How Mayday Games Got Into Crokinole: From One Anniversary Gift to $2 Million on Kickstarter

Sometimes a business opportunity begins with market research, focus groups and a carefully prepared business plan.

Our journey into crokinole boards started because my brother needed an anniversary present.

I'm Seth Hiatt, founder of Mayday Games, and we've been selling crokinole boards since 2009. Today, crokinole has become an important part of Mayday Games, but when this story began, I knew relatively little about the game.

Since then, we've gone from trying to find one board for a family anniversary gift to running nine successful Crokinole Kickstarter campaigns generating more than $2 million in pledges and 16,000+ campaign backings.

Here's how it happened.

It All Started With an Anniversary Gift

In 2009, my brother Nathan asked me for some help finding an anniversary gift for his in-laws.

They were from Magrath, Alberta, Canada, near Calgary, and were lifelong crokinole fans. Nathan thought a nice crokinole board would make the perfect wedding anniversary present.

I figured finding one would be easy.

Mayday Games had only started the year before, in 2008, but I had already spent years selling geek-related merchandise online, primarily through eBay, as well as through a small storefront in Utah. Board games were among the products we sold, and I was familiar with many of the major U.S. game distributors.

I assumed I'd open a distributor catalog, find a good crokinole board for sale at wholesale and order one.

I was wrong.

Where Were All the Crokinole Boards?

The more I researched crokinole, the more intrigued I became.

Here was a game that had been enjoyed in Canada for generations. It was easy to learn, incredibly satisfying to play and had the kind of immediate appeal that makes the best dexterity games so much fun.

Yet none of the major U.S. board game distributors we worked with carried a quality, full-size crokinole board.

I found a few small, inexpensive boards online, but they weren't what Nathan was looking for.

At the other end of the market were talented custom woodworkers, including the Hilinski brothers, making beautiful handcrafted crokinole boards. These were serious pieces of woodworking and sold for hundreds of dollars.

The craftsmanship was impressive.

But there seemed to be an enormous gap in the marketplace.

Where was the affordable crokinole board for someone who wanted a full-size, great-playing board without buying an expensive handmade heirloom?

That question eventually changed the direction of Mayday Games.

Finding a Gap in the Crokinole Market

Mayday Games was a very young company in 2009, and we were actively searching for interesting games and accessories that weren't already well served by traditional board game companies.

Crokinole looked like exactly that kind of opportunity.

Our goal wasn't to make the world's finest crokinole board.

Instead, I wondered whether we could produce something that delivered perhaps 80% of the experience of an expensive handcrafted board for less than half the price.

We purchased a couple of the highest-quality crokinole boards we could find and began working with our manufacturing partner in China.

That was the beginning of Mayday's crokinole journey.

Producing a good crokinole board turned out to be more complicated than it looked. The playing surface needed to be flat, smooth, attractive, durable and fast. Manufacturing a large wooden product consistently also presented challenges very different from producing traditional board games.

But in 2009, our first Mayday Games crokinole board arrived.

One of our first boards with Seth's then 10-year old son Chase playing at his elementary school's board game club.

We offered it for around $150, significantly below the price of the premium handmade alternatives available at the time.

Suddenly, owning a full-size crokinole board was realistic for a much larger group of gamers.

Taking Our Crokinole Boards to Kickstarter

A few years later, we decided to take crokinole to Kickstarter.

Our first Crokinole Kickstarter launched in 2013. It included our tournament-size board along with products such as a carrying case and our Crokinole Clock.

The campaign raised $35,078 from 275 backers.

By today's crowdfunding standards, $35,000 may not sound enormous, but to us it confirmed something important:

There were a lot of people interested in crokinole who simply needed a more affordable way to get a good board.

The roughly $99 Kickstarter price plus shipping especially appealed to budget-conscious board gamers.

And that became our niche.

Seth's daughter Abby demoing crokinole at GenCon 2011

From $35,000 to More Than $2 Million on Kickstarter

What started as a modest Kickstarter experiment turned into something much bigger.

From 2013 through 2025, Mayday Games has run nine successful Crokinole Kickstarter campaigns.

Together, those campaigns generated:

$2,015,053 in Kickstarter pledges

and

16,477 campaign backings.

We say "campaign backings" rather than 16,477 individual people because some of our loyal customers have backed multiple Mayday Crokinole campaigns over the years.

Our 2024 Season 8 Crokinole Board Kickstarter was our biggest yet, raising an incredible $748,041 from 5,762 backers.

That's a long way from the $35,078 we raised on our first campaign in 2013.

For us, those numbers aren't just about crowdfunding. They represent thousands of families, board gamers and new players who decided to give crokinole a try.

Our Crokinole Kickstarter Journey

Our nine Crokinole campaigns span more than a decade:

• 2013 — Crokinole Game & Accessory: $35,078 pledged from 275 backers

• 2016–2017 — Crokinole Game 2017: $150,602 pledged from 1,295 backers

• 2017 — Crokinole 2018 Maple Hardwood: $34,760 pledged from 271 backers

• 2019 — Mayday 2019 Crokinole Board: $69,443 pledged from 548 backers

• 2019 — 2019 Crokinole Board Season 2: $62,214 pledged from 587 backers

• 2020 — Mayday 2020 Crokinole Board: $394,728 pledged from 3,881 backers

• 2022 — Crokinole Board Season 7: $367,590 pledged from 2,906 backers

• 2024 — Crokinole Board Season 8: $748,041 pledged from 5,762 backers

• 2025 — ELITE Crokinole Board Season 9: $152,597 pledged from 952 backers

Combined, that's more than $2 million in crowdfunding support for Mayday crokinole products. Check our full Kickstarter history HERE.

