With our 2023 tax calculations now complete, it’s time for me to share the annual Stonemaier Games stakeholder report.
A “stakeholder” in Stonemaier Games is anyone who has an impact on our company and a stake in our success, whether it’s my coworkers, contractors, customers, Champions, Ambassadors, retailers, distributors, localization partners, artists, designers, readers, etc. So if you’re reading this, the transparency in this post is out of respect and appreciation for you.
Joy is always our goal–we don’t measure success by money, units sold, rankings, followers, or awards. Those are just metrics. So all of the data aside, I truly hope we were able to create some joy for you in the last year, and I’m grateful for your connection to Stonemaier Games.
2023 Revenue and Personnel
We use the accrual method for accounting (expenses and revenue count in the year when we ship the products to the customer). Last year, 75% of our revenue was from retailers, distributors, localization partners, and digital games versus 25% directly from consumers.
- Revenue: $16.7 million
- Full-time employees: 7 (Jamey, Joe, Alex, Dave D, Susannah, Erica, Christine)
- Part-time employees: 1 (Alan)
- Every day contractors/partners: 4 (Morten, Dave H, Shannon, and Karel)
- Number of cats: 6
- [Added by popular request] Number of dogs: 2
- Independent contractors: 100+
- New games: 2
- New expansions: 1
- New accessories: 1
- Crowdfunding campaigns: 0
- Shareholders: 25
For comparison, revenue was $20.7 million in 2022 (actual profit is a much lower number on any given year; while overall revenue decreased last year, profit increased compared to 2022 thanks to some improved partnerships and logistics). We consistently reprint almost all of our games, so the majority of our profits are reinvested into manufacturing, freight shipping, and personnel (our most valuable resource). It was also a particularly bad year for cat quantity, which dropped from 10 to 6.
We have no debt, nor did we take any loans in 2023. As usual, cash flow was tight at certain times of the year due to the gap between when we need to pay Panda (our manufacturer) and when distributors pay us, but we make it work. (I mention this to dispel the notion that profitable companies are always flush with cash.)
We warehouse and ship our games from Miniature Market for our products in the US, from Asmodee Canada for our products in Canada, from Spiral Galaxy in the UK, and from Aetherworks in Australia. My coworkers and I mostly work from home, though we rent part of a coworking space here in St. Louis.
Susannah and Christine (both of whom were already involved at Stonemaier Games) joined us full time last year, along with our newest coworker, Erica Sanders. Here’s a longer list of everyone who has an impact on Stonemaier Games, including demographics (photos of many of them are here).
Games in Print
Our core products are 16 games. The quantities below are the lifetime units in circulation for each game (just the game, not expansions, accessories, or promos) in all languages released in 2023 or before, and the BGG rankings are as of today. If you haven’t rated our games, you can do so here!
Viticulture: 243,834 units (BGG rank: 38)- Euphoria: 44,000 units (BGG rank: 585)
- Between Two Cities: 56,900 units (BGG rank: 792)
- Scythe: 550,102 units (BGG rank: 17)
- Charterstone: 97,500 units (BGG rank: 519)
- My Little Scythe: 68,500 units (BGG rank: 776)
- Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig: 50,000 units (BGG rank: 694)
- Wingspan: 1,899,043 units (BGG rank: 25)
- Wingspan Asia: 232,760 (BGG rank: 128)
- Tapestry: 84,650 units (BGG rank: 271)
- Pendulum: 49,200 units (BGG rank: 3286)
- Red Rising: 154,800 units (BGG rank: 939)
- Rolling Realms: 43,000 units (BGG rank: 1087)
- Libertalia: 62,584 units (BGG rank: 541)
- Smitten: 11,000 units (BGG rank: 5979)
- Expeditions: 70,500 units (BGG rank: 509)
- Apiary: 30,000 units (BGG rank: 551)
Wyrmspan, our newest game, was not released in 2023.
The new products we introduced in 2023 were Expeditions, Apiary, Tapestry: Fantasies & Futures, the Wingspan Fan Art Pack, and a variety of promos for Rolling Realms. As usual, we’ve tried to keep our release schedule streamlined and focused so we can shine a big spotlight on everything we make.
Social Media, Contacts, and Other Metrics
This data is as of March 1.
