Talking Shop

Playing to win

The popularity of games for the whole family, repeat sales from puzzle enthusiasts, the rise of games night as a social activity and the usefulness of travel games means Games & Puzzles is a solid category for most indie toy retailers, with some going one step further and choosing to specialise in the category. Here, they share what’s selling well and how they attract customers.

Adam Jemmett - Board at Home, Ramsgate

We offer a wide variety of titles for all board game lovers. Our bestsellers this year have been After Us as well as story-based game, Cartaventura, from Hachette. The Exit games from Thames and Kosmos have sold well, and from Big Potato, our customers love Herd Mentality and Muffin Time. Our focus is on games, but we have a small selection of puzzles from Coiledspring Games, Ravensburger and Falcon - and Haba for kids.

Globally, more people are playing board games now than ever before, especially at a time when money is tighter for most. Many of our customers come in to buy for a games night they’re planning at home, rather than going out.

We place the bulk of our orders at the start of the year at Toy Fair, or at Games Expo. For Christmas, we’re excited for Thames and Kosmos’s Exit Games advent calendar which always sells well every year. We’re also looking forward to bringing in Christmas crackers from Puzzle Post; this year, they have a licensed Traitors version, with prizes that provide a game experience for customers rather than the usual cheap novelties.

We’ve noticed that the price customers are willing to pay for games has reduced considerably over the last year. About 90% of our sales are up to £30 and the average spend is £15. We look at what we’re stocking and adapt our range to customers’ spending habits; everybody wants to get more bang for their buck.

We also stock Trading Card Games such as Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcana and Asmodee’s Star Wars Unlimited because they fit in with our family-friendly aesthetic. For hobby and gaming customers, we have Dungeons & Dragons, and we stock some big box games for the hard-core customers, but we keep stock tight on these, only stocking a couple of each premium priced game.

We have regular weekly events such as board game nights so people can come and play the games from our library, and role-play nights for Dungeons & Dragons. We also rent out our games room for schools and colleges. We’re lucky to have a great customer base who prefer to shop here rather than online.

Colin Wilcock - Mind Games Southport

We’re a small store, but we stock a wide range of jigsaws. One of our bestselling lines is Wasgijs from Jumbo, which creates destiny or mystery puzzles rather than following a picture. They’re different and interesting and they sell really well. Wasgijs’ Mickey’s Party – a 1,000-piece Disney puzzle – has been flying out recently. Disney licensed puzzles always sell well, and the same goes for Marvel. Cobble Hill, a US company supplying family jigsaws, is popular with customers. The puzzles have bigger pieces at one end for young children and standard piece sizes on the other, so are great for kids and parents to enjoy together. Our range also includes nostalgia and 3D puzzles from well-known brands such as Ravensburger and Falcon. The Crazy Cats series by Ravensburger is always in demand.

The majority of our puzzles are 1,000 pieces and we stock some with larger pieces which are useful for older people with dementia or Parkinson’s. We have an aging population and many nursing homes here, so that’s another market for us. We have a collection of brain teaser puzzles, like Cheatwell Games’ wooden IQ busters such as Starburst and Asteroid, and also cater to hobby players. This supports local school groups – and quite a few interested parents too.

We offer a trading scheme where customers bring in pre-owned jigsaws to trade with a new one for £4.99, which is going well, and we provide a service to complete a jigsaw and frame it – for customers who like the image but say they don’t have the patience to put it together. Christmas shopping begins in September, and more and more people seem to be looking for jigsaws to put on the table at Christmas so everyone can take part. Parents are trying to get kids off computer games and have more family interaction at this time of year. We’ll be bringing in Falcon’s Christmas jigsaw which is usually very popular as it provides two puzzles for the price of one. We’ll also be stocking more Wasgij, and we’ll order more from Gibsons too.

Becky Ottery - Eclectic Games, Reading

Our best-sellers are Wingspan, Wyrmspan and Sushi Go! from Asmodee, and also Mycelia from Ravensburger which is a gorgeously illustrated family deck-building game. Asmodee’s Quirkle Travel edition is also selling rapidly as well as Spots and Lacuna by CYMK, distributed by VR Distribution. What most customers are after at the moment is games in the £20-£25 range.

Everyone still wants to play Mattel’s Uno. Uno No Mercy has been hugely popular - when we’re able to keep it in stock. Asmodee’s Cobra Paw is one of our demo standouts; anything that demos well, sells well.

