Skip to Content
 

Some biz questions

3 replies [Last post]
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 10:42
R1773R
R1773R's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/18/2010

Hey Guys,

So me and my friends got together some funds and we are play-testing almost constantly for last 2 months :) We have been working on our games for over a year on a very intensive basis, and now we think we are ready to go for self-publication with some help from Kickstarter.

We figured the following questions would be probably answered best by some of you who have more experience then us :)

~ What is your experience with importing games into other countries? Paying some import taxes etc? Should we be super-concerned?

~ How hard is it to self-distribute a game for company that only offers one game? We are considering to pitch our game to PSI for the US market. Any hints on that? :)

~ Does anybody have any good list of game-parades in EU/US? What about "game-competitions"? How do games get recognized as "strategic game of the year" and stuff like that? :)

Thank you for your insights! Can't wait to read your answers tomorrow :)

Top
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 15:29
#1
MichaelM
MichaelM's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/09/2009
I sent a PM.

I sent a PM.

Top
Tue, 07/19/2011 - 11:44
#2
Benjow
Benjow's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/07/2011
Well...

I am new to this industry, but I've worked several years for a company called Logitech, the mouse company :)

As far as international sales, your best bet is definitely to go with a distributor, which may seem obvious. For one thing most foreign markets do not have the large chains that we have in the US. Even Europe is highly fragmented with lots of smaller shops who do their own buying (through a distributor). There are generally going to be some sort of tax/tarriff/fee associated with importing your product (depending upon where it is manufactured), and possibly some type of certification involved. Europe, for example, has very stringent requirements surrounding not using plastics in products, which will impact your production costs.

You will definitely need to tweak your pricing model for your foreign SKUs, but the tricky thing is that even though your costs will be higher, you may or may not be able to raise your retail price.

Does that help at all?

Top
Tue, 07/19/2011 - 14:17
#3
questccg
questccg's picture
Offline
Joined: 04/16/2011
Go with a publisher or a distributor

R1773R wrote:
...and now we think we are ready to go for self-publication with some help from Kickstarter.

Go with a publisher or a distributor (if you can). We are trying to sell our game and the market is tough. We were rated a 9.5 by someone in the business and our Board Game Geek rating is 9.67 and still sales are very slow.

If you can get a distributor, then maybe you can sell you product elsewhere. BUT first priority is to sell in the US, the market is fairly large.

We are trying to sell, one store at a time (because as of this writting we do not have a distributor). It is hard even to convince a store to stock/sell your product. We are now educating the consumer by having demo days at stores in order to build demand.

Before you "mass-produce" your product, make several prototypes and send it to as many publishers as possible use this BGDF link to help:

http://www.bgdf.com/node/621

Good luck!

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut