If you’ve walked through a Target store recently, you may have noticed they have a new endcap full of games that are brand new to Target. Some of them are completely brand-new games like Taco Bell Party Pack, some are new versions of an old game like Fireball Island: Race to Adventure. And then there’s Wingspan, which has been on the market for well over 2 years.
So, how did Wingspan end up there, and why now? Here’s a brief timeline of the process, presented by Stonemaier Games Director of Sales Alex Schmidt:
Fall 2019: At this point in time, GTG Operations was handling distribution brokerage for Stonemaier Games. Wingspan was selling well, and even as we produced bigger and bigger print runs, we couldn’t keep up with demand. Thanks in part to the publicity provided by NPR and the New York Times, birders and non-gamers were hearing about the game, as did Target. A pitch meeting was scheduled at Essen Spiel, one of the largest game conventions.
Essen Spiel, October 2019: Every year (before the pandemic), Target’s buyer would fly out to Essen to take a large number of pitch meetings, generally managed through their closest partners. Pitch meetings are essentially like interviews, but instead of interviewing a person, you’re interviewing games. You sit down together, talk about one or two games, show off components and art, and at most maybe play a few minutes of it to show how the game plays. The buyer repeats this process for dozens of games.
2019 was no different than any other year. Wingspan was pitched to Target for Q3 2020–yes, these meetings happen that far in advance. In October of 2019 you’re talking about having games on shelves in August of 2020. So, Wingspan was pitched. And then we waited.
Winter 2020: Target made their decisions for what they want on shelves for the fall… and Wingspan was not on the list. Why? It’s too expensive. A $60 game might seem like a very normal price to hobby gamers, but that’s not usually who’s buying games at Target. People buying games at Target are expecting games that are mostly $20-40. $60 is a big ask, and it was outside Target’s comfort price range.
Spring-Summer 2020: The pandemic hit. Retail game sales came to a screeching halt as the entire world held its breath, then went into overdrive as everyone settled in for the long haul of self-isolation and home entertainment. Catan and Ticket to Ride, perennial best selling games, both had their MSRP increased from $49 to $55. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion came out as a timed exclusive at Target with a price tag of $49.99. Wingspan–still at $60–continued to sell as quickly as we could print it (746,991 units printed by the end of 2020).
Fall 2020: September 1st was my first day at Stonemaier as we bought sales brokerage in house! As I’m brought in, one thing I had to quickly get up to speed on is those fall pitch meetings and how they work. Only, things were a bit different this year. Essen Spiel wasn’t happening. Everything was online. So, I pitched Wingspan to Target from my desk at home (in my–Alex’s–dining room, because my wife is also working from home and was in our second bedroom). I don’t know everything that was said the previous year, but Target was already familiar with the game. We talked about sales numbers and how Wingspan has reached audiences far beyond hobby gamers. The pitch ended, and the wait began.
Winter 2021: After several months, we heard back from Target, and they were on board! The price point still made them a little nervous, but they’d been seeing other games doing well at the $50-55 price point, which helped our case quite a bit.
Target was planning a special endcap (the end of any shelf at a big-box store, which is great for visibility) for June and they wanted Wingspan on it. Well, they wanted new-to-Target games on it. Shipping was (and is) a mess with lots of delays impacting everyone, but Flat River Group (our distributor for Target and a few other large stores) had an order of Wingspan en route that would arrive in time to be shipped to Target stores for the June endcap.
June 20, 2021: Wingspan finally is in stores at Target!
Here’s a summary of some tips to consider if you’re interested in getting a game into Target or another big-box retailer.
- Make a game that appeals to gamers and non-gamers alike.
- Prioritize distinctive, striking art, especially on the box. The box is really important to big-box retailers.
- Maintain a low price point. There’s nothing wrong with $120 games, but that’s well out of the range that Target will consider for their customers.
- Contact Target through an intermediary they already trust (like GTG Operations or Flat River Group, if you work with either of them).
