What It Takes in Owning an E-commerce Shop - The Game Steward | Ep. #004

On the 4th episode of The E-comm Show, our host Andrew Maff is with Dan Kaplan of The Game Steward. They talked about the challenges in owning an e-commerce business. Learn more about how a startup game store grew and is now hitting 7 figures annually. 

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What It Takes in Owning an E-commerce Shop

SPEAKERS

Andrew Maff & Dan Kaplan

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff

About Dan Kaplan 

With my best friend, we built The Game Steward, a successful startup, that finds and funds the best of the board game titles yet to come to market, and makes them available to our customers. (This is a radical change over the way the existing market works. In the established model, you only buy established, aka "evergreen", game titles from a long-standing distributor tier.)

In just a few years, we've backed and retailed well over a thousand different titles that had yet to come to market, opened our first warehouse, and hired a staff. We continue to grow and expand at a fast pace and all while remaining in the black (even during a pandemic.)

I'm a lifelong gamer, and I've made a lot of new friends in this industry filled with wonderful, colorful people. The Game Steward turned out to be a pretty fun game to play.

Dan Kaplan, co-owner of The Game Steward, lives in Virginia with his wife.

Transcript:

00:03

By doing that, for example, I keep everything centralized, I keep the cost down, and keep my skill building up. This is Brendan Gillen from Fight Gear Direct. This is Andrew Tjernlund with Tjernlund products. This is Dan Kaplan, of The Game Steward, then you're listening to and you're listening, and you're listening to The Ecomm Show.

00:27

Welcome to The Ecomm Show, presented by BlueTuskr. The number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts share their secrets on how they scaled their business, and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew.

00:48

Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Ecomm Show. I am your host, Andrew Maff. And today I have Dan Kaplan of The Game Steward here with me, Dan, are you ready for a good show?

00:56

Oh, yeah, absolutely. looking awesome. I'm

01:01

so excited about this episode. And I'm learning that this is a really bad habit of mine where I started episode and I go, I'm so excited about this one for this reason, but that's why I did the show, right? So your business is incredibly interesting to me, because of just the entire approach. And I don't I don't want to ruin the fun. So I'll let you start off. So why don't you give us a little bit of an overview about the game store? And we'll go from there?

01:22

Well, sure. So we are essentially a board game company, we sell board games, we're a merchant that deals, but we're really quite different than most of the ones that I have people say it but um, basically what we do is we sell board games, no one else sells, essentially, games are not in distribution, at least not the United States. So we'll go directly contracting to literally hundreds, this point 1000s of different board game publishers to find their prototypes in games that are limited edition, and Kickstarter, for example, before they've been published, like sometimes years before the contract with them, give them seed money, they make more games, and thus get better, you know, cost per unit of their production, and essentially, then put them up for sale on our store. And so about 99% of what we sell, is not available anywhere else. So you're kind of

02:15

like and correct me if I'm wrong, kind of like a Kickstarter

02:19

for board games. Well, I mean, we're like an aftermarket for Kickstarter, if you want to call it that. A Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site where everyone goes in, they put their money in, and they're not guaranteed to get anything back, you make you back the Kickstarter. And if the Kickstarter fails, then you're out of that money. Kickstarter does one nice thing that Indiegogo doesn't do which is on Kickstarter, if the thing doesn't fund, you get your money back at that point. But if it funds and then they go belly up, you're out. There's actually no real transaction with us, for example, we actually bond those. So basically, with us, if you buy the Kickstarter from us, we're selling you that pre order. And if it goes belly up, 18 months in, you get a full refund from us, there's no risk. So we are essentially an aftermarket for Kickstarter. We're not only a crowdfunding site, though, we do basically give seed money to companies A lot of times, if they're very large, we may have terms where we don't pay until it arrives. But some of the smaller ones actually need the money upfront to increase their orders when they're like doing the build in China, for example. So those for example, will often put all the money up front sometimes like two or three years in advance, although more typically it's a year to 18 so you

03:33

also would most likely if and again correct me if I'm wrong, have no inventory, no product of your own. It's you're helping other sellers and other businesses sell their product correct?

03:45

Well, I guess you could put it that way. These guys are publishers so their main goal right is designed the best board game in the world. Their main goal is not to sell it. Some of them do it is actually more common now especially post pandemic where they'll open up their own store, and they'll have their own stand although not all of them do that still. Yeah, and back in the day, it was really unusual right before the pandemic a lot of people you know, only they have excess inventory, they bother opening a store, if they're going to meet all their Kickstarters are limited edition and they're gonna go to distribution perhaps they would just simply sell what they had. And then they might have a remainder and they have to figure a way to get rid of that liquidated right? Now you see a lot more where publishers will after their Kickstarter open their own, like Shopify shop for example, which is relatively easy to do where they can sell just their products. So do are they are products I consider every one of them to be our children, our babies, but and we do a lot of individual work with every one of them mean custom contracting is not simple. There's a reason why people go to distributors, right because it basically makes it all the same. Everyone has the same contract. You can buy from multiple publishers at once. You get all in one pallet, right for us. Everything's individual. So it is true though. We do not make the board game although we are talking now. About there's a couple of titles We named them we would love to see them back in print so we're actually looking at maybe doing Kickstarter ourselves to do a couple of titles that we would love to see back in print that have been out of print for like over five years. Absolutely

05:13

genius. So I know you started this with your partner Michael

05:17

correct. Yeah, Miko Piazza. What, how did you come up with

05:21

this idea? Like this is a this is a mate like my head's turning like how many other industries could you do this for? Like, this is genius, what was what was the backstory, and I should

05:31

probably name again, because you know, prizes the Hungarian way, Michael piszczek, as well. So Michael actually came with the idea, I give him full credit, he was doing this on his own as a hobby. He was a big Kickstarter board game backer, and he also love limited editions. And he started buying, you know, as people will a couple extra copies and then selling them. And then, you know, he moved to the east coast, his wife got a new position. So he had to give up his job. And he started doing a little bit like as a side gig, as you look for things. And then in 2016, we spoke and decided to actually go for it just both was full time. And so that was a really big sea change, right? We joined gamma, the game manufacturer Association, we came up with our site online, we started by much more massive amounts of inventory, put a lot more capital into it. And so basically, it evolved from that basement gig, you know, where, when we first started off for a while we were in his basement, then we were in my garage, and now we own like, 1000 foot square warehouse in Virginia, where we have five employees working full time. That's amazing.

