Hey everyone, we wanted to share some important updates about how the recent tariff changes are affecting our board game business.
Tariffs on goods imported from China are currently a staggering 145%. While this is often presented as a penalty on China, the reality is that American businesses like ours are the ones that are actually paying the tariffs. When our games arrive from China, we’re hit with these tariffs, more than doubling our manufacturing costs overnight. There was no warning, no time to adjust our budgets—just a sudden, massive expense.
To navigate this extremely challenging business environment, we are taking the following steps:
- Price Increases. While we will keep them as small as possible, we will need to increase prices on our games to cover some of these new costs. This means now (before prices go up) is a great time to buy any games you have had your eyes on.
- Pausing production on most of our games. Given how devastating these tariffs will be on businesses and consumers alike, we don’t expect them to last. So we will wait in hopes that prices will come back down.
- Continue to get games ready to print. We will continue game design, art, graphic design, and the other pre-printing steps for games in our pipeline so that when the situation is resolved we will be ready to quickly get games to customers.
- No new physical crowdfunding campaigns. Until we have a production pipeline with reasonable costs, we won’t do any new crowdfunding campaigns for physical products.
- Look for low cost & low tariff printing options. We will continue to quote printing in the USA and in other countries around the world to try and find a low cost solution.
- Continue production on small card games. With small card games (like our upcoming Elemystic and Seeker Chronicles) printing prices are relatively low, while art, design, etc make up a higher percentage of costs. This means tariffs will affect a lower percentage of the game’s total cost, making it possible to bring them to market even in this environment.
- Focus on Apps. Unlike most small game companies, we have an awesome in-house digital team that cranks out award winning digital versions of our games. We will be focusing more on the digital side of our business. For example, we are switching our upcoming Star Realms Conquest Gamefound Campaign from physical product to a digital offering. This will include early access to Conquest, new legendary commanders, new promo packs, and even Digital Legend Accounts with unlimited credits for cosmetics and online tournament entries.
We are passionate about making these games we love. If you enjoy our games, you can help us by getting our digital apps, buying our games in your local game store or on Amazon, and backing our upcoming Gamefound Campaign for Star Realms Conquest in digital.
Thank you,
Rob Dougherty
CEO
Wise Wizard Games