My Year in Manufacturing & Games

The Quimbley's Toys and Games Team

2024 was wild, fun, and stressful. A year full of change.

The biggest change came when I decided to take an opportunity with a friend's start-up called Quimbley's Toys & Games. I had recently brought on a partner (Zach Cipriano) for Super Heumann Creative and thought this was the perfect time for risk.

I believe in risk, and even when things don't work out, the risk is almost always worth taking, even when you fall flat on your face.

Quimbley's was the brain child of a good friend of mine. He had taken over the flailing game company Petersen Games, producers of the famous board game Cthulhu Wars. After a long list of successful Kickstarter games, Petersen had run into logistical problems and had failed to produce their last five fully funded games. The plan was to produce those games and use them as a means of catapulting Quimbley's to the top of the charts. The team being assembled was an impressive mix of famous game designers, toy manufacturers, and logistical specialists. I would split my time writing books, marketing, and being a driving creative force, while helping all of us achieve success in the endeavor.

It was a good plan.

The execution?

Let's just say we all learned a lot.

One of the primary focuses of Quimbley's was going to be the building of a manufacturing plant here in Utah that would allow games and toys to be produced in the United States as opposed to China. This is the goal (at least stated goal) of so many politicians and business leaders across the country.

We were going to put our money where our mouth was and produce right here at home.

We got a warehouse, bought machines and printers, and started iterating product.

For those of you who have never worked in manufacturing, the iteration process can take a long time. You design a product, test it, create prototypes, and see what works. The entire operation is fascinating and eye-opening. For example, creating a product or game from scratch involves a ton of different designers all with their own expertise. Ever designed a box for a product before? That's what I'm talking about. That expertise is worth it's weight in gold. When you have someone with years of experience firing on all cylinders on a project they understand inside and out, it's magic.

Building that aspect of manufacturing from scratch? That's hard.

Another aspect of manufacturing that gets forgotten in all the political rhetoric is the fact that simply bringing factories back to the USA won't necessarily lower prices; a fact we learned pretty fast. The reason things are cheaper to manufacture in China is A, the level of expertise and efficiency they have in the industry is very high, and B, the fact that they pay their workers significantly less than we do in the US. Simply put, you have to pay people in the United States more money to work in a factory than they do in China. Will this always be the case? Who knows, but it's the reality right now...and has been the reality for decades.

We found that producing a board game here in the states would cost us almost double what it would in China, meaning we would have to charge double in order to pay for everything. For a board game to be financially viable it requires a 5X return on production. If a game costs $10 to manufacture, you need to sell it for $50 to make your money back on designing and creating the game, let alone have some profit left over to help produce your next game.

Even with the machines we had bought, we still couldn't compete with Chinese prices. We tried different products and fun RPG battle mats, but we always came back to the same conclusion. We were able to produce some things pretty well, like wooden accessories and such, but not at the scale that would make them viable mass market products.

The wooden game Cluthulhu

So it became clear we were facing some headwinds on the manufacturing front.

What about the gaming front, you ask?

Honestly we had no idea how angry the Petersen Games audience was about having paid for games that never arrived. Even when we announced we would be fulfilling those games for every one of the backers, frustration and resentment still manifested constantly. No matter what progress was shown on the prototyping and manufacturing of the games, an uninterrupted stream of rage would fly back in our faces.

Gamers can be a pissy bunch, let me tell you. It may have been a relatively small number in comparison to the massive audience Petersen Games had accrued, but it was enough to inundate us at times.

And then we started looking more closely at what had been promised to the backers and how much it would cost to fulfill in the real world. The prices they had paid on the Kickstarter would barely cover production on one of the more complicated games, let alone shipping costs and having any profits left over. There were so many plastic miniatures in the game that tooling alone was a crushing financial burden that would cripple the merchandise line commercially before anything else was even produced.

What we thought would catapult us into the stratosphere turned out to be digging our grave.

The designing of games, writing of character lore, and even the marketing were all a blast, but it became clear a scaled back version of Quimbley's would be necessary if it were to survive.

And so that's what we did. Some of us stepped away, allowing more resources to go toward what was absolutely necessary for success.

Luckily, Quimbley's survives to this day in it's truncated form, streamlining some of the more costly games and creating versions that are affordable for both the company and consumers. Yes, backers as still angry they aren't getting exactly what was promised, but for the most part they are starting to understand the realities of manufacturing and why sometimes things don't turn out the way everyone hoped.

That's one of the main takeaways of this experience for me. Manufacturing is a more complicated process than we give it credit as we complain about China and tariffs and everything else. It requires not only the machines to get it done, but the expertise and innovation that comes with creative minds fusing with math and engineering. Just because something looks easy, doesn't mean it is.

My experience with Quimbley's is one of the joys of my life. My creativity was stretched and twisted and strengthened. I learned more about board games and game theory than I ever thought existed, and learned from masters of the craft about how to balance player factions and create amazing experiences.

It was truly the best of times.

But life moves and shifts, and we have to move and shift right along with it. I'm happy to be back fully focused on Super Heumann Creative again and telling my own stories right alongside thought leaders and business owners needing to write and publish their books. I've loved it since the beginning, and now being able to focus on it 100% gives me a great deal of energy. Being split between two endeavors is never easy, and it's great to be able to focus once again.

So that was my year in manufacturing and games. I met and worked with incredible people, learned so much about art, manufacturing, and business, and made lifelong friends that continue to bring joy to my life.

Just because it didn't work out exactly the way we'd hoped doesn't mean it wasn't a success. Success is measured in a lot of different ways, and for me, Quimbley's hits too many of them to be considered anything less than a triumph of grit, determination, and the desire to bring good into people's lives.

The world is a better place because of Quimbley's Toys & Games, and I'm a better man because of my experience there.

May they continue to look 'outside the universe' and bring smiles to those who have forgotten how to play.