Website Closers® presents a lucrative company that has turned the global passion for Classic and Traditional Board Games into a booming eCommerce operation. Their trademarked brands have generated strong returns for the business. Having been in operation for close to two decades, this brand has built up a massive 522 SKUs with an average order value that ranges from $46.77 to $67.29. They now have numerous top selling products that range from board games to Chinese brass hardware products.
The bulk sales are Amazon FBA, where they maintain an impressive 4.9 Seller Rating and have been chosen for the Amazon Choice Badge for many keywords associated with the products they sell. This well-established brand operates within a field that is experiencing stunning growth. Globally, the board games market is projected to experience a 18% growth rate through 2026, with revenues expected to surpass $13 billion.
Board games are now sold online as often as through retail specialty stores and department stores. This brand’s unique and beautifully designed products have not only given them skyrocketing sales, but a secure position as a rapidly emerging leader within this flourishing industry.
A buyer is set to enjoy the company’s high profit margins, but there are also terrific options to take this business to even higher levels of profitability. Assured scale options include launching sales of their bestselling products into additional foreign markets, continued development of new products and the creation of a specialized Game of the Month Gift Box subscription.
This business has amply demonstrated from its phenomenal sales that there is a large market for its products, giving them a clear pathway to continued expansion. The business was formed in 2004 as four separate brands offering a variety of specialized products. The first is focused on the classic Asian board games Go and Mahjong, while the second offers European-style chess, checkers, and backgammon sets. They have also expanded to include a site for restoration products such as antique Asian hardware along with a fourth company for home goods.
The company has devoted considerable time to understanding its customer bases and taking its cues on product development from their buyers. They repeatedly attend leading trade shows that feature emerging trends and new designs within the gaming world, then meet with their primary manufacturers to collaborate on new ideas. Their products are largely manufactured in China, which makes up 85% of all production, with the remaining 16% comes from Poland. Most of their products are designed and manufactured for their brand only as the company has 15 unique product molds and all brands are trademarked in the U.S., Canada, UK, EU, and China. That includes copyrighted instructional guide series for game play.
This approach has enabled the brand to build up a massive product line of more than 522 SKUs, and they now have an additional 60+ products in the development stage.
In the past 16 years, this brand has become the premier North American name in Classic and Traditional Board Games and the dominant online player in Go Games, Mahjong, Portable Game Sets, and numerous accessories.
The company sells in not just the United States but has expanded its sale of board games to Mexico, the UK, and Germany after substantial success entering the Canadian market.
The company has a smoothly efficient shipment method, relying mainly on Fulfillment By Amazon, and they hold 180 days of inventory in stock at either FBA or their warehouse in Shanghai. Inventory orders are placed twice a year for most products.
Currently, 92% of sales are conducted on their Amazon platform, compared to 7% for their Shopify site and a small but rising percentage on eBay. All products are sold through Prime and they have been awarded Amazon’s Choice Badge for many of their offerings, including Mahjong, Go and Chinese Chess.
Their marketing campaigns have focused on PPC ads on Amazon, which gives this brand a terrific opportunity to scale through the development of a social media marketing campaign to boost organic traffic to their four websites. The company already enjoys an Instagram account with more than 5,200+ followers, and a sharper focus on their social media campaigns would help expand their customer base significantly.
The brand also has more than 27,000+ email addresses in their database, which could be successfully leveraged for new email marketing campaigns that drive up profits.
There then remains enormous growth opportunities from the development of new board games that could be added to the brand’s current product line. The company is gearing up to launch 60 new products within the next two years and has a road map for many additional SKUs, which should boost gross revenues significantly as their customer base is well-established.
The company has explored the possibility of adding another unique product: a Game of the Month Gift Box subscription that allows customers to look forward to receiving classic board games delivered monthly as an exciting new option.
Spending an average of 40 hours per week running this business, the current ownership is focused on executive and managerial tasks. The company has 19 full-time employees, with 15 based in China, including a warehouse manager, purchase manager, Cloud Z bookkeeper, logistics manager, graphic designer and photographer, IT developer and 9 warehouse employees. The company also has four employees in the Philippines: an executive assistant, a content and marketing manager, and two customer service workers.
While board games have been enormously popular for more than a century, there’s been a significant increase in the popularity of these products in the past year as people began spending more time at home. This is a worldwide phenomenon, reflected also in the rapid growth of Board Game conventions. Consumers have also made it clear that they’re perfectly comfortable searching for and purchasing these products online, which positions this brand to ride that growth to tremendous new levels of profitability as they continue to develop and roll out new products that capture the imagination of their loyal customer base.
A fortunate buyer has a superb opportunity to not only enjoy this company’s steady and elevated gross revenues, but also take this leader in the niche field of board games and make those profits soar even higher.