06:39

So did you bootstrap it? Did you take on any investment, any debt? Like what was that beginning stage, like funding it? To get to where it is? Now

06:48

we basically did bootstrapping, essentially, one of the things I brought to the table was I had some capital. So basically, I Angel invested in the company. And you know, to this day, we biking live both to put capital into the company a regular basis, because we'll do large amounts of bonds, and then it'll sell for a long time. And then, you know, for cash flow, but we've never take on any, any investors besides tubeless.

07:11

I love hearing that. I always I'm not a big fan of taking on investment unless there's some reason where you need to get to market before someone else then Okay, I guess. But it's it's always really cool to hear the story of someone who bootstrapped it just because it lets everyone know like it is absolutely possible. And it can be done. You just got to be patient takes a little longer, but that's how the game works. So I try not to get too deep into specific numbers, because I know a lot of sellers aren't aren't fans of sharing that kind of stuff. I know you broke seven

07:43

figures to break eight yet? No, we have not broken eight figures yet. So what do you do? I'm sorry.

07:50

What do you think is? Well, actually here? Let's let's backtrack first, what do you think was the biggest thing that helped you break seven?

07:58

Oh, well, that's an interesting question, what helped us break seven? Well, you know, we kind of went out this a little bit called lateral strategies. So we typically don't try and hit our problems, head on the way that we think a lot of folks are, if only because it tends to be the most expensive way. And people skip a lot of hurdles a lot of competition. So what I would offer there is, is that what we did was we looked at the people who are the core board game players, early adopters. And we market targeted those early adopters, knowing that they would play these board games with their friends. And they were a core audience. And so flipping them to the second stage, which was once they had bought our games for over a year, and given us lots of great ratings, and essentially told their friends about us, we began to see the second stage, were the people who were not necessarily like your alpha gamer, who wouldn't buy honestly that $1,000 board game themselves all the time. But we do sell $1,000 orders, because we sell like limited editions with all the extras. So if you want the board game that has all of the extra expansions, or like the metal coins, and the metal figures, we do carry those, like we'll buy variations on it. Right digress. So we got those core gamers and then their friends started to come and as we move through them to the next here, the Friends of the friends, I think that's where we broke seven figures. And we still see those seasonal shifts in our core gamers like the original core audience tend to buy a lot in March, as opposed to let's say December, but yet these the seasonal gamers, the ones that would offer the third, the third tier is kind of rough, but let's call it the third level of gaming that they tend to be much more seasonal shoppers. So that's where we start to see the expansion from Black Friday into December right through January. And we still see that curve in March. But now it's sort of underwater, right? It's like a wave, a tidal wave. It doesn't really break the surface of water. You can't see it right. So we still see Those guys come in. But now our overall shoppers that season are so high that it's still in effect, but it's under the under the top.

10:10

So interesting what what makes your peak in March? That seems I'm not even really sure I understand why

10:18

March. It's been true for years like we've been doing this, you know, since 2016. Like with Shopify, for example, online, and March is very steady that way. And as to why it was the March is the biggest, I've heard a number of theories I haven't bought into any of them. I've heard some people say, well, that's when people get their tax returns back so they have all this extra cash. I've heard, you know, a number of different theories, it may also be the seasonal cycle with supply from China's normally works, because what you'll see a lot of times is that people will promise their games in by Christmas, they'll miss that date, then you have Chinese New Year, which is in late February, nothing's going to ship then. And so a lot of stuff comes in, like right off the Chinese New Year, because everything is the boats and they come across least typically now we have these other issues, the pandemic, but we also we get a lot of inventory and so that also my explain why march was such. Again, though I, I've crunched the numbers, and I have not seen a really convincing argument. So

11:22

of course, the elephant in everyone's room right now pandemic, what hat so how did that affect your business? I'm going to go out and an assumption and assume you did pretty well, considering everyone's stuck at home, like the best thing to do is play a board game, but I may be wrong. So how did that go? Well, you know,

11:39

we made a lot of friends at gamma. Um, and you know, they've told us that the board game cycle is actually anti cyclical. So like you just said, when there's problems in the economy, board games tend to sell better. And so yeah, we we did fairly well, I mean, we had some march of 2020 was actually an inverse, right? That was the first year where sales went down. But that was when the story was breaking right on the pandemic. Yeah, so we had that downturn. And then, but after that point, when people got over the shock of it, and they were home, and they want to play board games, our business started to pick up, I would offer it has follow the same seasonal shifts that otherwise it has. It's interesting whether or not we would have hit the same numbers, if it hadn't been for the pandemic. I have to say that, aside from the dip in March that we saw because of the scare, and the people were concerned about it, I think we've probably grown at least as fast would have anyway. And it may have grown faster. It's hard to say. Wow, interesting. So with that,

12:41

obviously, because of it currently, there's, you know, a ton of supply chain issues and shipping as a billion dollars, and everyone's kind of still having issues, especially in our industry. What how's it going with you guys? What, what kind of issues are you dealing with right now?

