A Different Kind of Board Game Publisher #2

We did a recent blog post about how we are a different kind of publisher and got a lot of positive feedback so we are following up with another post with some other "unique" things we do that perhaps a lot of other companies do not.  These range from production to sales to strategy ideas.  We hope this will not only expose you all to greater insight into our company but also give other publishers ideas for their businesses.  A rising tide raises all boats and all that jazz.

Keep Our Molds

Admittedly a lot of larger or more experienced companies probably do this too, but if you are smaller or less experienced then maybe you haven't thought to do this yet.  When you have a game with any plastic or metal elements to it (like Bamboo Bash for example), the factory will need to make a metal mold to create thousands of identical pieces.  These "molds" cost a lot of money to create and wear out over time, though often it is in the thousands or hundreds of thousands of castings.   You need to pay for these molds upfront, and they can cost hundreds or often thousands of dollars.

But what happens when you have a popular game and make multiple print runs over several years?  Imagine if the manufacturing cost of the game is $7 USD the first print run but then when you go to reprint it the factory tells you it is now $8.50/copy?  What can you do?  Sure you paid for the mold but the factory can tell you that it is "their" mold and that they won't send it to another factory, then you're stuck!  They have you over a barrel and there isn't much you can do about it.  

We have learned this the hard way with a couple of factories doing exactly this to us.  We really didn't have any recourse except to pay for the reprint at a higher cost and feel like we were held hostage by the factory.  But now we know better.  So what do we do?  Two important things.

1. Clarify who owns the mold before you pay for it.  Get the factory to state in writing (an email works) that YOU own the mold that you are paying for and that you have the right to send it to another factory should you decide to change manufacturers later.  Asking for this clarification AFTER you have printed the game and paid for the mold is no good, you need to get this stated upfront while you still have the power in the relationship.  If a factory refuses to clarify this, move on, they are probably aware of this and may well take advantage of you later.  This one simple tidbit of clarification keeps the factory quoting you for reprints honest and gives you flexibility to change if you need to.

2. Negotiate a CREDIT for the mold cost at a certain printing volume. If you do have to pay big bucks for a mold or two, ask the factory if you can get a credit for that mold cost at say 20,000 copies printed.  You aren't asking for cash back here, just a credit against your future production for the value of the mold cost.  Why a credit?  For one the factory is making some profit off of your business so a credit of say $1,000 USD may only cost the factory $500 as they are foregoing some revenue.  But this credit also works to strengthen the partnership between both of you as the factory knows it is in your best interest to stick around for future print runs.  Either way it is a win-win situation, so we always ask for such credits upfront.

Since our owner lives in China he has been able to foster long-term partnerships with various factories and understanding how to address this issue has certainly been helpful for our company.

Sell Direct to Customers

As a board game publisher perhaps you consider distributors or stores to be your customer, but Mayday views the player as our customer.  Of course, we sell to stores and distributors, but we see the player of our games as our ultimate customer.  We have been offering products direct to customers through Kickstarter since 2011 and have successfully funded 52 projects to date.  Here is our list of completed projects by date.  We always ask backers during the survey process if they are willing to subscribe to our newsletter to receive very occasional updates about new products and special offers.  With more than 56,000 backers that is a LOT of potential repeat business! 

We actively encourage customers to sign up for our newsletter and use it to market our products to our customers.  With more than 60,000 subscribers to our newsletter between Mayday and our sister company Imperial Publishing, this means that special events like our Black Friday sale becomes quite successful.  

For our most recent Black Friday sale in 2025, we offered customers 30% off all card sleeves, 15% off crokinole and crokinole accessories and up to 80% off select other games and game accessories.  We had over $100,000 in sales on more than 1,500 orders between Mayday and Imperial Publishing and the vast majority of that business came from repeat customers who were subscribed to our newsletter. 

About 70% of our sales are direct to customer with about 30% coming from stores/distributors.  A lot of that is from focusing on customers and ensuring we are spending our time focusing on our customers and their needs.  We do sometimes get hate online and there are plenty of documented cases of us screwing up in one way or another, but we are always striving to improve and focus on the customer experience.  Back 10 years ago we were hiring minimum wage kids to do our customer service and the customers' interaction with us left a lot to be desired.  Now we have a truly competent VP of Sales and a customer service team that is mature, dedicated and experienced.  Paying more and getting high-quality help means our customer experience has improved a lot in the last few years.

 Actively market direct to stores and distributors

While only 30% of our business comes from stores/distributors we also work hard to keep those relationships strong.  We have a dedicated website for stores/distributors (here) but it is password protected and only existing accounts can see our pricing.  We love getting new stores/distributors onboarded (they can email to our VP Sales at brigit@maydaygames.com to sign up).  We attend GAMA trade show most years and love talking to stores about how our products can add to their bottom line.  

