Company Profile - Asmodee

Asmodee playing a winning hand

Asmodee continues to expand on its already vast offering with new launches and distribution partnerships that offer retailers fresh new opportunities at every turn. Rachael Simpson-Jones caught up with Alex Green, MD of Asmodee UK, to find out how the company is faring, what’s driving sales and the impact of economic challenges on the Games market.

It doesn’t matter how big you are – challenges are challenging, and it’s fair to say the toy market is once again facing its fair share. While shipping costs have come down slightly from the extortionate heights they reached in 2020/21, this hasn’t happened as quickly as businesses hoped it would be and it seems highly unlikely we’ll see prepandemic prices ever again. On top of cost, delays and shipments being bumped are still causing headaches for many.

“Everything surrounding the ‘big squeeze’ – the rising cost of living and inflation – is of course a concern,” adds Alex Green, continuing to elaborate on how the current climate is impacting the Games & Puzzles market. “I think we’re yet to see the full effects of this: in October we’ve got the next hike in the energy price cap, so we’re keeping a close eye on whether that big jump in prices is going to catch even more consumers out. We’ve seen a slight cooldown in boardgame sales, but we’re not worried. It could just be that consumers are much freer these days to go on holiday, visit friends - to not be stuck at home.”

Trading Card Games are one of the company’s bestperforming categories right now, having maintained consistently strong sales for the past 12-15 months. Magic: The Gathering (Wizards of the Coast), Yu-Gi- Oh! (Konami) and Digimon (Bandai) are all strong and showing growth, Alex tells me, though it’s Pokémon that continues to dominate the TCG scene. 18th-21st August saw the Pokémon World Championships 2022 take place in London - the first time the championships have been held outside of the USA - while this month welcomes Sword & Shield – Lost Origin, for which pre-orders have been rolling in. There’s also a new Nintendo game arriving on 18th November: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which heralds the arrival of the next new set of Pokémon characters. All events and launches will almost certainly drive sales, but they also reflect the strength of the brand and how invested its fans are.

Speaking of fan investment, I asked Alex for his thoughts on Netrunner, a card game one of the retailers in this month’s Talking Shop seems to think is becoming popular again. He seems surprised – the game was first published back in the 90s - but explains that hobbyists return to classic titles time and again throughout the years, which can lead to unexpected comebacks. “A lot of games come out of circulation and then go back into it again,” he explains. “Netrunner’s original publisher Wizards of the Coast created a game called Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, which was out around the same time and in the same universe we now have Vampire: The Masquerade Rivals from Renegade Game Studios which is enjoying some success. Nowhere near the levels of Pokémon and Magic, mind, but these games will always have their place.”

Echoing what several retailers and suppliers have told us recently, Alex says consumers have a keen eye on price points and will be trading down slightly on their usual purchases, looking for games that still offer quality and value for money, but at a lower price point. One of Asmodee’s current best-sellers is the fast-paced, family friendly card game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, which retails for around the £10-12 mark. It’s great fun to play, demonstrates well in store and has very cute artwork – best-seller material all-round. Asmodee has also recently welcomed Matt Edmondson’s Format Games to its distribution portfolio. Most Format Games offerings, including Noggin, Ansagrams, Egg Slam and So Wrong It’s Right, sit at a price point of between £10-15, and are proving a hit among consumers as a result.

That’s not to say games which sit at the higher end of the spectrum, such as the original Ticket to Ride and Catan (both mainstays of the Asmodee portfolio retailing for around £40-£50), are no longer selling well, but it will certainly be interesting to see, particularly as we move into the festive season, where consumers are willing to pitch their spend this year. Alex says: “Wingspan remains in high demand, which just goes to show that consumers will pay for high quality games that provide great entertainment.”

I pressed Alex a little more on the topic of consumer spending, keen to know if he feels there’s a definitive pricing sweet spot among consumers. Spend variability, he says, is largely down to the different types of gamers out there. Miniature gamers (those playing games using intricate models, not really small people) arguably think nothing of dropping reasonably large amounts of money on their hobby. The base Star Wars: Legion game is £120, for example, but it offers painting, gameplay, army-building and much more, which is a lot of activity for the price.

Then you’ve got enthusiastic boardgame players, who will happily pay £40-70 for new and exciting titles. Alex says: “Generally, these types of games are one of the last things these people will give up when cutting costs. When we look back to the 2008 recession, we saw that these gamers were no longer going out to the cinema, but were still buying board games to play at home.”