12:55

Well, you know, we're used to 1000s of separate contracts for our board games, we don't work with distributors, right, or we do a bit it's not we're against distributors, I mean, they obviously have a great role in the industry. And they're very important. The thing about it is though, because we do private contracts, and because we also do a ton of pre orders, sometimes our customers know that they're limited edition board game, or Kickstarter is not going to come in for 24 months. So our customers are, you know, through deliver sticks, they're made of steel, they don't flinch. Certainly the core board gamers when it comes to these long term things, also, they do with us that these games are sold out or long sold out. And so what we do is, we essentially take the preorder, and even though the price of the game may go up before reaches market, we don't do any funny business like we you buy from us, you have bought the game, you've reserved of that price, we're gonna keep it for you no matter what. So I think a lot of them sit, and they're like ready to wait it out. I've got some suppliers who should deliver, you know, in February who still haven't delivered, it's kind of rare. But as is happening, some of these are big games. And I will see amongst some people who are relatively new customers who aren't used to the fluctuations, like with Kickstarters, for example, and the delays. And you know, some of them are upset, we'll explain the situation, a lot of them I would offer probably 75% will be like, Oh, that's great. Appreciate you let us know, we're gonna sit on it. And we'll wait. The other part, what I would offer is is that, for us actually has been kind of nice, because we normally get this huge crush on certain months of deliveries. And actually, because of the delays, it's actually spread it out for us. So instead of getting a tidal wave in one month, we've actually seen this sort of nice distribution over several months. Now, does it go to next year? I mean, and I'll tell you, I'm hearing from publishers, right, the cost of shipping containers got like 20 times. Yeah, so yeah, they're struggling and we've had a few instances where we work with them and said, you know, we understand your game has gone up in cost. You tell us what we need to do. We'll you know for The more games that we sell, we're going to add a little bit to that will will offset some of the costs. But for the most part, people will say, so, for us so far knock on wood, you know, we're doing well. We're seeing the inventory come in. And because of our strange nature of not really being one of these groups that like just buys from distributor and distributors late, everything's late, we're dealing with all these individuals, and they all come in at different times. So for us, you know, it's something comes in every day of the week.

15:32

So with all of those different issues that obviously, plenty of hurdles that you just listed, and obviously currently for this year, how are you kind of preparing for q4? How does that work for

15:45

you? Well, we've looked at it, I mean, one of the things we try and do is we try to make sure we bought enough, right, that's always the thing. So we are putting down a lot of money, putting out a lot more inventory. Knowing that probably when we go into this next cycle, we're gonna grow as much as we did last fourth quarter. And so also trying to put out and get as many things became landed for Black Friday sale. So we do one sale year, it's a Black Friday sale, only nine stock items. And that's usually a monster. So everything that we've collected over the course of the year, some of it was held back, what happens is we'll make it work. But because we're limited edition, you can't get more, we'll always over order. So there's a few different copies, right, we'll have pristine copies for customers, we'll set the standard ones aside. Then on Black Friday, we put all these up for sale, we know they're dented or not, usually things are small, people don't even notice them, we noticed them. And so our black friday turns to this gigantic monster. So one of things we try and do is make sure we have enough landed in stock inventory, to make sure that we can feed that furnace for the Black Friday sale, that Black Friday sale really for us also, you know, it trains Google algorithms, for example, to understand who our customers are. And since we're really we're very niche, right, we're a very fine segment of even think about gaming, right, you got gaming all all kinds, you got a big part of that computer game, right. And then there's a small subset of board games, right. And then there's a small section of that, where you overlap, let's say with Kickstarters, limited editions, and so on. So you get to smaller, smaller circles. So where we are very niche. And so one of the things that the Black Friday sale does for us, and we always prepare for one reason we feed it so well is that Google sees all the people who come to our shop, and they begin to better profile exactly who our customers are. And that makes all of our advertising campaigns that much more accurate, going right into the Christmas season when you want it. So we see a much better ROI is going all the way through, let's say February or March, because of that training of the algorithms using the Black Friday sale for sale. So when you think about what I'm gonna do fourth quarter, that's a big one, right? The second part of it is, is making sure I have enough inventory in place, try and learn as much as I can. So it will be available for people for Christmas, for example. And then of course, you know, just keeping track of all the title, we carry actively, probably no more than three to 450 titles at a time. Although we have 1000s of items that we have back this limited edition, right? We don't have more. We're unlike other stores, right? We can't buy and do a scale. So it's not like we buy and then say, oh, we'll keep selling it and keep selling and keep advertising and build that market. Basically ours disappear. And then it's over. Sometimes we get a second swipe at it because publishers says hey, I've got these extra 1000 copies, do you want them? Absolutely, we'll take everything we'll be happy to. We've had a few instances like that, where we get second and third tries at the game. But normally, right, it's gone. So we have to move on. And so what we're trying to do right now is just make sure that for the fourth quarter, we land the inventory, get the pre orders in.

