Groundhog Day at the NEC

The toy and game sector is very seasonal. Early in the year there is a rush of trade fairs starting in London, moving through Birmingham, Nuremberg, New York and finally Hong Kong. In our first year we took a stand at London Toy Fair, and having found that slightly disappointing, in that buyers were about as common as genuine remorse from a banker, we changed tack this year and headed to the Spring Fair in Birmingham. If you are unfortunate enough to have to attend more than one of these events – and some people in the trade will go from one to another, building up and breaking down stands between airports and anonymous hotels – you are likely to fall ill, either mentally or physically. Then sometimes it is possible to pass through a metaphysical barrier and find yourself accepting and enjoying your new reality inside NEC world.

I spent three days at the NEC with my colleagues trying to drum up business for About Time, which was difficult because of the snow and the general lack of buyers prepared to walk the full length of the enormous hall and then to stop and talk. By all accounts this fair was the worst in years, thanks to the economic crisis. Still, we did get some interest. There are always some useful conversations to be had with independents like us, as well as with industry veterans kind enough to pass on their wisdom. Deals can begin in these places. The NEC is a huge monument to consumer capitalism, and it's very hard to find anything healthy and real to eat, as of course all the franchises have that familiar corporate feel and taste. This kind of diet adds to your gradual sense of being trapped in a giant airport come shopping centre where everything is artificial and overpriced. An apple for 65p! It did feel like we were in a toy industry Groundhog Day and would soon forget that anything existed beyond it.

Outside the snow was falling and girls in high heels carrying balloons were slipping up on the ice and requiring assistance in order to arrive at their car in the giant car parks. Inevitably there was lots of Christmas stuff on display, because after all it was a gift fair although thankfully the snow did make it feel very Christmassy.

Birmingham city centre appears to be like the NEC only on a larger scale, dominated by giant shopping chains and corporate monuments to 1980s-style town planning where the car and the shopping mall are king. As ever, the curries are the best thing to be had, and I enjoyed one at a place called Lasan Eatery in Hall Green that really made me want to try everything on the menu and just keep eating till I exploded. 

Myself and Iain, About Time co-inventor, also attended the Nuremberg Toy Fair, which is like the Spring Fair but only for toys. This year we seemed to have improved our pitch – and of course we had our first year of trade and all the experience we had gained to give us greater confidence. Iain is our company’s Terminator – he’s got the relentless drive, firm handshake and Nietzchian self-belief that helped get us through our interrogation on Dragon’s Den, and tie up all important meetings with the buyers. Once they have seen it with their own eyes our brand seems to click with major buyers – they like the look and they get the simple idea behind the game. But we still had to kick down quite a few doors to get them to give us a look. Just as well we have almost religious faith in what we do.

The buzz

We came bouncing into the new year 2009, exhausted, exhilarated, amazed we were still here and had done so well, considering all the devastation and terror unfolding around us, rather like the crew of the Millennium Falcon after they survived the asteroid storm (apologies to non-Star Wars fans). Our rule was, keep the faith, stay calm and focused, and keep working – after all, come depression, war, plague and pestilence, there will always be a Christmas, and there’s nothing like a new game to distract everyone from family arguments and impending financial disaster. It worked for us. I remember reading the advice of self-made publisher Felix Dennis on how to make a business work - put in the ours, and gather the talent around you. Without being overly modest, we think our team works by combining complementary skills that together are essential for a creative business,...and we definitely put the hours in.

January and February were something of a dead zone last year (as were March, April, etc) but this year something had changed. The drip, drip effect of having a product on the market, of getting it into shops, online and into living rooms, had, it seemed, created that all important buzz. Okay, the phone was not ringing off the hook, but when it did ring the call was long distance, and the caller had some very good news for us. America was waiting.

In our trade there are two crucial markets, and the UK is not one of them, even if the UK is crucial to us also. The US and Germany are where most of the action is. In the UK as elsewhere board game consumption was long ago dwarfed by the arrival of Playstation, X-Box and the likes of the Wii, extending the reach of the computer game from the spotty teenagers to the all important family market. These days board games are generally only launched off the backs of a TV or film brand. Genuinely new and successful independent board game brands can be counted on one hand in the last decade or so.

When Trivial Pursuit launched in the early 80s, the computer game platforms of today were mere twinkles in the eye of the future geek game designers – arcade favourites Space Invaders, Galaxian and Defender were the best on offer, and not available in your bedroom. Launching a board game at the end of the Naughties was something akin to the charge of the Light Brigade, or the Zulus armed with spears launching themselves against the British armed with Enfields led by Michael Caine and Stanley Baxter – noble perhaps, but pretty much doomed. Never mind, About Time would reverse time itself, tip the logic of the digital age on its head by feeding the hidden but never extinguished desire of folks everywhere for something they can touch and feel and shout and laugh about in the comfort of their living rooms without a console in sight. In a word, retro classic. Admittedly, should an opportunity to bring About Time into the digital era arise, we would jump at it. But for now the brand represented something, dare I say it, timeless and comforting, yet held in high regard through the decades, like the Sweeney and the Clangers given a makeover by the producers of the Sopranos or Life on Mars. I'll stop now as I'm getting carried away.

 

 

What a Year to Launch a Board Game

It is said that most people have at least one novel in them. The same could be said for board games – most people have at least fleetingly had an idea for one. And that is usually where it finishes. As with the novel, it may be in you, but there is the tedious business of creating and perfecting it. And as the cliché goes, ideas are ten a penny. Everything is in the execution. Once you have your board game, the even bigger challenge arises. You have to sell it – to players, investors, retailers. Like novel writing, board game invention has something of the myth about it. It conjurs up an image of the old fashioned inventor bashing away in his shed – until one day he pulls the cloth off…a time machine. About Time is a time machine of sorts, a trivia game based on timelines – ‘Time travel in a box’ as it says in the strapline.

After several years testing, researching and testing it again, we decided to bring it to market. That was 2006. We set up a company, consisting of inventors, creative director and business maestro. We had a game, yes, but we did not yet have a brand, or any real idea of how we would go about selling it. The name had to change, as did the look of the product, and somebody had to write a business plan. We launched the product to market in late 2007, and built our PR story around our brief appearance on BBC2’s Dragons' Den. It worked well enough to get us national newspaper and radio coverage and to sell a respectable number of games through a national book retailer. And lo and behold, the punters enjoyed the product and the retailers liked it too.

Jump a year on and a great deal has changed. We survived our first year as a business selling a product, extended our retail reach, struggled endlessly with the heart stopping joys of cash flow, and the breakdown-inducing frustrations of developing an online web sales and marketing presence. So much to learn, so little room for error.

Then came the credit crunch. Mercifully board games sell well in recessions, if only in the run up to Christmas, and About Time was no exception. After the doldrums of the first half of the year – tumbleweeds abounding where we imagined the never ending kerching of busy cash tills - this came as a tremendous relief. However between ourselves and the consumers are the retailers, many of which experienced something approaching panic as general sales figures plummeted in the last third of the year. We forged a few key retailer relationships and out of that something beautiful emerged. Working with The Guardian Reader Offers was particularly fruitful. Like banks, retailers are looking at the big picture and not necessarily at the potential of a single line producer whose one product, no matter how popular and wonderful, will not save them from a downturn. From enthusiasm and optimism in the summer to cold sweat and near panic by the autumn, it became abundantly clear we would have to market and flog About Time and do everything we could to keep our retailers on side. As one store managed said to me wistfully: “What a year to launch a board game!” Thanks.