Retail Cost

Thanks Kirioni,

What sort of price were you taking pre orders at?

And what was the margin, if you don't mind sharing!

Thanks Guys!

This is all so encouraging.

A bit of background. I have always liked to think I am good creatively and thought about the possibility of combining my old job (I was a funeral director for eight years) with a board game.

When I got home after a long business trip away I had thought a lot about how it could map out. I sketched it onto a piece of old wallpaper to start with and we had a few hearses (pawns) to move around the board. It was a traditional roll and move game.The game was OK, but it didn't really do much. You landed on coffin nails from time to time and went back to the funeral home, or took someone's handles of one of their coffins. All the nail events had actually happened to me as a fd when I was much younger. it started to develop when we introduced an inner board where the equipment for the funerals had to be purchased. Once your funeral was complete then you had to get to the crematorium or cemetery and conduct the funeral to get the money. Then out again to get more funerals and play on.

We called the game 'Hearses In A Hurry'.

I introduced 2 'Hurry up' spaces, where if you land on them, the 30 second sand timer is turned over and you have as many turns as you can do in that time. it rather developed a mad sense of urgency to the game. We ended up playing it for a time of 45 minutes on a countdown timer as this was the best from our experience.

At this stage (2007) we just had bits of paper for equipment tokens and although we had printed out good quality money it was obviously still a home made game.

We spent a lot of time getting friends around to play it and made them fill out a proper written questionnaire about the game and forced them to say what they didn't like about the game. This brought a number of changes. I then endured the harsh experience of many people no doubt, when I started to ring around some game companies. Generally and not surprisingly they were not very positive. Argos direct expressed an interest, but wouldn't sign and NDA, Paul Lamond Games brought me to a meeting in London and then announced that board games didn't really do well these days and I two other rather forgettable meetings with board game publishers, all of which hacked me off as they wouldn't play the game!

Gamesplay UK have said they will promote another game I have made (much less prototyped) but for this they require me to stump if £4,500 for a prototype professionally made....Ha Ha!How about No.

So, back to my funeral game. As part of my business I speak to ladies meetings, business clubs etc and rather foolishly on a talk entitled "From Hearses To Hostas" about a month ago I said as a throw away comment that I had a home made board game about funeral directing and if anyone wanted to order one for Christmas (home made) then they were available at £10. I was rather surprised to take 4 orders and landed myself in a right pickle trying to get them done. Big Fool I am.

My wife was fantastic, she hand drew a new board as the one we had been using had baked bean stains on and coffee over it and was very wrinkled. We then took this to a printer expecting him to photocopy it and laminate it, but he rather inspired by it put it all onto a screen and reset it in proper print and then printed out the equipment, nails and funeral cards. We have since made a few more adjustments, the board is now in 2 pieces, scored down the centre and joined with thick tape at the back. The pawns, sand timers and dice have been bought fairly cheaply from a really helpful board game company in Suffolk (www.the-education-shop.co.uk. These cost about 70p and the print job came in at around £4, but that included a lot of setting things up as a one off cost.

We struggled a bit with a box, but the printer gave us some and we branded it by sticking a bank note and a nail card on to the top.

We have sold only 15, but have orders for about another 15. All at £10.

Future adjustments, I have sourced a telescopic box company that will print and make the box in the shape of a coffin and shrink wrap them as well. Still waiting for final costings on this. Reckon that it is going to come in at around £5-£6 a game in total when we are finally done, but want to charge £15 for it.

Probably not interested in large wholesale quantities at present. Would rather sell a few here and there. In my other business (selling plants) wholesale always seems attractive, but the margins are so much less and the hassle greater. Selling to the public is much more attractive as I can control it and take it at my pace. It is after all at this stage a bit of fun.

If I can prove to myself that I can sell 500 in a year, then I would be greatly encouraged and look at a larger number for the following year.

Selling to people I now is always of course far easier, but I have realised that in order to sell in a shop, then the game box must look a million dollas (well it has to look half decent), otherwise no one will ever understand what a fantastic game you have created.

I hope this answers some of your questions and helps somebody a little.

Still learning huge amounts and desperately want to work on the other game we have created, but need to get this properly up and running and profitable first.

Hearses In A Hurry is available from me at:

tim@bowdenhostas.com

or call
01837 851590

Tim