Lessons Learned from the Moor Visitors Pre-Order Campaign: Part 1 – Stonemaier Games

Lessons Learned from the Moor Visitors Pre-Order Campaign: Part 1

box top with designIn late February, I ran an experimental 1-week campaign through my website and Celery (a pre-order e-commerce platform). The details and motivations for doing so are described on this post, but the basic idea was that only retailers would place orders with Stonemaier Games, and I would connect customers directly to those retailers.

Shipping for this campaign, which was supposed to be much faster and simpler than a normal project, has proven to be a wild ride. I’ll save that for Part 2 in a few weeks. Today’s post will focus on everything else.

Statistics

The Moor Visitors Pre-Order Campaign allowed retailers to pre-order not just the Moor Visitors expansion but also other incoming printings of Between Two Cities and Viticulture, as well as in-stock inventory such as Euphoria and the Treasure Chest. Each product was sold at a 55% discount off MSRP (instead of the usual 50% discount retailers receive).

In total, the campaign generated $99,387 in revenue over a 1-week period. Retailers purchased 4,440 copies of the Moor Visitors expansion in that time, which accounted for $29,970 of overall revenue.

If I had run a more traditional crowdfunding campaign just for Moor Visitors, I would have sold it at $12 per copy with a $3 built-in shipping subsidy. A big part of the appeal of this campaign was that backers could avoid shipping fees by buying locally or consolidating orders with online game stores, so I estimate a 30% decrease in copies sold.

Based on that and the equivalent of $9 in revenue per game, I would have raised $39,960. Given that it was a vehicle for selling other products to retailers as well, I think the $10k difference in revenue is worth the overall gain in both revenue and retailer relationships.

Out of the 300 retailers we contacted, 125 of them decided to participate in the campaign. Most of those retailers opted into being listed on the official Moor Visitors page on our website for backers to browse during and after the campaign.

Mistakes

  • Overemphasizing the Mystery: I kept consumers and retailers in the dark about Moor Visitors to create an air of mystery about it. Plus, I wanted to be able to announce a product and have it be available almost immediately, just because that’s so different than anything else we’ve done. However, I think it would have been better for everyone if I had given them at least a few weeks’ notice.
  • Starting on a Monday: I asked retailers to launch their pre-order pages on a Monday, but I think any other weekday would have been better for them based on the number of retailers who asked if they could launch on another day.
  • Quantity Limits and Overselling: I didn’t think we’d come close to selling out of Moor Visitors, as I printed 5000 copies, but we came much closer than I thought. You can set quantity limits through Celery, but a big part of the appeal of this pre-order system is that retailers only needed to purchase exactly the number of copies their customers ordered from them. So many retailers waited until the last day or two to place their pre-order, which could have been too late if we had already gone over the 5000-copy limit. I don’t have an elegant solution for this.
  • Perception of Exclusivity of Retailer List: I heard from at least half a dozen people who bemoaned that I hadn’t selected their favorite game store for the pre-order. The truth, though, was that any retailer was welcome to join–it’s not like I was hand-picking some over others. I updated the wording on the pre-order page whenever I heard a comment like this, and I think the final wording communicated a message of inclusiveness.
  • When There Isn’t a Retailer in Your Region: There are a few notable regions where no retailers signed up (Japan comes to mind). They can still order from some online game stores, but I think it’s still frustrating for those customers.
  • 99-Unit Limit on Celery: I don’t know why, but Celery has a 99-unit limit per order on each item, which required some retailers to place multiple orders. I asked Celery to remove the limit, but they wouldn’t do it. Sometimes I had those retailers just pay directly via PayPal, and then I manually changed the quantity remaining in Celery.
  • Not Having an Official Release Day: Depending on their region, retailers have been receiving their pre-ordered games at different times. Many of them bought more copies than they needed, and I didn’t restrict them on when they could start selling their extra copies (though many of them were polite to ask). In the future, I think I’d have an official release date to add some differentiation in time between pre-order customers and other customers.

Insights

  • Posting the Retailer List Online: Originally I planned to put the retailer list in my announcement e-newsletter and not on our website, but I’m SO glad I didn’t do it that way. I was constantly updating the online list as the campaign progressed, and it continues to serve as a way to connect customers to retailers.
  • Intensity of Launch Day: Since backers were buying from retailers instead of Stonemaier Games, I thought launch day would be much more relaxed than a Kickstarter campaign. I was wrong. Fortunately this is my day job, but if it weren’t, I would have wanted to take the day off just to focus on the campaign.
  • Retailers Become Advocates: This was one of the delightful surprises of the campaign, as it’s so different than a Kickstarter project. Retailers were outright selling Moor Visitors. They made an event of it in their e-newsletters and their stores, which extended my reach exponentially well beyond our e-newsletter subscribers and Facebook fans. And they didn’t do this because I asked them to (I didn’t)–they did it because it was good business for them and because I was directing customers to them. It really felt like we were working towards the same goal, which was awesome.
  • Price Floor: I gave the retailers a price floor of $9.95 USD, and I think this was the right call. I didn’t want some retailers accepting pre-orders for 10 cents over cost. Retailers are competitors, but when my brand is on the line, I want them to play nice.
  • Quietly Accommodate Stragglers: Even though it was only a 1-week campaign, I quietly left the pre-order widgets live for retailers to use for an extra few days. This ended up being really important, because there were several dozen retailers who simply forgot to place their order by the deadline. Normally I’m very strict with deadlines, but in this case, I didn’t want to hurt backers (who were on time) just because their retailer of choice was a little late.
  • Importance of Short Timeframe: I think it was crucially important to the success of the campaign that it was short. It could have been longer than a week, but the point is that there was a deadline. It wasn’t your typical pre-order that’s live for months and months. Because of the short timeframe, there was an elevated level of urgency that resulted in good buzz and immediate action on the part of retailers and backers.

