suggest that you abandon your game, but maybe you should change the format. TCGs are notoriously poor selling and many retailers are gunshy about them. Maybe you should look into FFGs LCG model.
Hope that helps.

I was replying at the same time. Sorry for duplicating some of the points.

As to pricing and volume discounts.

As a retailer, we currently stock over 17,000 different items. And we have just a 1200 square foot store that also has gaming space and a print production area.

Most stores have very real limits on space. Given that, they have to make choices as to what they will stock. When making those choices, its often boils down to two things,

1) What will sell itself the easiest.
2) What can you make the most profit on

If your game is not yet offering name and brand power whereas it can sell itself very easily and a poor profit margin, 999 times out of 1000 a retailer will not stock your product. Why should they? If they are treating the business of running a game retail store as a real business, then decisions must be made based on what is most profitable (short and long term).

Would I still stock Magic the Gathering if I only got a 40% discount?

Begrudgingly, yes. Because the game has a huge fan base, is always picking up new players and virtually sells itself. But I can also make money reselling used cards in bundles. 70-80% margins on those. So I have a means to balance out their lower margins a bit.

Stock an unknown game with no existing brand power and fan base and a really poor margin? With no high margin variant of the game that I could sell on the flipside? No. There is no financial benefit for doing so.

Sometimes as a game manufacturer you have to go back to the drawing board with regards to how you produce, package and price your game because your first approach just isn't compatible with the marketplace. Sometimes your ultimate vision for the produce might need to meet a compromise or two in order to shoehorn the product into a cost structure that will meet market preconceptions.

I have board games that I would love to produce into lavish high end editions, but the costs of doing so would make then have to retail for $150 instead of the $40 or so they do now. Unfortunately, I know from experience that I would also run smack against a lot of market resistance trying to sell the game at $150. So instead we sell the $40 editions.

Ryan
GOB Retail

Maybe you are better off doing demos at stores and Cons and selling the product on your own web store.

As the saying goes, "Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door."

After reading through this thread and your responses, I think you should really go back and read guildofblades' comments again. They tell you precisely what needs to change in order to get this product on the shelf, but all you've done is argue that your product is good enough as it is. I'm not a game store owner, but guildofblades is -- he knows what goes on the shelf and what doesn't: the fact is that a completely unknown product with 35% margin will never get on the shelf.

You're offering 35% margin or 40% with bulk discount.
You need to offer closer to 50% margin or 55% with bulk discount.

What it boils down to is that right now your production costs are too high, which leads to your MSRP being too high and the retailer's margin too low. No amount of in-store demos, posters, buy-back incentives, pretty artwork, or any other tactics are going to make much difference until you address the core problem.

I don't know how you're getting your cards printed/laminated, but it sounds too expensive. Have you looked at POD printers such as TheGameCrafter or SuperiodPOD? You could print yourself a box of 1000 cards through TheGameCrafter for $95.25 plus postage, then have your "collation guy" sort and package them into boosters. If collating and packaging costs more than $1 per booster then I think there's something wrong there too.

10-card booster
Printing: $1
Collate and package: $1
Your profit: $0.5
Game Store Markup: $2.5
------------------
MSRP: $5
Margin to game store: 50%

Another option is to re-think the way that you package them. From your website I see that the players need 6, 9, or 12 boosters to play the game. Why not sell them in sets of 30 instead of 10? That should reduce your collation and packaging costs (comparatively), and also give them a different price point to the Pokemon boosters.

30-card booster
Printing: $3
Collate and package: $2
Your profit: $1
Game Store Markup: $6
-----------------------
MSRP: $12
Margin to game store: 50%

Play with the numbers any way you want, but if the game store's margin drops below 50% it won't get on the shelf. Similarly, the MSRP needs to stay below the price of comparative popular products (Pokemon, MTG) or the customers won't buy it.

Or go with a different business model such as online. But that's a whole other thread.

Regards,
kos