We are finding that solo RPGs are growing in popularity, such as Final Girl and Colossal. Role-play in general is still doing really well – we see Dungeons & Dragons being bought by families, students and those who have hit the nostalgia button. In trading card games, Asmodee’s Star Wars Unlimited is very popular and Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcana is still going strong. Pokémon is not quite at the insane levels I’ve seen it reach before, but people continue to buy it.

Jigsaws is more of a winter thing for us, but Ravensburger has some very appealing Pokémon designs which are selling strongly all year round. We’re also seeing great sales of its circular 500-piece puzzles which are quite unusual – they’re colour wheels with different silhouettes such as fish, food or flowers. We also stock Coiledspring’s Schmidt jigsaws, the World’s Smallest 1,000-piece range from Cheatwell and 401 Hidden Things by Big Potato.

At Christmas, people will buy games that are solid, reliable evergreens. There will also be the core gamers who will come to buy games for their relatives because they don’t want to give them socks. I’m expecting Asmodee’s Catan from and Carcassonne to do well. Wingspan and Wyrmspan will be popular, and also Daybreak by CYMK, as it has only just come out. We will be stocking Thames & Kosmos’ Sky Team if we can get enough stock. As it has won the 2024 Spiel des Jahres — Germany's game of the year award – it’s certain to be in demand.

We run in-store events every evening from Monday to Friday. At weekends, we have whole day events on both days, usually for trading card game tournaments. We also run a monthly open board game session and are looking at taking board games events to businesses after being approached by a local company.

James Graham - Leisure Games, London

Our big hit so far this year has been Star Wars Unlimited by Asmodee – it’s going very well. Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcana, after a bit of a dip, is now moving steadily, and One Piece is also very popular. Magic the Gathering is ticking along, but sales of Lorcana have overtaken it and Star Wars Unlimited is even better than that. Demand for Trading Card Games has shot up in the last 12 months because of the new introductions from Asmodee and Ravensburger; both companies have really got behind them, resulting in TCGs becoming a big area of growth for us.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised that Hive, which is an old family board game a bit like chess, has had a real resurgence following a new expansion. Star Realms, another traditional board game, has also had a big resurgence – we can’t seem to keep that in stock. In role-play games, we’ve been doing well with Thousand Year Old Vampire followed by Heart: The City Beneath. In the coming months, we’re looking forward to bringing in the new Mothership role-playing game which we’re expecting to be big.

Staples which continue to do well include Asmodee’s Sushi Go! and VR Distribution’s Spots. This year, it’s the smaller games which have been selling, which is a sign of the times, so we’re focusing on those price points much more. Our customers also enjoy puzzle type games such as the Exit games from Thames & Kosmos.

In the jigsaw puzzles category, most of our range is from Ravensburger. Our biggest market has always been the elderly, but we are now selling more kids’ jigsaws. Ravensburger caters to this market too with its 100-piece puzzles, and its Disney licensed versions are always a winner.

As we’re on a high street, we sell lots of kids’ games to one-off customers, but we also have regulars who are adults invested in TCG or role-playing games. After Covid, it’s good to be back to in-person sales – especially as we’ve seen a drop in mail orders because shipping costs are less viable following Brexit.

We run lots of events in store; about four nights a week and regularly at weekends. Three evenings are now dedicated to Magic the Gathering players, and we’ve had to put on an extra night since last year, due to demand. A further evening welcomes players of Star Wars Unlimited and One Weekend events are always popular – they are mainly TCG focused, but sometimes highlight board games.

We are anticipating a good Christmas and will bring in more new releases before then.

Mark Green - The Yorkshire Jigsaw Store, York

When we look at our best-selling puzzles, we find the most recent releases are always near the top of the list. Customers, especially those who have puzzled for a long time, love to look out for the latest ones, often part of an ongoing collection. A good example is the latest puzzles from Jumbo’s Wasgij brand – eight titles feature in our top 20 so far this year.

It’s always difficult to know what the consumer wants but we have found the two main factors that drive sales are newness and price. So, as well as relying on demand for the latest releases, we will occasionally run a special offer, taking advantage of surplus stock from suppliers bought in bulk which we can sell through at a reduced price.

Extra-large-piece puzzles have become more sought after, so we’ve recently brought in a selection from Ravensburger, which has started to produce extra-large-piece puzzles in 300, 500 and 750.

As a specialist puzzle retailer, sales are very heavily tipped in favour of adults, and children’s puzzles account for less than 10% of our catalogue. But in terms of licensed puzzles, we stock the likes of Peppa Pig, Paddington, Peter Rabbit, Disney, Marvel and Harry Potter.