18:51

We're interested, obviously, we're reading the news, we're watching what's happening with COVID. Um, and, you know, looking for any curveballs. Yeah, I mean, these publishers find you? Well, we tend to find them. Some do find us we have metrics that we've actually started, you know, we've talked before the interview, right, I was an enterprise architect for a long time. So doing metric based work is basically how I do everything. And so we collect metrics on games, and I've been working tirelessly to get better and better information data in from various websites put together and actually get the scoop on what is the site guy say about a certain game, right? It may not be a maybe a first time publisher, but you can take a look at it, you can see what the interest is going to be in six to 12 months. And that's really our my job really, or our job is to sort of prognosticate like what will be popular in a year or two years. Right. And put that together. And so what we do is we find those metrics once we do we approach the game publisher, a lot of times to will simply reach out to them on game found or Kickstarter. Make Contact say, Hey, we are this large buyer, we noticed that you're selling, you know, you don't have let's say, let's say a retailer offering. Can we talk to you about that? Like you? What would you say if we bought like 10,000 units from you, you know, how will that work? Can you? What if we bought a shipping canister with how many fit in one shipping container? Does that make it easier for you look for those places where everybody can give. I'll also offer that my business partner, Michael, started with a friend of ours from Great Britain, a Facebook group for retailers to fund Kickstarter. So we're also working really hard to bring our other game board game stores, you know, and help bring information to them and provide a venue where if you have a Kickstarter or elimination board game, you go on there, and just say, Hey, here's my offering, I have this retailer, you know, level pricing, I mentioned retailer offering or retailer buys or contracts, and hopefully making that connection loop better. Because, you know, when we started, it was very rough, right? It's Kickstarter board games, and limited edition board games outside of distributors, it was almost unheard of, to really carry them in a large fashion. A lot of brick and mortar stores would get orders from their customers like a customer come and say, Hey, Andrew, can you get me this one game, and they would order a copy of it, and get it for your loyal customer. But the whole idea of being a specialty store that like, I think probably 90% of our offerings are Kickstarter. I think the other 10% and limited edition are not available in the US and in distribution. And we were really, we are the first and basically what we have the deepest and broadest catalogue of games in this in this branch. And, you know, that is something that I don't think the world had seen before. Really, I think that's what really differentiates us. But Forgive me, I think I digress on your, that was great. You can

21:52

take the show. Um, you mentioned you mentioned the Facebook group, it actually reminded me because I didn't want to ask you when we were talking about the q4 stuff, because I mean, you have the perfect audience for you know, kind of that community building because talk about like a tight knit group that probably all have opinions about certain things, which means you can keep conversations going all that stuff. So what is your marketing strategy look like? Do you have a Facebook group also for, you know, your actual customers that are buying these games? And like, what's your whole strategy? Like?

22:27

Oh, well, I mentioned to you that with the, with the retailer Kickstarter group, that I should also mention that our friend Dave, from Manchester, England with fanboy three, one of the biggest board game retailers in Great Britain, a co founder that group with Michael, so I give them full credit for, for doing that, for example, for us individually, our media strategy, again, we try to be lateral. So we've done some strange things. But in terms of Facebook groups is pretty ordinary, we have basically a, you know, Facebook business page, we have a Facebook group, where people can join it's private group, what we do tend to do is put out announcements for remainders that we get that are hard to find, we'll put them out there first, right, so our loyal customers who have subscribed to that can get those first, we've also developed a system on our site now where if a game is sold out, you can sign up for it. And basically, if you're a previous customer orders, you'll get six hours warning before non customer if we get those games back in stock. So we try to do things for our customers, and our repeat customers, you know, to let them get a slight edge on those things. And it also brings value to joining the Facebook group. Yeah. with Facebook as well. We're example in media, it's not really about organizing so much. But advertising, we've done Facebook campaigns, right, where we make sure that our groups are covered. And that essentially people I think this is a big vending machine, as opposed to sales. The difference being is that you know, when you want that, that those corn chips, right, you go to the vending machine, you pick the quarters you want, you don't want to hear from the corn chip vending machine you won't. And that's with us was sales, like we're a giant vending machine, we put our stuff out in Google Shopping, we put our stuff on Facebook, and essentially if you were interested in a certain kind of chips, you know where the vending machine come and find it from us, but always be there. And hopefully, you know, any title you're looking for, we can give it to you. Um, in terms of organizing, though, in terms of for the grassroots of it. I will say this, our brick and mortar brothers and sisters really do so much with it. We are trying to do our own brick and mortar front end to our warehouse, for example, by game board game companies, they provide a play space, and they really build this. So you know, we talked about like a Facebook group, for example, like retailers who back Kickstarter, that's something that we've contributed on and most of my business partner, but really it's you know, those board game stores and unfortunately not us at this point. They provide that play space, they provide a place where people can tactfully touch the games and look at them. Feel the weight for example, and they provide in a safe environment for people who share that interest, you know, we talk about third spaces. For game companies and board game merchants have been doing that for decades. My best friend Mike, who is my business partner, we met in high school, at a little board game store in Alexandria, Virginia called the little soldier which no longer exists. And it's exactly that third space in the 1980s are not that, you know, brought us together, and a lot of my close friends, in fact, a few of them who work in our warehouse, you know, we met through gaming. And we've known for decades. So I'm sorry, you mentioned about, you know, Facebook and groups, I sort of took into third space, which is really Are you familiar with that? Is that a term that everybody knows there's no

25:39

that one, um, that one was a little lost, but I was gonna come back to it can what is a third space? Yeah, I apologize for that, Andrew.