- Be patient and try again. Target buyers aren’t looking for the new hotness. If a game seems like a good fit now, it may be an even better one next year.
- Negotiate terms that match your business philosophy. Stores like Target love exclusives (perpetual or timed), but it’s not the only approach–there’s nothing exclusive about Target carrying Wingspan.
- Rules aren’t necessary rules. The process for Wingspan won’t be the process for every other game.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this process, please let us know in the comments below!
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Also read:
- What Do Retailers Really Want?
- The Current State of Retailers and Kickstarter (2019)
- The Magic Formula for Publishing an Evergreen Tabletop Game
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content!
34 Comments on “Target Acquired: How a Hobby Game Appears in a Big Box Retailer”
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[…] After a lot of hard work and a significant amount of time, our Director of Sales (Alex) worked to get Red Rising–and then Wingspan–into Target. He was able to do so without any special versions of the games or […]
Another great article Jamey. I imagine you can’t comment specifically about Target. However, I am guessing that distributors who supply big box stores generally pay about 35% MSRP to a game publisher? They flip it a bit higher to the big box? I also heard that regular game distributors pay about 40% MSRP. Are these figures close? Thank you!
All distributors to whom we sell–regardless of which retailers they sell too–get a 60% discount (unless they pick up the games in China and cover freight shipping).
How did you negotiate returns? The sound of that truck backing up to your warehouse can be crushing…damaged boxes…returns from one regional warehouse with orders from another regional warehouse in an Amazon style method to avoid transfer shipping costs…who pays shipping?
Can you go over the pitfalls of such an arrangement?
As far as I know, it wasn’t any different than any other product we sell to a distributor (who then sells to a retailer like Target). We pay for freight shipping to the distributor, and they pay for shipping to Target. If any games arrived damaged, Target reports them to the distributor, and we reimburse the distributor (or sometimes they just eat the cost if it’s a very small quantity).
I saw Wingspan at Target on Monday night while looking for Fireball Island. I said to myself, Oh I haven’t gone to Target in a long time! It was on the bottom shelf though at a corner so I expect some carts to hit it.
What considerations did you have to make in regards to your pricing/promotional policies? For example, Target runs buy 2 Get 1 Free Games a couple times of year which would put Wingspan up to 33% off.
We don’t actually have any pricing or promotional policies–retailers are free to price our products as they wish.
Tiny note – Goliath’s game is ‘Fireball Island: Race To Adventure’, not ‘The Last Adventurer’ (which is an expansion for the Restoration Games version) https://www.target.com/p/goliath-fireball-island-race-to-adventure-board-game/-/A-82006504
Thanks, I’ll adjust it!
I’m curious, beside Wingspan is there any other SM game that is being considered by Target? I think Between Two Castles and Viticulture would be a great fits.
We’re at the very least always considering what games might make sense to pitch to Target! How well Wingspan does for them will likely have an impact on how interested they are for similar games from us. For that same reason, it’s important not to try to get them to buy games we don’t think will do well for them.
Viticulture is a good game and only a little bit heavier than Wingspan, but keep in mind it would be sitting in the middle of toys (kids) section. It’s a game explicitly about wine making so that’s pretty much a non-starter. A random parent doesn’t want to see that when they’re considering what game to bring home to their 14-year-old, 12-year-old, and 10-year-old. And that’s before getting to there needing to be a reason they would buy that instead of Catan or Ticket to Ride, when it’s $5 more expensive and they’ve probably never heard of it before. Wingspan makes that argument very well. Viticulture is a bit harder of a sell.
For Between Two Castles, I would personally lean towards pitching Between Two Cities instead. It’s cheaper and a little bit lighter of a game, with Between Two Castles being more of the “gamer’s game” version of it. The big question with either of those is: “Do we think it would sell well at Target to its mass market customers?”