Like every retailer, we hope that the Christmas period will be a busy one for us. We have placed orders for all the new festive lines from Gibsons and the new twin packs from Falcon and Wasgij. These are popular as customers get two puzzles for the price of one. Jumbo has also released advent calendars for the first time this year in the form of Wasgij and JVH which I’m sure will sell well.

Gibsons, Falcon and Ravensburger all release limitededition Christmas puzzles each year that will be in demand. We have some of these in stock already and from as early as the summer months they have been selling well.

Ian Davis - Rules of Play, Cardiff

Currently, we are seeing good sales for lower ticketed items such as Next Station London by Blue Orange, Sea Salt and Paper by ColourAdd, Tinderblox by Alley Cat Games and Kits by Floodgate. I’m very pleased with footfall and the number of units being sold is on par with pre-covid figures, but the average spend per game is lower –around £20 rather than £50, as it used to be.

Asmodee is our biggest supplier in terms of popular titles, and we also do well with Coiledspring Games. Other notable suppliers include Tactic Games and John Adams; we particularly like Dinky Linkee from John Adams’ Ideal range.

Although we carry a wide selection of mainstream games, we are a hobby orientated destination, rather than a typical high street store. Dungeons & Dragons is our bestselling role-play game, and there are quite a few companies trying out new game systems including Monster of the Week, Kids on Bikes, Masquerade and Path Finder, which is similar to D&D gameplay.

We stock household names like Mattel and Hasbro and also brands like Big Potato, which is becoming more well known, but we find that many customers come in for titles which aren’t easy to find on the high street – we carry 2,0003,000 titles, which is a much wider breadth than high street stores. We also stock all the accessories for Role Playing Games, as well as classic items such as chess boards and Bicycle playing cards.

In the TCG area, Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon are all in demand, but Pokémon is the one that is the most steady. Newer introductions include Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcana, which is doing very, very well, and Asmodee’s Star Wars Unlimited, which is starting to take off.

We run a community group so people can regularly meet up to play TCGs or RPGs. We hold events as often as we possibly can, and demos too. We run a board game festival yearly at the end of April, which saw over 500 attendees this year, and next year we’re planning a second one in October. We also do corporate events, community centre events and school clubs. Providing experiences and taking games out into the community is how we market our shop. We’ve even been asked to do wedding receptions.

This year, suppliers are beginning to create lower priced versions of popular games which I think will be really important for their success in the next year or two because of the cost-of-living crisis. Asmodee has created smaller box versions of Ticket to Ride, and this type of adaptation is really popular among our customers.

For the rest of the year, we’re looking forward to Leder Games’ Arcs on the hobby side of things – we’re anticipating this to be a big hit. On the more family-friendly side, we’re excited for the 10th anniversary edition of Asmodee’s Sushi Go! We’ll be attending Spiel Essen in October to search for more new games – there’s always something new in the games market.

Tim Evans - Toys & Games of Worcester

Trading card games have become really popular, and I’m delighted with how Disney Lorcana has taken off. It started off strongly 12 months ago and its momentum has been gathering ever since. Pokémon remains an evergreen which gives us our biggest share of sales. It’s not as popular as it used to be at our organised play events, but it’s still very strong among collectors. We’ve been stocking Konami’s Yu-Gi-Oh! and Wizards of the Coast’s Magic the Gathering for about 20 years and they are both still very strong brands. More recently, we’ve brought in One Piece, which has a smaller but very passionate customer base, and Flesh and Blood remains steady. Asmodee’s Star Wars Unlimited is seeing significant growth after a slow start. Sales are really ramping up now that people are getting into the gameplay. From what I’ve heard, it has one of the better gameplays. I make an effort to keep up with trading card games, which is vital because there are new products every week – you have to be switched on to source the right products for your customers.

In board games, we have had price promotions from Ravensburger for games like Back to the Future, Villainous and Horrified which have helped us enormously. Big Potato Games’ Christmas hit Kluster remains popular and the brand’s range of fun games at excellent price points between £10-£20, like P for Pizza, represent the type of game that has sold well over the summer holidays. Asmodee’s Timeline and Skull – small travel-sized games – have also been in demand. Everyone loves our exclusive Worcester Monopoly from Winning Moves. Even traditional games sell well over summer, particularly travel versions like John Adams’ Rummikub, Mattel’s Scrabble, Asmodee’s Bananagramsand even Big Potato’s Herd Mentality.