25:45

So three days is a phrase, it's used in modern Merchandising, and in modern, sort of mall space. And I remember I was talking to a local talk show here, a radio show that we have for NPR about this as well, because people will argue about developing a space commercially, or we would make it a park, right. And we basically banned commercial spaces from it. And I called it I was like, guys, you're, what you're talking about is so 20 years ago, because the way that really commercial spaces work today, the ones that really, really work. And obviously, there's many ways to slice this up, is they provide like a safe space, you think about like your high end bookstore, for example, where they have chairs, where you can sit and read the books, right. Um, they also may have like a coffee shop attached to them, they're providing a space where you can not only get the merchandise, but you can actually enjoy your time in that space. And so those are called third spaces, at least by certain groups, people. And board game stores, for example, I've been doing that for decades, right, providing that third space, I've seen interesting thing when I was a kid, like Dungeons and Dragons, for example, was frowned upon. They're like, Oh, it's satanic worship, there was a few people were and now I see that parents are driving their kids in droves, to board game stores, right? To play Dungeons and Dragons, because they're actually talking face to face with other people, instead of on devices. So those third spaces are kind of like community spaces. And the way that they're, you know, paid for basically is, is that you are a patron or merchant you shop at that store. Sometimes there's a small nominal fee, right? People will maybe charge a quarter for sodas, or charge a little bit of time for a tablespace if it's very, very active. But for the most part, you know, those third spaces are designed to bring you in and, and games to offset provide gaming tables for decades. And like I said, bookstores, board game stores, maybe some high end coffee shops, perhaps did this originally. But they provide those places where you can set up your laptop if you want to. And you can work if you want. That's a third space for.

27:52

I mean, that's now a marketing brain is running. So forgive me, I mean, so when I was a kid, I'll admit it, I was big into Pokemon. And I would go and like do things and it was relatively similar to what you're talking about. So now I'm thinking, do you host events do you like because and if you're not doing this, I suggest you do it because I just had this idea that sounds great in my head, and correct me if I'm wrong. But you could take your your data out of Shopify, Google Analytics, or wherever you want, figure out where some of your top customers are in three or four cities and do like a tournament and actually host like an event. Have you guys ever thought of doing something along those lines, because I know that game stores are not common in most cities. So you could actually kind of have like a pop up shop. If you guys ever looked into doing something like that?

28:39

Well, we could wait. So let me explain a little bit like my friend Dave, who is fanboy three in Manchester, England, he is a huge batch of the gathering host. He also does, you know, every collectible card game you can think of right? He knows his events. And he's been doing it for years, and he has staff dedicated to that purpose. And I would offer that, for my knowledge other board game stores, I think we may be the only ones who don't do that. So we don't sell a collectible card game. And put it out there we specialize right in these limited edition board games. So we don't have as the gathering. We don't Pokemon we and we don't we don't carry any of those. So for us, it would be a bit of a stretch. But I take your point. And I'd offer that your your other no more typical board games. We are the exception. Every other board game I know actually are worrying store. And it has been making its margin over the years by selling Magic the Gathering, right and doing the events that you're talking about that crowd based service that essentially brings in customers and provides additional revenue stream, right. It makes them familiar with the store. It provides them a play space, they get familiar with it. Also there's a certain amount of you know, profit to be made and hosting those events, although I'm not sure exactly the margin, but that's to be honest with you. That's one of the things that we we don't do clickable cards. Maybe if there was a board game tournament, we could do something on those lines, but we aren't working Have Andrew on providing a space where our warehouse is so basically that people can come to our site and visit us and pick things up directly from us. Because today, we're really online. Like I said, like fanboy three, Manchester, if you want a delightful place to play, you know, Pokemon, or Magic the Gathering is a whole basement, dedicated that with this advanced air conditioning system to keep the air fresh, like hundreds of chairs and tables, and train staff who do nothing. Oh boy, I should say nothing else. But it has been years or decades running these events. They really know how to do. But I agree with you is a good way to experiment. Yeah.

30:43

What did you say your warehouse was based out of?

30:45

our warehouse now is in Vinton Virginia, which is in Nigeria? Yeah. Coming soon. I'm sorry. That

30:53

your space coming soon. Vinton Virginia,

30:56

you ready for it?

30:58

Wait, what is that? Is that in the works? Is that something you guys? Well,

31:01

so to tell you to, in our same town of in Virginia, right next door, is the largest seller of Magic the Gathering cards, I think in the world, possibly in the country, but I think it's in the world, finally as to because several of their employees have left there to come work for us. No, it's totally different. So yeah, we are the kind of board game store. And I absolutely agree with you on the community service. And what brick and mortars do at this point, unfortunately, I think that if we went into magic, the gathering might be slightly eclipsed. But there might be other avenues yet. Also, they tend not to be limited edition, right? I mean, there is this idea that there's limited quantities, right? But it's not exactly the same thing. We say limited edition, what we mean is, is that there's like a publication window. And then a lens. Although now that you mentioned Andrew, that does sound like mentioned the gathering, doesn't it? Yeah, it could.

31:51

And, you know, if you had a, you know, maybe a game that everyone wanted to play, but there was obviously very limited amounts, and hence, it's a limited edition, you could almost take that like several of those games and like put them on tour. And just have a have a day where someone can come in play and sit and you know, have a coffee, enjoy a drink or something and play a game with some friends. And then you take it back and it goes back on the road. Absolutely. Yeah. might be interesting.

32:22

A little bit like we'll have European board game publishers don't have a space United States. Well, we do work with them a bit on that, like, they'll really do the demoing, what will happen is they'll deliver to us, and we'll hold for them, for example, and that sort of thing. So we do a cooperative relationship. But it's definitely a place where we could expand. Absolutely, as

32:42

you mentioned earlier, you know about what helped you break seven figures, what is it you think is going to help you break