It's something we never could have imagined when Nathan asked me to find that anniversary present in 2009.

The "Honda Civic" of Crokinole Boards

We've never tried to convince customers that Mayday makes the finest crokinole board money can buy.

In fact, we like describing ourselves as the Honda Civic of crokinole boards.

If you want the crokinole equivalent of a Ferrari—a gorgeous handcrafted heirloom board that you intend to lovingly maintain and eventually pass down to your children—there are excellent specialty board makers producing exactly that.

We respect what they do.

But that isn't the problem we originally set out to solve.

Our goal has always been to produce a good, affordable tournament-size crokinole board that people aren't afraid to actually use.

Take it off the wall.

Play with your kids.

Put it in a carrying case and bring it to your friend's house.

Take it to a family reunion.

Take it camping.

Get fingerprints on it.

Play it.

Crokinole is too much fun to spend its life hanging on a wall because everyone is afraid of damaging an expensive piece of furniture.

For many players, we think a Mayday board occupies that sweet spot between quality, performance and affordability.

We Were Selling Crokinole Before Today's Market Existed

One part of our history that surprises people is just how long Mayday Games has been making crokinole boards.

We started in 2009.

That means Mayday was selling full-size crokinole boards years before several of the brands familiar to today's American crokinole players entered the market.

We weren't entering an already crowded category.

When I tried to find Nathan's anniversary gift, I discovered that there essentially wasn't a mainstream U.S. market for an affordable, full-size crokinole board.

We like to think we played a part in changing that.

And we're happy that the market has grown.

More companies making boards, more people talking about crokinole and more gamers discovering the game is ultimately good for everyone who loves crokinole.

More Than Just Crokinole Boards

Once people started buying our boards, they wanted everything that went with them.

So over the years, we've expanded our crokinole accessories substantially.

Today our crokinole product line includes Standard and ELITE boards, colored crokinole discs, acrylic 20s holders, carrying cases, crokinole wax, Gliss powder, wall-mount options, replacement components and our unusual little Crokinole Clock accessory.

Many of those products developed because of suggestions from customers or because we encountered something ourselves that we thought could make owning and playing crokinole more enjoyable.

We continue trying to improve both our boards and the entire experience around storing, transporting, maintaining and playing them.

Introducing the Mayday ELITE Crokinole Board

For many years, affordability was overwhelmingly the focus of our crokinole line.

Eventually, though, we started hearing from customers who liked Mayday's value proposition but wanted something more refined.

That led us to introduce our ELITE Crokinole Board line in 2024.

ELITE isn't intended to abandon the philosophy that got us into this business.

Instead, it takes what we've learned from producing thousands of boards and applies it to a higher level of production for players who are willing to spend a little more but still don't necessarily want to pay $400 or more for a handcrafted board.

Today, customers can choose between our Standard and ELITE crokinole boards depending on their budget and what they want from their board.  Check out this blog post for a comparison of the Standard Vs Elite boards.

Mayday as a Gateway to Crokinole

There's something we're proud of that might sound unusual for a company selling crokinole boards:

Some Mayday customers eventually buy more expensive boards from our competitors.

We're completely fine with that.

In fact, we like to think of Mayday as a gateway to crokinole.

Imagine someone hears about this strange Canadian game where people flick wooden discs across a giant round board.

They're curious.

But spending $400, $500 or more to find out whether their family will enjoy it can be a pretty big leap.

An affordable board makes that decision much easier.

They buy a Mayday board.

Their family starts playing.

Their kids love it.

Friends come over and ask, "What is THAT?"

Then somebody gets hooked.

Maybe several years later, that person decides crokinole is one of their favorite games and buys a beautiful handmade board.

Great!

There's room in this hobby for affordable mass-produced boards and incredible handcrafted heirloom boards.

If our board introduces someone to crokinole, we consider that a success regardless of what their second board happens to be.

From One Anniversary Gift to Thousands of Crokinole Players

It's amazing to think about how accidental this entire journey was.

There wasn't a strategic meeting in 2009 where we decided that Mayday Games needed to enter the crokinole market.

My brother Nathan simply wanted to buy his Canadian in-laws a great anniversary present.

I went looking for a crokinole board.

I couldn't find the product I thought should exist.

So we decided to make one.

That decision eventually led to nine Kickstarter campaigns, more than $2 million in pledges and over 16,000 campaign backings.

More importantly, it has put thousands of crokinole boards onto tables in homes around the world.  We continue to love the game and host crokinole tournaments at several conventions too.  Here are some photos of our 2026 Crokinole tournament at GenCon in Indianapolis.

Our team of employees and volunteers

With over 75 players and a dozen boards, our 2026 tournament at GenCon was a huge success!

Congrats to Alex C. who took home first place and won himself a crokinole board and some special victory discs to boot!

Why We Still Love Crokinole

More than 15 years later, the biggest reason we're still in the crokinole business is very simple:

Crokinole is an amazing game.

You can explain the basics in a couple of minutes.

Children can play it. Parents can play it. Grandparents can play it.

You don't need to read a 30-page rulebook.

You don't need to convince someone to commit an entire evening.

Put the board on the table, hand someone a disc and tell them to flick it.

A few minutes later, they're desperately trying to knock your disc across the room.

That's the magic of crokinole.

We're incredibly fortunate that Nathan asked me to find that anniversary gift back in 2009. It led Mayday Games into a category we never expected to enter and introduced us to a game that has become an important part of our company's history.

We love this game, and we're so happy to have stumbled onto it.

And if you're just discovering crokinole and wondering whether you really need to spend hundreds of dollars to find out what all the fuss is about, that's exactly why we started making affordable crokinole boards in the first place.

Find a board, grab some discs and start flicking.

You might discover your next favorite game—just like we did.