Feedback

Here’s what retailers had to say about their experience with the pre-order. Please note that their impressions may have changed after the shipping ordeal that I’ll describe in Part 2.

  • “The pre-order has been brilliant for us. I would love to see this model used again in the future – it really allowed us to get exposure in states that wouldn’t normally be able to locate us.”
  • “We’ve garnered a nice boost in traffic and sign ups since the pre release promotion. Normally we are completely out of the loop as customers will kickstart or buy from U.S websites. Please consider doing this again. I’m hoping other designers and small publishers do the same.”
  • “With your announcements combined with my own, we have sold all 50 we had preordered! Which I think I can safely say makes it our quickest selling product ever!”
  • “For me as one of only two German shops that offer your expansion, it is a great experience. I have right now about 35 pre-orders, more as I ever expected.  And many new customer…”

I also heard mostly good feedback from backers, with the most common feedback being that they were happy to save on shipping fees and that they were excited to discover new retailers.

The one notable piece of negative/constructive feedback I received about the model from a backer was that the backer trusts Stonemaier Games, but they don’t necessarily trust the retailers I put in between them and us, particularly in terms of customer service. I think that’s fair, though perhaps that trust will grow if I run a similar campaign in the future, filtering out retailers who didn’t provide a good experience the first time around.

***

Under What Circumstances Would I Do It Again?

I’ll say this first: This type of campaign is NOT good at doing some of the things a Kickstarter campaign does so well: gauging demand, building community, and improving a product through stretch goals. Thus I don’t think it’s good for new games. It also would not work for a new creator or company.

That said, I think it’s a perfect system for small expansions to existing games, especially if you make the core game available too. I elude to this in most of my points in the post I wrote during the campaign–they still hold true.

Really, the only key difference is that I wish I had run the pre-order before the games left the factory in China instead of first shipping them all to St. Louis. I’ll talk about that more in Part 2.

***

I’m sure you’ll derive some conclusions about this campaign that I missed, and I’d love to hear them in the comments.

17 Comments on “Lessons Learned from the Moor Visitors Pre-Order Campaign: Part 1

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  1. […] read: Lessons Learned from the Moor Visitors Pre-Order Campaign: Part 1 and Lessons Learned from the Moor Visitors Pre-Order Campaign: Part […]

  2. Very interesting answers. Thanks.

    I do actually hear most of my friends and fellow gamers specifically say X replaces Y and summarily remove X from their game library. Is that a large enough sample? Probably not.

    The coder in me likes the mental exercise of abstracting functions(in this case expansions) for reuse. I could see a day where games are more modular and this happens.

    For me, the cross use expansion would feel less like someone milking me for money because of how it extended my present value.

  3. The system you have chosen to use is brilliant, as usual. When we talked about a card expansion a year ago, my secret worry was that such a small expansion would not be worth the trouble. Is this a model that one could do on a larger scale or would that pull too much focus from future projects(2-4 a year)? Do you think mini expansions like this give a significant boost to the evergreen aspect of a game? This last question may require more time to adequately answer, but presently of interest to me.

    I have a hunch that evergreen games can happen organically, but that there is a set of circumstances, that when reproduced, can accomplish the same. A question I’ve been asking myself – would expansions in a ‘family’ of games that have cross game relevance reverse product cannibalism, increase value for each product and make a single expansion return more value for effort/cost applied. (Assuming a quality expansion)

    in simpler terms, would an expansion that worked for both Agricola and Caverna change the perception that the one replaces the other and result in the desire to keep both?

    1. Dave: These are great questions. I’m pretty new to this (as you know, the only other expansion we released, Tuscany, was the opposite of a small expansion :) ), but I’ll share my thoughts:

      Is this a model that one could do on a larger scale or would that pull too much focus from future projects(2-4 a year)? Do you think mini expansions like this give a significant boost to the evergreen aspect of a game?

      –Some companies seem to be able to sustain that model (FFG comes to mind). However, for Stonemaier, it took nearly a year to go from inception to delivery of Moor Visitors. Perhaps we could get on a cycle where we deliver more of them, but I try to be contentious of peoples budgets. I don’t want to make them feel like we’re milking them every few months so they can keep their copy of the game up to date.