32:48

eight figures? Well, I think that as word of mouth spreads, that, you know, this sort of, if you ever read the tipping point, for example, it's this idea that you, you keep expanding on that. And what we try to do is we're trying to prevent, trying to provide, I should say, the best customer service available. So one thing we've seen was a few copycat stores. Now I've opened up some of them for our customers or ours, some of them are images, where like, they're like, Oh, you know, we love the game story. And we're like, open up our own little thing. It supports their game, others who are a little more abrasive, and like, actually come after us a little bit, which is a little it's interesting that people have done that we've found out later that have done that with everyone. So what we're seeing really is is that providing just top notch service, security, trustworthiness and quality, right? And making sure that all our customers are taken care of we keep hiring new personnel to make sure we can answer the phones, reply to all the emails in a prompt fashion. We're also working on new ways in which to update our customers, like working on, instead of just saying a newsletter, what new games we have, we're working on a newsletter that will include things like, hey, what is the status of all your current orders? and tailor information about what it is that you're about? in each one of those? So it's queued up today? Especially if you're going to wait 18 months? Yeah. Gaming publishing China? Has it found a shipping container yet? Is it on the boat coming back? You know, is it in distribution with the with the fulfillment agent that the publisher chose, as it arrived at the game store? You know, that sort of thing? Matt is answering question exactly. I would offer that. If we keep doing this. And we keep expanding our base the way we add more and more people tell their friends. This is the right way to go. I just feel like you know, there's nowhere to go. But Oh, yeah.

34:48

How big is your market? Like, where's where's your cap?

34:50

You know, that's a great question. We heard from many people before we started that our business was impossible. In fact, I intended electric given by a board game retailer who said years of experience so I deeply respect great guy. And here is the lecture actually stated, this is why we were just getting started, how our model we'd already started was completely impossible would never work. Since then he knows us, like, Okay, alright, it can't work. But it's, it's one of those funny things, we have to work really hard and some ways that board game stores never do, right for all those individual contracts, for example, and all those separate fulfillments and everything is a lot more track. It has been just like in this environment, we're used to some chaos, right? So pandemics don't really rock us very much. Because basically, we're used to having to track everything ourselves and watch it. So if I had to nail the future, um, I think that basically, are providing this service, especially to people who aren't near like a game store that can provide it, and who have seen a Kickstarter, for example, and can't get it. If you're in Topeka, Kansas. And you don't have really a retailer who provide this for you. That market. I mean, it's almost infinite. And the way it can be infinite is that basically, you get past or I should say, past, but you obviously inclusive, the core core gamers, right? Who really have the gamers who understand who you are, and how rare that thing is, then you get to their friends, and the friends of their friends. And they want to get this out. And they've heard about this item, they Google it, right? So that's why I say we're the vending machine. And now they found us. So the only questions really left for them are, can I trust these guys? Right? Or I'm gonna give them my money for 12 to 15 months? Or maybe just two or three months? You know, can I do that? And so I would offer that, where does that market end? I'm not sure. I mean, all right, traditionally, I'll say this, we see more in common between German customer, a French customer, and a US customer than we see between two us gamers, if you just classify them as gamers in general. So when we do our algorithms, for example, Google, we're always looking at that very carefully and saying, hey, our customers that are Berlin, you know, we that is the profile, right? Don't split that traffic, and come with these different profiles for these other countries now, for us, but as a small company that is looking at a very specific segment, we want to pull those together to get the populations together to get the algorithms right. Because without enough data, right, the algorithms won't work. So and that's getting a little technical in there, but and so basically, when we look at that, we want to be able to globally provide for this market. So as Topeka, Kansas, it's Wolfsburg, Germany, it's all those little towns. And honestly, we thought a long time ago that it was a lot smaller than it was, I don't think we really know how big it could be. Ultimately, as the trust grows, and namebrand grows, you know, it could be could start to get into a significant margins into the game market, which is really not saying anything much. I'm not getting used to the numbers, I'm afraid. But I would offer that I don't see us being to a virtual model for years to come. We've talked about it. But we'll see. Yeah,

38:16

it sounds like a great position at the end. You kind of touched on on Google, and you don't want to get too deep. But actually, I love that let's let's touch there for a second. Um, so you, obviously you're global. You're doing Google across the board. You have products, though, that you're taking pre orders for you go in and out of stock for like you have issues there. So are you I would assume you're catering more to the search side and less on the shopping side?

38:41

Am I correct? Or display? That's actually just the opposite? Really? Yeah. So in Google, for example, we're also do Microsoft ads. Yeah, good. Thank God,

38:52

no one ever does those.

38:54

They're so underrated. Well, you know, our feeling has been to basically to be the vending machine. We wonder the name machine in every corner of, we'll call it every cafeteria or office anywhere, right? So we use a lot of the smaller search engines as well as Microsoft ads. And Google has been the biggest one. I'll tell you this is this is unusual. Like if you ask me how many active items I have in Google Merchant Center. What would you What would you think that would be? He said, You usually have

39:29

about three to 400 products on your site at a time correct? I'm gonna guess if you're going out and stuff occasionally I'm gonna