Customers still want jigsaws in the summer, for a rainy day or for something to do in the evening. We have about 300 jigsaw designs to choose from, from licensed to landscapes and cottages, mostly from Ravensburger and Gibsons. The 1,000-piece jigsaws are the most popular, and Ravensburger’s promotion to buy two jigsaws and get a roll-out puzzle matt for free has bumped up sales. This Christmas, Ravensburger is supplying an exclusive Worcester jigsaw puzzle.

Big ticket, intense strategy games that used to be popular have struggled more recently. Now customers are looking for £40 and under. This Christmas we’ll be placing a big focus on brainteasers such as TapTap from Character Options and brain puzzles from Smart Games. These performed well last Christmas and we’re extending our selection as they are at the perfect price point for the current climate. In a bricks and mortar store, customers notice them, pick them up and play with them. We run organised play for all the trading card games every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in our 66-seater unit – and these events are going from strength to strength. They support the sales of our games but also support the community. We hold events for everything from Yu-Gi-Oh! to Pokémon to Magic the Gathering, as well as swap events for football cards like Topps’ Turbo F1 cards and Panini’s Adrenaline XL.

James Waddelove - Storktown Toymaster – Leigh, Lancashire

We stock a wide range of 1,000-piece adult jigsaw puzzles, with best-sellers from a variety of brands including Gibsons and Wasgij from Jumbo. We are quite a traditional shop, so we mainly offer traditional images such as cottages and village scenes. Closer to Christmas we will bring in festive-themed jigsaws which have always sold well – Gibsons and Ravensburger usually bring out a special Christmas edition, and people who enjoy puzzles like to get into the Christmas spirit with these.

For younger kids, Orchard Toys offers a great selection of games and puzzles. Parents want their kids to play together away from screens, and this range of educational games and puzzles means kids can learn without knowing that they are. We also stock plenty of traditional games such as John Adams’ Ideal range, which includes classic Snakes & Ladders and the Electronic Bingo machine. A newer game which is selling well in the Ideal range is The 1% Club board game; it’s a bit different and is really popular.

During lockdown, jigsaws were absolutely flying but now sales have stabilised. They are steady throughout the year but pick up more in the fourth quarter when the weather gets cold and people want to be indoors. We find that most of our puzzle sales are for individuals to do at home, and that games are a more popular way to get the family together.

Classic card games such as Mattel’s Uno and Winning Moves’ Whot! are always in demand, as well as licensed playing cards like Harry Potter and Marvel. As these are a lower price point, they are a quick and affordable purchase.

As for trading cards, we have Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcana and Magic the Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. TCGs are great for bringing in repeat customers regularly, and spikes in sales come with the release of new sets and themes. We run Pokémon swap days in-store about once a month, when fans can swap cards and talk about Pokémon. These sort of events are important to encourage customers to visit the store.

A lot of young people collect Pokémon all year round –from the age of about seven – and those in their 20s and 30s enjoy the gameplay more. It all starts with the excitement of finding shinies, then they gradually get into gameplay. Lorcana has been a steady seller – it appeals to families because of the Disney characters, and I think it has great potential.

Emily Hoyle - Hoyle's of Oxford

There are clear best-sellers across our different categories of games. In the card game category, it's no surprise that Uno Show Em No Mercy has firmly held best-seller status for a while now. Its rapid rise in popularity highlights its appeal for all ages. The new edition of Oxford Monopoly – in which our shop features – has been a real standout and appeals to tourists and students alike, as well as residents at Christmas. To celebrate its release, we hosted an in-store event with the Monopoly man himself, providing a unique photo opportunity for customers.

We are very much a family store, and our best-selling games reflect this – Ticket to Ride and Catan by Asmodee, for example.

All trading card games are selling well, Pokémon is the strongest with the booster packs a best-seller, especially over school holidays and with American tourists. A surprise hit was the 2023 World Championship Decks – consistently selling out even with the 2024 decks around the corner. It is sad that Yu-Gi-Oh! is pausing Speed Duels as the boxes full of multiple decks sold well and the line was just hitting its stride.

Given our Oxford location, it's no surprise that the Lord of the Rings licence is especially popular. The Exit: Shadows Over Middle Earth game by Thames & Kosmos is a standout, offering an immersive escape room experience set in the beloved Middle Earth universe. The Lord of the Rings Magic: The Gathering cards also continue to be a hit, and Harry Potter playing cards are a favourite among fans of the Wizarding World, both collectors and casual players. Alice in Wonderland is also popular, especially the flamingo shaped croquet sets from Professor Puzzle. These themed games and puzzles not only tap into the rich literary heritage of the city but also resonate strongly with our local community and dedicated fans of these franchises.