It’s when you get down to the more general consumer that you start to really see the impact of economic conditions on games spending, according to Alex. Interestingly, there’s also a payoff in the amount of time consumers will spend researching their potential purchase. Earlier in our conversation I’d mentioned that Wingspan, which retails for around £60, is on my wish list: I just haven’t yet been able to justify buying it. (My husband says doing up our alarmingly retro 1970s house is more important – I disagree.) Because I’ve read all about the game, watched playthrough videos and checked out reviews from other gamers, I know I will buy it: it’s simply a matter of when. At the lower end of the price spectrum, consumers don’t take such a deep dive. It’s more a case of reading the box (‘does it look fun?’), checking the age rating (‘is it OK for my niece?’) and assessing the number of players (‘can we all play it at this weekend’s BBQ?’). This is where the likes of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza come into their own.

“Over the past four or five years, the industry as a whole has got much better when it comes to production quality,” adds Alex. “Companies are no longer trying to fill boxes with air or empty space to create artificially big boxes, for instance. Nowadays, it's far more a case of what looks good, fits well and offers great play value. And consumers really like heft; heavy boxes mean lots of value.”

As many readers will already be aware, Asmodee’s portfolio is substantial. The company distributes for a great many suppliers, which Alex says is a privilege. Helping retailers understand the portfolio and where it offers them the most sales potential boils down to understanding the different games segments and where each slots into the retail landscape. Hobby and independent retailers are Asmodee’s bedrock, Alex tells me, and while no retail partner can carry everything, most will see success with a broad range of products. Support for indies hinges upon stock availability and after-sales service, alongside additional perks such as launch events and organised play activities. The likes of Waterstones or John Lewis, meanwhile, might require demonstration support, while retail giants like grocers benefit from joint business planning, depending on their range selection and margin requirements.

Happily for many games fans, the organised play event sector is getting back to full flow: Magic and Pokémon events, Alex says, are almost back to their pre-pandemic strength. However, he notes that while Asmodee is keen to provide much more in the way of in-store demonstrations, finding people to run them is proving tricky. There’s no longer a pool of specialists to deploy to stores like there was pre-Covid, and the labour market remains weak across many sectors, not just retail. Stores that organise events themselves are more able to cope, as they can divert people and resources to events where necessary. Asmodee is working hard to find a solution though, and we’ll surely see in-store demos returning to the likes of Waterstones soon.

Alex is on the fence about just how and when Christmas sales will arrive. Some reports he’s read say it’ll be an early Christmas this year, while others reckon it’ll be late as it was in 2021. Whatever happens, Asmodee is confident consumers will be out there spending on games – it’s just not sure when the surge will come. The strategy is therefore to remain flexible and react quickly to the market as things occur: another late Christmas may cause some consternation around promotions and just how aggressive (or otherwise) to be with them. Sales wise, Alex is confident of a similar performance to last year, which will be music to the ears of many a retailer. With such a huge product range, some of Asmodee’s games will naturally be up on last year, while others will be down. Success lies in striking a balance.

One of Asmodee’s focuses for the year ahead is marketing. Alex tells me: “Our DNA and history is as a distribution unit, and distributors are not generally known for their marketing efforts. They tend to be quite cautious. But we’ve got great products that offer great entertainment value, and frankly we should be telling more people about them. We are evolving our marketing efforts, we’re trying new things and exploring new areas. At the end of last year, coming into 2022, we ran a CITV sponsorship for the first time, as well as a series of slots with Absolute Radio. And as I mentioned earlier, we want to resurrect our demonstration programme, even if it’s in a different fashion to pre-2019. We’ve done UK Games Expo, Car Fest North and South this year too. It’s all about finding new consumers and reaching them wherever they are.”

Asmodee is moving to new premises next year which will help to improve efficiency issues, which Alex says comes naturally from being spread across multiple sites. In Q1 2023, Asmodee will be able to bring all its different offices together for the first time, which will help it better support its suppliers, retailers and consumers. Asmodee didn’t get where it is today by luck – it’s taken plenty of hard work and first-class support – but Alex and the rest of the team aren’t playing it cool just yet.

“It’s about doing a better job of the basics,” Alex finishes. “Customer service and consumer sentiment mean something, and we can’t take our eye off the ball even though we’ve got lots of products and we’re in a good position. Our ultimate goal is to get more people playing more games, more often, and we want to help all our partners take consumers on that journey.”