Between Two Castles is much more visually attractive, though, Jamey, no offense. I think that the quasi-fantasy castle theme would also be more appealing to kids than building a standard city, since we’re talking about products in the Toy section.
Whoops, I just realised that I should have addressed this to Alex. Sorry about that!
Can someone post a pic of a Target Endcap, please. Would live to see Wingspan in situ.
Congrats to Stonemaeir and Elizabeth Hargreaves for the great success of this game.
I was hoping to post a photo on this post, and I know I saw one the other day, but I can’t find it now.
Was there ever any consideration of doing a cheaper Target version, maybe with less cards, or without the bird feeder perhaps? I’m not sure if that would be possible or desirable, but I’m curious if it was at all viable.
It’s possible that Target asked Alex about that at some point, but it is not something I would have considered. You would need to take a lot out of Wingspan to drop $20 off the price.
I will have to look for it when I am next in Target.
Funny thing about Target and games. When I worked at one in the 80s, they sold games including MB Gamemaster Series, Diplomacy, Rise and Decline of the 3rd Reich, Advanced Squad Leader plus the common ones and the new ones like Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. Not sure if they carried Scotland Yard or Empire Builder back then or not.
Of course back then they also had car parts, fishing equipment and paint.
That’s really interesting! I worked there one year in high school in the early 2000s and I don’t think we had any games outside of the standard Hasbro range at the time. Well, there were Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards with baseball cards near the registers, but that was it.
This was an excellent explanation of the process involved! I hope you don’t mind, but I provided a link to this blog in a KickStarter discussion, of another game included in that endcap. There’s some unhappiness because the retail edition is appearing in Target before the KS edition reaches people, and I think this blog provides some insight as to the lead times involved in the Big Box endcap process.
Great entry Jamie, thanks! We have a product line of miniatures with a core game offering with all the minis and 6 unique solo games also with miniatures. our price point is $45 for the core game and $13 for the solo mini games – we got striking art thats unlike anything in the industry right now and our box foot print is small – I feel we are checking off all the boxes you listed =) the one thing I don’t have is connections – the groups you mention that have established trust with Target buyers – how does a smaller indie publisher establish credibility with those groups? basically whats the best way to foster trust as to facilitate getting face time with higher ups in the industry? Thanks in advance!
Trust comes in a lot of different forms, but in this case it’s not so much a matter of trust as it is clientele. That is, if you want GTG Operations to make a connection to Target, hire GTG Operations as your distribution broker: https://stonemaiergames.com/a-review-and-recommendation-of-gtg-operations/
Did I miss something big? Or was it just a typo?
You said “….my wife…”! Did you guys get married?
I came to say the same thing! I caught that as well… Congratulations Jamey!!
No, I’m not married. This article was written by Alex, as noted here: “Here’s a brief timeline of the process, presented by Stonemaier Games Director of Sales Alex Schmidt:”
LOL totally did miss that… whoops! We were just so excited for you 😂
Hahaha! What you missed is that this blog post was written by me. I’ve been happily married for 11 years. :) Unless there was a secret visit to the courtroom over the weekend, Jamey and Megan didn’t suddenly get married.
I hope that this leads to more large retailers stocking board games in the same way they have more video games than they did ten years ago. Fingers crossed! And well done for wingspan.
What I got from this: the Ares Expedition deal was almost certainly worked out before the Kickstarter.
I realized that too (also, unlike another Kickstarter, at least we got a notice about TM Ares… I had a Kickstarter that just showed up in Target before it shipped with no communication at all… a topic frequently covered on this blog)
Super awesome insight. I had no idea what kind of process goes into placement of products in Target. Thanks for sharing!
I went to target a couple days ago and bought Trails and the Taco bell game. I then saw Wingspan on the endcap and got super excited! It’s awesome to see SM games becoming more and more common. I was happy to see SM games at Barnes and Noble so this is a great step in the right direction. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Justin! We’re excited to have our games visible and available to more and more people. :)