39:38

say less than 100. So active items right now I'm looking at Google Merchant is 163,004,435. But how does it okay? So let me break it down. So, we advertise in about 25 different countries, right? So those are all going To multiply the number of items, because the way Google Merchant works more or less, it's segmented out by country. Okay, so I'll put that as their multiply. That's that number to start with. Also, you know, those are like, you can have all of your ads in English. Now, we haven't quite gotten there yet. But we started broaching into ads into German and different Spanish, Japanese. And then when you get down to it, we have this other thing, right? I told you before I was I'm pretty technical. I was an enterprise architect for many years for a multibillion dollar firm, as well, a division of a multibillion dollar firm. And I'll just go in there and say that what we did was we spoke with Google, back in 2016 70, back when it was still in California support. And we got the ear actually have a lot of like, I would call it old timers, people who were just down the hall from the programmers that were actually developing the song. And I say that because since they moved offshore support in 2017. Like the, the support people, God bless them, they don't know, they weren't trained as deeply right as Palo Alto. Yeah. And so we had the benefit of that, and they told us what the rules are. And so basically, we do it like this. And I would offer this to anybody who wants to advertising. Let's say you're selling, I don't know, let's say you're selling soap, Okay, and let's say your soap is lemon scent. And let's say it's just happens to be great at taking motor oil off, are you gonna run one ad that says, You know, I have this lovely lemon scented soap, or, you know, one to one that says, I this lovely lemon scented soap. And oh, by the way, here's a second ad, got motor oil on your hands. This is the best scented remover of motor oil, and you're going to find, and so that's literally one of the best gems I can give you, which is, the way that you're supposed to use Google ads and a lot of people in support group now don't even notice is that if you have one product, you can have seven different ads, where you profile, different kinds of shoppers? Are you trying to get Motorola offering? Are you really loving lemon scent, you know, or something in between, maybe there's five or six different ways you can sell it so. So when we do board games, we have algorithms written that look at our various and break up the ads differently. And then we test them out. And what we do is let every run ad run for like six months. And then if it does, well, we leave it in play. But then our algorithms automatically look at the past history. And the ones that don't do well. They pull them out, we put new ones in. And so we're constantly rotating our ads. And basically, with what single product we may have firing off over 1000 different variations of ads for it, we see which ones work. By time it comes to market, right? Pretty much when things come to market, we're almost sold out when we saw it in pre work. And by the time it does that there will be down to a few ads that don't work really well. And so this is, for example, why we use Google shop, we also offer the Google Shopping, your return on adspend rs, I have found I can't get near it. I mean, you can try you know search ads, you can try other things. But the fact that people are ready to buy when they go to the Google Shopping, they've already gotten to the point where they're just they looking for it. They're serious, they want it. Remember, I told you I'm a big vending machine, right? That's what I mean, I'm not gonna chase you across the web all the time, although I'll do a little of that you honest with you, what I'll do is I will put out variations on all the kind of keywords you might be looking for in the various audience, audience members you might be when you search for that game, you'll find often for me, maybe five different variations, I may have the super bundle, I may have the singular supplement that has the one finger that you want. And I have all those out there. And I have many variations there up. So you may refer to as table lock game, you may have said a board game, you might have been looking for it at 70 different ways. We put them out there, and people find us. So when I said we're a vending machine, I really meant it. And I'm not only one milling machine, I'm virtually like hundreds of vending machines, with variations on naming my candy bars. Right. So that if you're looking for that one name there. Yeah, I mean, it is so

44:11

and I assume you're the one running Google Ads based on the information

44:15

she just gave me. Oh, yeah, because of my technical background. Yeah. Also tell the truth. When Mike and I started, right, we have a big budget. So what we wanted to do was we want to get in there. And the thing that being a board gamer, for example, I looked at this. Now my game is the game store. That's my game. And, you know, finding out how to laterally strategize for advertising is something that I'm always listening for. When I listen to this folks in Palo Alto, talk to me about how you can do variations on ads. It Out watch what worked, realize that I was incapable of guessing what is the best combination? What is the best way to sell this? Really the acid test right is you do the experiment you go out in the world and look at will choose for themselves and see what works. Now I've got a bonus here for me because I sell pre orders. So I often have like, just months and months and months to figure it out, right? In fact, I'll try to put my ads as early as possible right to see SEO and everything else. And then it may be several months, like I said, six months, I don't even start to pick up prude ads until six months ago, right? That's also usually when we've gotten closer to delivery. So now, the hardcore board gamer might know about a game Tuesday in advance and put their money down there ready to go like I'm locked in. Dan, I want that game. Already. Andrew, I got it stored away. You're safe. You've got it. Anytime you want cancel your anytime a full refund is no problem. We're just here to do that. Yeah, then you get like the newer gamers, right? Who are friends of the friends, the friends, they're not used to doing that. So what will happen is as it starts to come into, or coming closer to stock will be more blips on the media. That's when the ads will start to hit. And so so one of the things to look at in your particular market is right is how long does that take? Now for a lot of folks, it may be immediate, right? You may be wanting to have immediate impact on your ad, the second you landed? Well, I would offer if you put out 10 variations on it. And to work? Well. Now you have to working at the scrape. You can also look at the trend. Look at what worked for your market. Why wasn't this two ads work now for your other products? What is it about those particular versions of the variations that worked so well. Now let me try to make sure I do those variations for all my other products. And maybe the ones didn't work to make sure you tried them. see which ones because like, for example, for me, I've got people who buy board games sometimes because they want to paint the meeples they buy and they're gonna use them in d&d. So you know, people buy my games for all kinds of reasons. So sometimes noting that this comes with 500, individual, medieval meeples. Or I should say people's individual figures, sorry, I said people's figures are paintable, or maybe come shadow cast or precast. So you can paint them easily. That is one sector is one way to sell effect. So and I'll just say this to another great tip for folks.

