Board Game Side Hustle
My oldest son recently turned 10 and as in prior years we had a hard time coming up with gift ideas as his birthday is right after Christmas. There were a few books he wanted, but those were available at the library, so I didn’t want to get those as he goes through them so quick. However, he did mention that he would like a new board game so we started our search there.
Now we have a ridiculous number of games including the classics like Catan, Ticket to Ride (amazing), Uno, Guess Who and Crib as well as new ones like Exploding Kittens, Here to Slay and TacoCat Spelled Backwards. Our yearly cycle is to get a few new games for birthday’s and Christmas and then donate some old ones that the kids are too old for to the local goodwill thrift store.
My experience has helped me understand that there is a revolution going on in board games. People are not only open to, but looking for, new games. This is a huge business opportunity and my most recent game purchase has reinforced this. As I was going through the game section on Amazon I ran into a newer game from the founders of Exploding Kittens… Mantis.
It’s a very simple, yet fun, game where the objective is to score 10 points by matching cards. The mechanics are not important here, the margins are. The game consists of 105 cards an instruction manual and a comic book. Breaking it down further it is actually seven pieces or art for the front of the cards and a few versions of the back. And it sells for a regular price of $23!
I mean laid out in a bigger box it looks impressive. But really when you get down to it, it’s two packs of normal cards…
Mantis Card Game
If you wanted to create your own card game you would come up with the mechanics. Design the art, which could easily be outsourced to a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork. Then you would have to get the card game produced.
A quick search on Alibaba and you find that once you have the art it would cost you around $2 per copy to manufacture your own similar game when you are starting out at the minimum quantity, which is 500 for the factory below.
Alibaba is a great place to look for manufacturers
If you were to use Amazon to sell and fulfill the product then based on the current pricing under an individual plan you would pay:
$0.99 fee per sale
15% referral fee
$3.86 in fulfillment if you let Amazon store and ship the products (based on large standard size at a weight of under 4oz)
So where are we? $23 sale price less $2 in manufacturing and $8.30 in Amazon fees to sell and ship it, leaving $12.70 in profit per sale (ignoring original art costs and shipping from China, which should be relatively minimal per unit assuming you ship it by boat).
So what would a successful run look like as a startup board game business? Lets make some assumptions:
$400 - Art for seven pieces of art and a box design
$0 - Rules are written and then there’s a link to a YouTube video that you create to show them how to play the game
$200 - Sample from factory to check prior to production
$1,000 - Manufacturing costs x 500 minimum order
$500 - Shipping to Amazon warehouses
$500 - Miscellaneous costs for a barcode and other items that pop up
Total starting costs = $2,600
At this point you have 500 games in various Amazon warehouses just waiting to be sold. Let’s assume you sell the product for $20 to make it an easier purchase for people.
Assuming we eventually sell all 500 copies (biggest assumption in this post!). Then we would have:
$10,000 in revenue
Less $2,600 in start up and manufacturing costs
Less $4,150 in Amazon selling and fulfillment costs
= $3,250 in profit before marketing expenses.
So that’s $6.50 in profit for every $20 sale, which is over a 30% profit. In reality you would likely also budget around 15% for marketing spend, which could increase sales, but lower your profit to $3.50 per unit or just under an 18% profit on the first run which incorporates some start up costs.
The really big win is if your games start to take off. Once you start manufacturing in higher quantities your per unit cost will drop and your start up art and sample costs are already done. At this point you start making real money. Assuming a $2 per unit cost to manufacture and ship to the warehouse every unit is now generating $6.70 in profit after paying Amazon fees and 15% marketing, almost double the first run.
It’s an interesting side business that has a low enough barrier to entry that most people could do it, but high enough that most people won’t put in the effort. Instead they will likely pay $99 for a course on how to dropship, thinking they can make $10,000 per month by selling the exact same stuff everyone else is selling… Side note, creating those courses is a great business.
A Few Ideas To Help Start a Boardgame Business
Put your project on Kickstarter, you never know, you may not even have to shoulder all the start up costs yourself.
Give yourself a lot more time than you think. The first time I did a physical product that could be fulfilled by a warehouse (socks, thanks for asking) it took forever to find a great manufacturer and figure out how to do barcodes, etc.
Get lots of feedback from everyone you know and make sure someone new to the game can easily understand it.
Create a how-to video on YouTube, I really think this is going to be a necessity for future games.
Don’t get too fancy. Some of the best game mechanics are the ones that are similar to others so people can pick them up quick.
Be creative. It’s better to stand out.
Most of the card games are coming in larger boxes to feel more valuable. I think there could be an opportunity to shrink the box down to the size of two packs or regular playing cards and sell the environmentally friendly approach of not shipping air across the word.
A Few Other Ideas For Boardgame Businesses
Board Game Review Sites – Similar to Board Game Quest, you could benefit from advertising and affiliate revenue. I think a clean site that had simple to understand instruction videos on how to play games would do well.
A Platform Site – This would be much harder, but you could start a company that just sold custom games from small developers. Like Etsy for board games. This seems too small to be worthwhile, but who knows… You could also sell used games here. Heck, you could even put in a Kickstarter like function to fund the creation of games.
YouTube Channel – Similar to the review site above, but just a channel that reviews and does how to videos on board/card games.