- e-newsletter subscribers: 46,078 (63% open rate)
- Facebook fans: 38,686 (though most interactions are in our Facebook groups, which have over 92,000 members)
- YouTube subscribers: 49,488
- Instagram followers: 49,028
- Discord members: 1,965
- Stonemaier Champions: 15,257
- ambassadors (active volunteers): 602
- retailer/distributor mailing list: 924
- reviewers (active): 361
- international localization partners: 35
- Stonemaier Games Design Day attendees: 100
- game submissions: 298
- funds donated to charities (annual auction and bee-related charities): $42,082
With Joe as our Director of Communications, Alex as our COO, Susannah as our Retailer Relationship Manager, Dave as our Customer Outreach Manager, Christine as our Director of Visual Design, Erica as our Ecommerce Brand Manager, Alan as our Director of Special Projects, and Jamey (me) handling lead design, development, marketing, content creation, project management, and direct-to-consumer sales, we have people specializing in different interactions on various platforms in service of you.
New in 2023
Some major new developments at Stonemaier Games in 2023 included:
conventions: Thanks to new coworker Dave Deenik, we significantly increased our convention presence, including booths at Geekway to the West, Essen Spiel, and PAX Unplugged (along with other conventions and various partnerships).- shipping options: For some fulfillment centers, we added new shipping options, including local pickup in St. Louis.
- brand-specific semi-monthly newsletters: I started sending semi-monthly newsletters for those who want to follow specific brands (Expeditions/Scythe, Rolling Realms, Apiary, and Wingspan/Wyrmspan).
- eco-friendly packaging: For any expansion or product for which the packaging isn’t needed after you open the product, we’re trying to use recyclable alternatives. So far we’ve done this for Tapestry: Fantasies & Futures, the Expeditions playmat, and the Wingspan Fan Art Pack. Panda has been great to work with as we pursue a more sustainable future.
- co-hosted videos: Most of my long-form, top-10 videos on our YouTube channel have just featured me talking to the camera, but this year many of those videos have included co-hosts (Stonemaier Ambassadors who expressed interest in a specific topic).
- advertising: We haven’t invested much in advertising in the past, but I think Andrew Cook has done a great job with a variety of social media ads over the last few months, and we plan to continue them in 2024.
Looking Ahead to 2024
After Wyrmspan, we have some April surprises, the Expeditions expansion, Rolling Realms Redux (new core set) and more promo realms, a new game, and the Apiary expansion.
You can sign up for our monthly e-newsletter to receive notifications about these announcements. We have a pretty good idea of our 2025 and 2026 lineups as well.
In 2024, my goals are to welcome both new and experienced gamers into the gaming community and bring joy to their tabletops, to support my amazing coworkers, and to lead with kindness, compassion, and empathy.
***
Thanks for joining Stonemaier Games on this journey, and if there’s anything we can do to add joy to your tabletop experiences, please let us know.
Do you have any thoughts, observations, or questions about this report? I want to continue to learn from mistakes and successes, experiment, and listen to our stakeholders in 2024.
Also read:
- 2022 Stakeholder Report
- 2021 Stakeholder Report
- 2020 Stakeholder Report
- 2019 Stakeholder Report
- 2018 Stakeholder Report
- 2017 Stakeholder Report
- 2016 Stakeholder Report
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
37 Comments on “2023 Behind-the-Scenes Stakeholder Report for Stonemaier Games”
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Hi Jamey,
Just wondering if the Oceania expansion of Wingspan have sold less in total units compared to the European expansion? I’m just curious if subsequent expansions of the same game (that are not stand alones) generally sell less with each release? Could you also provide the numbers or just by how many percent less/more do they sell? That’d be great.
Each expansion has sold less than the one before it, but I think that’s mostly attributed to time: The European expansion had a 2-year head start on Oceania, which has been on the market for 2 years longer than Wingspan Asia. In total, the expansions have sold around 1.1 million copies.
Thanks, Jamey. By your example, you’re setting the standard in this industry for transparency, authenticity, and integrity. I’m always proud to put a Stonemaier Game on my table.
I’m honored to hear that, Chris–thank you.
[…] maintenant au sujet qui fâche : les chiffres. C’est dans son rapport annuel publié il y a quelques jours qu’on apprend tout ça. Avec 16,7 millions de dollars de […]
Hi Jamey – thanks as always for sharing this. It is very helpful for new creators as it gives some context from someone who has made it as a publisher successfully!