47:11

Microsoft ads has just added or just adding a beta feature now, where they feed for they've had it for a long time with a feed from Google. But now they're adding a feature where you can finally advertise in multiple markets with one feed from one Microsoft ads account, which you could never do before. I have just done for the beating myself. I'm waiting any day now the last two weeks to get into it, but basically allow you to do is it allows you to take that one feed and it will convert now for the first time ever on on Microsoft ads your currency. And thus you take one fee, let's say the United States. And you can then take that and say I want to I want to advertise to New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, all the English speaking countries. And basically at that point, they'll do the currency conversion for you for the first time. Now Google's done it for a long time. But Microsoft, literally it's a new beta, you have to call support. They have to nominate you to be part of the program. And that like I said, I'm waiting, it should be any day now. Hopefully I'll get into it right now. So the only thing I'll say there is that reason I have so many ads, right is because I'm an international, I don't know for anyone who's my situation who's got a narrow market. If you I want to dominate and market worldwide, I want to reach every customer and every continent. So I've been advertising for a long time in Thailand, as well as Germany, right? I advertise all over the world to our customers, or in fact, we did really well in Thailand. Actually, we had a great ROI and Thailand for a very long time and then went down. And then I looked, I found a a board game store owner in Bangkok, specializing Kickstarters. Right, so he took my market in bet in Thailand. So now they can buy look. Well I'm like good for that, right? Because Yeah, I would do if I was a mate, if I was in Thailand, I buy from Bangkok before the US. But, you know, it's, it's a growing market. And I would offer that if you're narrow, the thing you want to do is do what you do well find all your variations. But also, seriously, you've got to gear up to be International. I mean, there are so many extra extra scalability in there because if especially with just English, you can advertise in English, obviously in Germany and France well now, in early 16, you couldn't actually grow while they required you to advertise the local language. But now you can't advertise in English. So those same ads with let's say those 10 variations that you've written, you could be run as not as the United States, but you can run them Canada, you can run them in Great Britain you can run them and at least on Google for example, you're now you run all over Europe. Microsoft, like I said the new program you can now run them at least in with currency conversion. I made it by Microsoft for the first time, you'll be able to run them. In those all of those English speaking countries. If you are French feed you the same thing. You could do cup of coffee, coffee, as well as France. You know, it's not as many countries obviously, but there's no problem with that. It's decent. And essentially, that's what you that's what we've named, that's where our growth is due in fact this last year I didn't mention this. But if I looked at it, we did have a see a decrease in sales somewhat in domestic, seasonally, but it was more than made up for by our increasing sales internationally. Yeah, one of the great hints I'll give to any Shopify store owner out there. It's the it's the best secret. I know, actually, I told you a few tips. Federal Express international mail service, virtually no one's heard of, and virtually no one supports them. But I'll say this for Shopify shiprush does. And what Finn's does is is fims will actually allow you to get great rates International. So if you're a small store, you can actually use their basic rate is, is outstanding. And basically you get Federal Express right and they'll mail your stuff all over the planet. I mean, firstly, make I it's hard for you to find countries that don't cover. And the way they do it too is the more each batch you send out ways to lower your rate. They don't even do it individually. Basically, they look at your the weight of your overall let's say pallet, or your bag. And I'll just say the starting rates are fantastic. And they just get better from there. And we found people really love them. I mean, FedEx is a good name, some I won't name those shipping services will put surcharges on the back end. FedEx is not one of them, right. So you have a customer and they pay for the shipping already. If you have a shipper who then charge them extra without letting you know they're going to do that. I we go into service, but we had a lot of anger Katie and customers back in 2018, we quickly stopped that. But Federal Express and fins is also new for you. If you ask for it, you can't ask Federal Express for it because Federal Express and fins were never merged properly. This is almost like his own company within Federal Express, you had to find Federal Express, international mail service, literally that name, because there's Federal Express International, entirely different deal. So if you're a small store, and you do fit, and I'll tell you it took me two years to find shipper. Chip rush is a small application that is shuffle application is no longer on the Shopify store, though By the way, maybe they'll go back, but they do support Shopify. And they are one of the only ones who does fims. And they do a virtual application. So with a lot of other, I won't name them applications that you shipping with, they literally still have the old model where you have to install. So I'm like 500 miles Andrew from my warehouse, I see Mary, my director of warehouse every once in a while, not enough that I can like help her if she's an individual install. But the thing that ship rush is it's just like Shopify, all these web browser login. Once you do that the entire application is open to you. So if Mary has a problem, I can log in as Mary or as myself in 500 miles away and see exactly what she sees. and fix it. I'll just tell you, as a Enterprise Architect, formerly, one of things I look for right is to keep my base of my product slim, and agile, which is the same things like not having individual installs and local PCs, for example. By doing that, for example, I keep all everything centralized, I keep the cost down and keep my skill building up, right? Because now, if I went to 50 employees, right, I still have more installs to I have zero, right? I basically everything browser based. So by honing my application library, I can keep my whole organization agile from technology standard, and easy to grow, right? everything and I would offer any business owner where they work. If they have a kind of foresight, it pays off. It takes a while, but it does pay off because when you actually start to grow, now you can grow more expediently with less overhead, more scalability, basically meaning that it will create a lot less effort to get much larger right and support more staff. But I digress. Then you're like

53:47

the king of us so many things that Google going global like we could sit here we could do this all day we might even have back on the show and just pick a topic and be like Alright, we're going global today. Let's Let's do it. But I don't want to take up too much of your time. I obviously greatly appreciate having you on the show. This is that quintessential moment where I give you that opportunity to just kind of like let everyone know where they can find you and all that fun stuff.

54:14

Oh sure. I appreciate Andrew. And if you guys wanted to try individual ones, I'd be more happy to try to keep myself in fewer words. But basically it's thegamesteward.com You can also I think thegamesteward.com www.thegamesteward.com basically when you come to our website, you'll see Mike and my face on the front, you'll see our phone number never angkorian calls at any time. And you know any questions you have contact our customer support. You can also email me at Dan@thegamesteward.com. And Michae@thegamesteward.com directly. We're a small business. We're always looking for our customers and we want to help everybody if you're looking for a rare board game we want to hear about it. Amazing.

54:56

Of course, Dan, appreciate having you on the show and obviously everyone listening thanks for tuning in. Head over at theecommshow.com make sure that you subscribe to the podcast on any podcast platform that you want really, or the YouTube channel and of course, keep selling and good luck out there. We will see you guys in the next episode.

55:13

Thank you for tuning in to The Ecomm Show. So head over to theecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The Ecomm show is brought to you by BlueTuskr a full-service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to BlueTuskr.com now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The Ecomm Show.