      That said, we recognize that fans of our games want more stuff for those games on occasion, so we’ll try to provide that service. That’s more geared to existing fans than it is to attracting new people, though every time our games hit someone’s table, they have the potential to be played by someone new. So I think it helps the growth of a game to inspire people to get it to the table–that might be part of making a game evergreen.

      Would an expansion that worked for both Agricola and Caverna change the perception that the one replaces the other and result in the desire to keep both?

      –That’s an interesting question. It might! Do you think most people now choose one or the other but not both? I think there’s a new version of Agricola coming out soon, so the publisher must have determined that there’s still enough interest in it to make more copies.

  4. Thanks for the great article Jamie, I am also looking forward for part 2.
    I am wondering though, why you chose to do that through Celery and not just from your own website? In what way did it help you?
    The idea is really good, but I don’t understand this part.

  5. My FLGS was told about your campaign, and told me they reached out, but nothing came of it. I’m not spending $10CAD to ship a ~$14CAD expansion to a game, however much I like it.

    Nor will I “bulk” up an order since online retailers in Canada have horrendous shipping costs and very limited rebates over brick and mortar, which means it often comes to roughly the same price, if not more expensive, to buy online. At very similar price points, I’ll support my FLGS every single time.

    I skipped this one. If it’s ever in stock, I may buy it, but seeing the way it’s gone so far, I think that’s very unlikely.

    To me, this was a total failure, but good on you for trying something new to see if it works better. Just adding a data point to your pile.

    1. Guillaume: Could you let me know the name of your store? I guarantee that I responded to every retailer who contacted me (unless their e-mail went to spam and I somehow missed it, even though I checked my spam folder several times during the campaign for that reason).

      I appreciate your feedback, though I’m curious about what I can learn from this feedback. Aren’t you essentially saying that you don’t want to pay shipping on small products like this, so you want to be able to buy them from your FLGS? This campaign provided that exact service–the difference is that your FLGS chose not to participate, which is no different than if your FLGS chose not to buy the produce from a distributor. So was the campaign a total failure, or was the total failure related to your shop’s unwillingness to connect you with a product you want? Maybe I’m missing something here–I’m trying to learn from your comment.

  6. This is such an innovative idea, Jamey! I was blown away when you first announced it. Thanks for testing out the waters so others can avoid some mistakes if they try something similar.

    My main concern with trying it myself is managing relationships with so many retailers and handling special requests from them without the structure that Kickstarter provides to make that part fairly easy. I know you were learning along the way on this one and you’re not known for “simple” campaigns, but how much time do you think you spent on this compared to a fairly simple Kickstarter campaign for an expansion?

    1. Brian: That was a valid concern of mine too, but in the end it was quite similar to Kickstarter (but a lot less stress). Just like Kickstarter, retailers could select their rewards and quantities through automated widgets (and, thanks to Celery, it was easy for them to select multiple rewards). Just like Kickstarter, I e-mailed back and forth with any retailers who had questions, but we’re only talking about a few dozen out of 125 retailers instead of a few hundred (or more) out of thousands of backers.

      Setup time was much quicker and easier than Kickstarter, and other than launch day–which was comparable to a Kickstarter launch day–it required significantly less of my time on a day-to-day basis during the campaign. I still gave it the attention it deserved by being available to retailers (and on social media and BGG), but the intensity was much lower than a first week on Kickstarter.

      1. That’s great to hear — thanks again for sharing. You’ve found yet another useful tool to have in the publisher tool belt! We’ll see if I run into a job that requires a tool like this in the future. :)

  7. This almost seems like a good idea anytime you were doing a reprint at the factory, Maybe start the campaign a week or two before the run is scheduled to start, Set it to end sometime before the print run ends, so you could add more orders in if there is increased demand, and there’s a certain amount of stock you would like to have on hand post sale to cover that time.

    I look forward to see how you handled shipping!, I just had a breakthrough myself this weekend, on figuring out weight/size on the campaign I’m working on, Keep it simple.

    1. Sean: Yeah, that might be a good idea. The one risky thing is that distributors could get tired of us doing that. I think there needs to be a good balance or they’re not going to want to work with us.

  8. As for dealing with quatity limits, what about an email update to retailers at some point before sellout? It’s as a reminder to buy and relates sense of urgency to the reader.

    1. Troy: Perhaps that would help, though I’m not sure it would solve the problem. Say there are 500 units remaining, but retailers have already accepted 600 orders from their customers. When those retailers show up at my website to place their pre-orders, there isn’t going to be enough to cover their demand.

  9. Thanks for sharing these lessons, and I look forward to Part 2. As a workaround to the 99 quantity issue, could you have created another product or option for a “Case” or a “10-Pack” or something? A retailer wanting 150 copies could then have ordered 15 cases. (It’s not ideal, of course, but it may have been better than placing two orders.)

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