Eventful Playspace

Richard Gain: Tell me a bit about Go4 Games—its history, what kind of store it is, and how you'd describe the current health of the board game market compared to last year.

Mac Nirandorn: Go4 Games has been around for 15 years. We started with miniatures, then expanded into board games, role-playing games, and finally cards. We are 100% event-driven; event tickets consistently rank in our top three weekly sales. Currently, the board game market's health is not as strong as last year, with more people gravitating toward the card game market, which we see as the "low-hanging fruit." Still, board games remain in our top five weekly sellers.

Richard Gain: What would you say is the biggest challenge you’re facing in selling board games right now, and what’s the sweet spot for pricing?

Mac Nirandorn: The biggest challenge is price point; that’s number one. The current sweet spot for us is $40 to $60. Sales tend to slow down above $60, particularly in the $70 to $75 range. The second challenge is the "hook" to get customers interested—compelling box art and easily digestible descriptions on the back of the box are essential.

Richard Gain: Speaking of interest, what types of board games sell most consistently for you? And what does a great publishing partner look like in terms of communication?

Mac Nirandorn: The most consistent sellers are "light competitive" or "heavy cooperative" games. Cooperative titles like Lucky Ducks Dark Quarter, Bard songs, and Gloomhaven do very well. For competitive, the lighter strategy games like Rival Restaurants and Kabuto Sumo are strong. A great publishing partner is one that communicates, ideally through some type of social media discourse, like a Facebook group, to share monthly updates. I rely on social media—Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok—to discover new games because I don't have time for newsletters.

Richard Gain: How valuable are demos, organized play, and launch promotions for you?

Mac Nirandorn: They are extremely popular and often influence our decision on whether to pick up a case of a product. Organized play is highly valued because it’s already structured, saving us time. We’ve seen great success with organized play kits for games like Riftbound Nexus Knight and Japan Tactics. Even for one-time purchase board games, organized play is worthwhile because we charge a ticket price for events, ensuring we get value and providing the social experience that online retailers cannot.

Richard Gain: Is there anything you wish publishers understood about the life of a small game retailer?

Mac Nirandorn: Yes, the biggest thing is the cash flow problem, especially when publishers schedule releases alongside major launches like Magic. It forces us to pick and choose, and we sometimes miss out on cool products because of the financial drain of those huge releases. Offering terms, such as 60 days to work with product, would be immensely helpful, similar to what Fair provides.

Richard Gain: I understand the issue with terms; it’s an overhead many publishers can’t afford, which is why we usually rely on distributors for that. We, on our end, are focused on maintaining product value close to MSRP and avoid third-party sites like Fair to do that. Given the difficulty of terms and the online value issue, what's the best way for us to get you to keep backstock products selling long after the initial new release period?

Mac Nirandorn: Organized play would be the big one. Since we're an event-based store that runs things daily, having pre-planned events is immensely helpful for us in terms of time and for keeping the game relevant, even older titles.

Richard Gain: I have two theoretical ideas to support retailers that I wanted your opinion on. First, if a friend of ours came in to run demos for two hours, would you be okay with giving them a $40 gift card that we then reimburse you for in product?

Mac Nirandorn: Absolutely, 100%. I think that would be great.

Richard Gain: The second idea is if we were to give you a quality shelf and a certain amount of free product each month to dedicate that shelf to our products right in the front of your store, contingent on you sharing sales data and photos, would that be a worthwhile proposition?

Mac Nirandorn: I mean, if the shelf is a quality shelf, 100% would totally do that.

Rich Gain: The idea is every month we would give you, say, $500 in product for free to make sure that shelf is for our product.

Mac Nirandorn: The only thing I would be concerned about for your end is what Asmodee did a couple of years ago with their bestsellers rack. More often than not, I saw stores just use that as a free rack to put junk on once they went through the product.

Rich Gain: Well, this would be an ongoing thing. In order to get the free product, you’d have to send us pictures. We’d probably send friends in, maybe check the store, make sure that the pictures are actually what it is. But then if you do that every month, you get product.

Mac Nirandorn: I think that's great.

Rich Gain: We have 30 publishers we work with, so we can rotate the product very quickly—highlight some of the new stuff, some of the old stuff. It's an idea I had. Effectively, it's what Coca-Cola does in Target, where they buy an endcap, pay Target money for that endcap, and then they stock it with whatever they want. The big question for my publishers is what value does that have, and that's what we kind of have to determine. Part of the deal is you’d have to share sales with us of our stuff and see what's happening. Did your sales change? Did they stay the same? Did they get better?

Mac Nirandorn: Okay.

Rich Gain: Then we can judge that pull. Maybe we could get a formula out where we could say, "Okay, if a store is this many square feet, if we spend $500 a month, we're going to make $10,000 extra," and then extrapolate that out.

Richard Gain: Well, thank you so much, Mac.

Mac Nirandorn: of course.