Talking Shop

Boxing Clever

Sam Giltrow spoke to a selection of indie retailers about their Games and Puzzles offerings, finding out what’s selling well and how they encourage customers to see them as a go to destination for the category.

Mark Green - The Yorkshire Jigsaw Store, Easingwold

We stock all the major brands of jigsaw puzzles. Our bricks and mortar store in Easingwold was a newsagent in the town for 50 years, but the shop was rebranded to The Yorkshire Jigsaw Store in 2014 with the aim of creating the largest jigsaw store in Yorkshire.

We take puzzles from all the major manufacturers and sell them through the store and website, which has been getting busier and busier each year - and as soon as Covid hit, it went ballistic. Sales have been phenomenal; anything and everything was selling, particularly nostalgia lines, but during lockdown a lot of manufacturers were struggling to produce stock and get it to us. It was a matter of taking anything they had, and I think people were so desperate for puzzles that they didn’t really mind too much what the design was. With regards our success during these covid times we wouldn’t have been able to manage without our team who ended up working much longer hours than in usual times, to fulfil all the orders.

Ranges which have done particularly well for us during the last year include Falcon De Luxe from Jumbo, which regularly brings out new titles. As soon as they are released, people want them straight away. Jumbo also seem to have had consistent stock available. Gibsons are getting back on track now and we have been taking in a lot of stock. They produce many puzzles with designs local to us, such as Scarborough, York and Staithes, which are very popular with our customers, so we’ve been delighted to see those back on the shelves. We also carry other ranges from Jumbo and Kidicraft, while Clementoni ranges are solid performers too. Hopefully it now seems to be back to business as usual in terms of stock availability, across the board.

We offer advice to our customers who want help with choosing puzzles, particularly if they have not bought puzzles before. They ask things like which brands they should go for; certain ones have smart-cut pieces which are irregular shape and more difficult to complete than the standard shape. But other people come in that have been doing jigsaws all their lives and probably have even better knowledge of them than we do.

Although sales have quietened down a bit since restrictions were relaxed, our customer base is now much higher than when we first started. We now have over 30,000 people on our mailing list, including international customers, and are having a warehouse built just outside town, because we have outgrown where we used to store our puzzles above the shop. We are expecting the new warehouse to be operational by the middle of September, just in time for Christmas.

We are confident it will be a busy Christmas with so many new customers and we send out marketing emails twice a week. A new release, such as a launch from Falcon, will see a spike in orders in response to our email announcement, so we know the customers are there – we just have to balance getting the right stock in, at the right time.

We are a destination store. We have spoken to holidaymakers staying in the area who say one of the reasons for coming up this way is to come and visit us, which is great. We have even had people travelling for three hours on a day trip just to come to the shop.

Since Covid, the number of people who are really into jigsaw puzzles has grown – some tell us they are addicted to them. We even had some customers, who were holidaying up here in their caravan visit the shop because they had forgotten to bring their puzzle board. We can lend them an ex-demo board for the week – it’s lovely to be help people like that.

We haven’t yet held demonstrations in the shop, but it is something we had started to consider before Covid hit. We know a couple of illustrators who are based in Yorkshire, and it’s something we will look at again for the future.

As things return to normal, we’re looking forward to seeing the reps again face to face. Our suppliers have been very supportive, and we have a good relationship with all of them. We are looking forward to the run up to Christmas and seeing the new festive releases, which always sell well, such as the Gibsons limited edition puzzle and the Falcon De Luxe two-pack of 2,000-piece puzzles, which they release each Christmas and are extremely popular.

For children, licensed puzzles such as those from Ravensburger, with characters like Marvel Avengers, are perfect pick-up lines for a Christmas gift. We also stock a good selection from Orchard Toys, which parents love as they are educational and help with subjects like spellings and maths for early years children.

There really is something for everyone in our shop, and we are confident that sales will continue to do well in the run up to Christmas and beyond.

Jake Cannon - Firestorm Games, Cardiff

We currently have three bricks and mortar stores as well as a busy webstore, and specialise in tabletop miniature games, board games, card games and anything else that’s cool and collectible. Being part of the Toymaster group, we deal with many suppliers, and one of our main ones is Asmodee.

Over lockdown, we saw sales of board games peak. This has now plateaued, albeit to a higher level than preCovid. This would suggest customers who have been introduced to games as a hobby, or who have returned to it, are still enjoying it and are going to continue purchasing.

Some customers know what they want while others have an idea or framework, and our staff members ask questions so they can gauge what the customer is looking for. There is no point recommending a game like Pandemic to someone who is looking for a competitive,

back-stabbing game, while Dobble is unlikely to satisfy the thirst for a heavy Euro gamer.

The webstore has been vitally important over the last 18 months while our stores were closed, and the lockdowns forced us to discover new methods of reaching and interacting with our customers. Social media was an obvious outlet but producing original content in the form of product and company update videos has proved very productive.