For those of you who may be new to the publishing business, there are several key distributors in North America that we sell through.  We used to have them put in purchase orders and send out products as they ordered and paid for them, but when a distributor pays for the inventory up front they are naturally more conservative with their purchases.  In recent years we have moved to a "flooring" option whereby these same distributors stock roughly 5 times more product than they used to but only pay for it when they sell it to stores.  The inventory is still ours and they don't owe us a penny until it moves.  This allows them to carry our product much deeper without the financial burden or risk and to the extent our products continually sell through, it means more sales for us and them.  This has resulted in our distribution sales keeping pace to our ever-growing direct-to-customer sales.  

We also were one of the early entrants to a new virtual distributor called Faire.  If you are a store we recommend you give them a at try with our referral link HERE.  You get $75 of free product from us and free shipping of all your orders from us for a full year!

If you are a publisher you can email seth@maydaygames.com directly and I can get you a direct referral code to sign up so we both get something out of it.  But Faire basically connects stores and publishers without the hassle of us shipping the product to a distributor.  We ship the product directly to the store and Faire gets a small commission on most orders.  But... if the store signed up under our referral code then there is no Faire commission on their orders from us, EVER.  It is a really slick system and the commission is quite modest so it is well worth it for us to be on there.  How worth it?

Well, it isn't nothing!  Many of these sales are to smaller boutique stores or international stores who we would never have reached through traditional distribution.  But over the several years we have been on Faire we have done a lot of business that we likely wouldn't have had otherwise.  Not being afraid to try new things has lead to a lot more success for us.

Set a MAPP Policy and Enforce it

A MAP Policy (Minimum Advertised Price Policy) is vital to maintaining value in your brand.  If you sell to just anyone and let everyone with your products compete for business online it will result in a race to the bottom based on price.  Soon your brand value will be eroded to where you, your retailers and online sellers are all making pennies and your customers will soon learn that buying anything from you at full retail price is dumb.  

We have a stated MAP Policy for both our brands (Mayday and Imperial Publishing) that states that stores may not advertise our products at more than 15% off MSRP and they are further prohibited from selling on Amazon, Ebay and Etsy.  We sell on these three channels and actively enforce our policy.  At first we had to really work hard on Amazon and other channels to clean up the listings and get stores to stop selling there, but now that we have that working it is much better for the brand and no company wants to see online retailers competing for pennies against one another.  Our brands have a much better image in the market and when we do offer a discounted price at certain times like Black Friday, it is all the more enticing for customers.

Regional Websites For Even More Coverage

In the last few years we have experimented with selling more globally by setting up MaydayGames.eu in October 2022 and Maydaygames.com.br for Brazil earlier this year. 

 

A look at MaydayGames.Com.Br for Brazil!

We plan to roll out other regional websites and find ways to offer our products to local markets from local warehouses in the future too.  For our European website we store product at a warehouse in the UK and they have our store synced into their order fulfillment system so that those orders go out automatically.  We also offer EU stores/retailers the opportunity to buy directly from our EU warehouse to save on shipping and to get our product faster.  In just over 3 years we have sold over €182,000 (thats Euros folks!) directly to the EU and the UK.  Some of that is wholesale customers but having this option available has added more options to our customers which has been amazing.  

And this is our European Website Front Page

Our Brazilian website has been opened for just a few months but it is already gaining traffic and we are releasing 3 games in the next 12 months in Portuguese as a result. 

Direct Shipping From China

Something we have been doing for several years is offering customers the option of checking out on most of our products with shipping directly from China.  For the USA this rarely makes sense but if you are outside of the USA you will find our shipping rates from CHINA are often much cheaper than from our US or EU warehouses.  Yes it will take a little longer to get to you but all of the shipments come DPP (Duty Pre Paid) so you don't have to worry about customs/import tariffs, though of course you do have to pay VAT where applicable, like in the EU for instance.  

We have spent significant resources on integrating the shipping costs from our Chinese warehouse with both of our US websites AND our EU website so that the shipping costs to most countries worldwide is calculated correctly at checkout.  We have an employee in China who is in charge of ensuring these orders are properly handled and to help addressing any customer issues.  We end up getting about 10% of our orders selecting the China-shipping route and a significant number of international orders coming into our shops that we believe we simply wouldn't get otherwise. 

Our owner touring the Chinese Warehouse earlier in 2025 

Managing the inventory from our factories to the Chinese warehouse and integrating everything has taken a long time and ensuring everything is up-to-date and shipping properly is nearly a full-time job for Emma.  But again, we are chasing the sales and want to ensure we make it as easy as possible for customers to order from us at the best possible price.  If you are curious to know how we set up this warehouse and what we do to make it all work feel free to post a comment below and maybe we will do a future blog post on JUST that, because it merits its own blog entry just for this!

Conclusion

In the ever-evolving board game market we believe that staying lean and thinking outside the box is vital to staying relevant to our customers.  We are constantly introducing new items and testing the waters on new ways of doing things.  In the last couple of years we have introduced metal coin sets and last year we rolled out our Box Bands, which we are having a hard time keeping in stock.  

We are constantly trying to implement new strategies and try new things to better serve our customers and improve our cooperation with our factories.  Hopefully you've found some of these insights useful or interesting.  We may do a Part 3 in the future!