One point I was wondering if you could elaborate on: you mentioned that revenue was down about $4M but profits were up. $4M seems like a huge swing in cost reduction so curious if you have any tips on how this was done that could potentially be best practices for someone new? Not looking for specific numbers of course but seems like a major success I would love to hear how you accomplished!
Thanks,
Scott
Thanks Scott! The main reasons for the increase in profitability compared to 2022 were decreases in freight shipping expenses (through ARC Global) and decreases in US fulfillment expenses (we switched over to Miniature Market’s warehouse early last year).
first time viewer of your site are any of these card games on steam ?
are there any plans to bring them to steam / digital / Global ?
Yes, several of our games are on Steam. Check out the shop/digital games page for links.
ty for fast reply.
Thanks for the interesting behind the scenes. I’m curious … do you make any money from games you have on BGA or say the Wingspan app? Also lovely to see your bee 🐝 charity donations :)
Thanks! Yes, we make a little bit from licensed app royalties.
That’s great- we have both print and online and although I love to play in print, my family can’t keep pace with my love of the game :)
I deeply admire the transparency and leadership shared here. Being relatively new to board gaming, it is wonderful to see how a business can be successful and still embrace the community it serves. Thank you for all you do.
Thanks Paul! Welcome to board gaming. :)
Thanks for the information.
Sounds like 2024 is going to be a rather stacked year. Champions are going to get quite a ton of value from this year’s membership!
I hope so! :)
Fantastic to see the numbers! Lots of positive, however in healthcare we learn most from our grumbles and complaints ie it’s the unreasonable person or the error and its analysis who drives improvement more than the compliments. Do you have any stats on this aspect and lessons learnt?
Of course! There’s always room for improvement. Last year we experimented with preorders for Expeditions (i.e., we accepted orders right before we went to print instead of waiting until after we’ve already made the game). While this helped us serve retailers better, I think it also hurt the retail release, so I probably wouldn’t use that method again in the future. Beyond that, there isn’t anything in particular about the releases for Expeditions or Apiary that I would change in the future. I think we may have overestimated demand for the Wingspan Fan Art Pack, but I still think it was a really fun project to create for Wingspan fans, and it was a good reminder to me that we can take risks on lower-cost products and be fine if they don’t sell quite as well as we hoped.
As Stonemaier fan and a small business owner myself, I really appreciate seeing this information. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Dan! I hope it’s useful in some way to my fellow creators.
What an amazing amount of transparency. I love the detail and info about your team.
I do find it hard to believe that no one has a dog though – or do you just not report on them?
Love your company and its mission.
Thanks Sherry! I should be more transparent about dogs: Two of my coworkers have 1 dog each. :)
You gotta pump those cat numbers up! Those are rookie cat numbers!
(Thank you for the very open and honest report, and for the snippet about an apiary expansion )
The transparency here is so impressive. This is a very interesting glimpse into a gaming company ! Does anybody else do this?
I was originally inspired to do this by Steve Jackson Games, though I’m not sure if they still do it. I think Pine Island Games and maybe The City of Games have done it in the past too.
I read the SJG report for many years too. It’s cool to see the ways that such actions ripple forward in time. I think many of the things you do will have such impacts too. Thanks for sharing; this is always an interesting read!
Thanks Ira!
As always, you show leadership through your values. In this case, your transparency is top notch. Thank you! I’m glad to see the accomplishments of SM and I wish you many more years of joyful gaming!
Thank you, Jonathan!
Great report, as always. Good to see that Stonemaier Games is healthy and continuing on its journey.
One question: there is an asterisk after the Wingspan sales count. I am not sure what that means. I looked for an asterisk footnote and did not see anything. Is this supposed to refer to the Wyrmspan note at the end, or is it something I am just not seeing?
Thanks in advance!
Thanks David! The asterisk is a typo–I’ll remove it. :)
I love that you do this every year. It really helps add some perspective to the industry and SM specifically.
Thanks! I appreciate the opportunity to share.
Amazing year! Glad to be able to contribute as a customer and active member in your social groups! Looking forward to everything 2024 brings you.
Thank you, Gage!