Now our stores are open again, we have been so happy to see customers returning to shop in person, as well as to play in our gaming areas. We expect online sales to remain strong and peak again in the run up to Christmas, when we also expect store sales to steadily increase as people return to the experience of in store shopping more and more. Christmas itself will be an interesting time in retail this year.

We host regular play, and learn to play, events at all three of our branches for board, miniature, card games and role-play games. This organised play is essential for bricks and mortar stores to offer something unique that online deep-discounters cannot. Gaming in the modern age is much more than buying a game to play at home with friends - the experience of meeting and playing or learning new games while socialising in a fun environment is now more popular than ever before.

Games releases and restocks will be critical this year. After industry warnings that stock may run out earlier, we have taken the decision to up-order core lines in August and September instead of October. Ticket to Ride and the other games making up the ‘Asmodee greatest hits’ sell out every year and we are never able to get enough stock. This year, we will be relying on established names/games. There simply isn’t enough Pokémon stock on the planet to satisfy the brand’s popularity so this has to be carefully managed; with the 25th anniversary celebrations due this October we are expecting demand to spike.

Suppliers have been offering support for re-opening - competitions from Asmodee to highlight bricks and mortar stores and extra promotional materials from companies such as Konami, Wizards of the Coast and Pokémon have helped immensely and encouraged players to return to the store to buy and play. Playing games with others and socialising is still a fantastic experience.

With games such as MicroMacro Crime City winning the Spiel de Jahres this year, I think this shows the industry is up to the challenge of providing fresh and interesting ideas for an entertainment starved public.

Our flagship Cardiff branch is moving very soon to a new, world-class venue. Still in Cardiff, the site will house our bricks and mortar store, webstore warehouse and shipping operation as well as hosting the South Wales Gaming Centre where people can come and play all types of games. An in-house café is something we are really excited about, and the location is very easy to get to. We look forward to continuing to expand and introducing more people to our wonderful hobbies.

Mike Berry - Leisure Games, London

We aim to stock as wide a range of games as possible, but with so many new titles now published each year, we have to pick and choose to some extent. The majority of our games come from Europe and the US, and we generally buy them through distributors such as Asmodee UK and Coiledspring.

Two player and solitaire games have been very popular recently and escape room type games have been flying off the shelves. I think they appeal to quite a wide market as they are a combination of game and puzzle, can be played as a two-player or as a solitaire game, and are also a good price point. Party games have, unsurprisingly, fared less well over the last 18 months, but hopefully that will change now restrictions have been lifted and we head towards Christmas.

We buy virtually everything through distributors, and they are getting stock in now, in preparation for Christmas. We don’t generally worry too far in advance about stock, although we will start building it up a bit earlier than usual this year because of anticipated supply problems. We have noticed in the last few weeks that the number of new release games is lower than normal. I suspect this is down to shipping – some of the new releases are just not reaching us yet – but there’s also a reduced number of games coming through Kickstarter at the moment due to the pandemic.

We fared well throughout most of lockdown because we already had a very strong online presence, so were easily able to switch to 100% mail order. As shops reopened, our mail order sales unsurprisingly decreased, although in store sales have not yet recovered to prepandemic levels.

During the pandemic, a lot of people discovered modern board games and I think many of them will continue to enjoy playing them. We have found it more beneficial than ever to have a hand-picked core range of games displayed in one area of the shop - games which the staff know well and can point people towards with

confidence as being reliable, enjoyable games.

We love helping customers to find the right game and find they fall into one of three categories. Hardened games enthusiasts know exactly what they want and rarely seek advice from staff. More casual gamers who have quite a lot of experience of games are easy to help, as we can suggest games based on what they have enjoyed in the past. The non-games players are more of a challenge, as they can be scared off if we recommend something that looks or sounds too complicated. Some really only want Monopoly and finding something new to suit them can be a real challenge.

We have really missed holding in store events as demonstrations are the best way to show what the games are all about. For the time being, we have had to change the shop layout, but we are looking forward to having people back playing games in the shop, where we can comfortably seat around 24. We hope to get back to holding in store events next year.

Asmodee UK has been very pro-active in supporting such events and even sent out ‘care packages’ to retailers, consisting of games to give away in a competition and to use as demo copies. We were also pleased to take part in the ‘Love Your Game Store’ promotion, whereby customers could scan a QR code in store once a day to enter a draw with a first prize of £1,000 cash and a number of £50 store credit vouchers.

We are looking forward to a busy run up to Christmas, and fingers crossed that families will be able to get together this year. We always stock up on the most popular evergreen titles which can be relied on to sell well, such as of Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder and Forbidden Island from Gamewright. The big seller at Christmas in the more specialist hobby end of the market will be decided nearer the time - and might well not even have been released yet.