How Solopreneurs Thrive in Board Games: Adam Rehberg’s Experience

EP081_11-07-24_Adam Rehberg

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Hi, welcome to another episode, of Toy Business Unboxed. Today’s we’re thrilled to join by Adam the visionary behind Adam’s Apple Games. Adam’s journey from the hobbyist to a game designer and publisher had led him to create some of the most unique board game in the market today. With a philosophy that [00:01:00] found equal immersion plus tension and interactions. Adam’s game pushed the boundary of traditional plays. So innovative components and engaging theme. In today’s interview will dive into the life of being a entrepreneur and the challenge of crowdfunding and also the creativity that is really needed to create a game that can stand out in the competitive world of the board game industry today. Thank you so much for joining us on the interview adam.

Adam Rehberg: Thank you for having me, Jason. Excited to be here.

Jason Hsieh: Can you first tell the audience a little bit about your background and your story on why do you even started your own board game companies?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. After college I got the entrepreneurial bug a little bit and started working on digital app development. I’ve always loved games, always been a gamer. But spent I don’t know, a year or two or so, learning how to code, trying to publish an iOS game got a couple of dev kit stuff, dev builds on friends accounts, it was a lot of work to iterate and because I was starting out in so many different fields at once, like it was learning, [00:02:00] art, learning, animation, learning, music, learning game design as well, learning coding, and that was just a huge hill to climb. And so I started taking these app ideas and putting them on the tabletop because I could iterate so fast on the gameplay. And then I knew I, I could probably build it faster as an app later, but I found that I was just so enthralled with the like the social interaction and the physicality of the product and, the game and that play that it creates that I just never went back from all that tabletop stuff and I just I went full force into that.

Jason Hsieh: I see. I see. I also want to uncover like the first board game that you created. I think you also have a copy of it.

Adam Rehberg: I do. Yeah. So this is eight or nine years ago. It’s a game called Bruin, USA. That’s a cool beer bottles, like fancy packaging going on here. But this game was inspired by my friends and family at the time were getting into the craft beer scene. This was like 2015 when it was booming in the U.S and I knew that type of a theme would attract people that I was already [00:03:00] around to try it out. Initially I submitted the game idea into a competition. We ended up getting selected as a finalist, went to Gen Con in person pitched to industry veterans and didn’t win the competition. But we placed like second, or I placed second, and that gave me the validation that like, I need to make this thing possible and, that is like why I chased Bruin USA as the first product that I was gonna release and create.

Jason Hsieh: For the competition. Can you tell the audience a little bit more on what do they actually, what does the judge look for? What does that process look like

Adam Rehberg: to enter? It was just like submitting your pitch, so it was a very, gimme a couple wide pieces of sketches. Like a couple and it was just like, Hey, risk meets craft beer and people said that we wanna hear more. So then, when we got about a month or two to craft the thing into a real product. They hooked us up with , local print on demand service that printed it and sent it to the facilities. And we all showed up and pitched now to these industry veterans. And I think I was so young and green at the time that I didn’t really [00:04:00] know what people were expecting or wanting, but what I think I just tried to show people was that I was an enthusiast and a hobbyist and a fan of craft beer. I tried to pour passion into the craft beer nature of the game, the theme of the game. And also was clever in that was starting to sprinkle in specific components that would remind people of craft beer. We’re not playing with wooden cubes or wooden bits here.

I literally brought bottle caps that were your own player color and that then also served as your money. And I think too, just a little bit of the industry veterans were like, we think that this game is gonna be a lot of fun and we don’t think it’s balanced. And I was like, okay, that’s fair. And I think some of the things they would talk about would be like the recipe on this beer is not right. I’m like but like, how do you know oh, I grew my beer, right? Like I actually did a really scientific approach to saying, IPAs are gonna have more hops, right? And maybe a pilsner is gonna have a higher quality water. And so there was a lot of, in my mind, a lot of beer science that was abstracted, but poured into crafting the [00:05:00] recipes. And then from there, what was interesting was the industry veterans gave me ideas and advice and seeds and planted the seed in my mind that when this thing was gonna be made, I was actually going to go and reach out to real craft beer industry and bring them into the game.

And so we ended up doing that. I ended up getting like over 80 different craft breweries licensed and have their logos and their trademark flagship here in the game. It’s a huge pro, huge project. I don’t know if I ever wanna do that much licensing again, but it was really fun and high effort starting point.

Jason Hsieh: How long does that project, it sounds like a very time consuming project. How long does that took you?

Adam Rehberg: From idea to like final delivery? It was like less than two years, I would say. But there was like a lot of learning processes along the way, so it was like the whole new game designers learning process every time you play testing one a little more, a little bit more, a little bit more, when I think more of a veteran starts to take away. You can go at it in multiple different ways. So by the end of the game, by the end of the product. The game had evolved into this more hobbyist product [00:06:00] versus it’s, and it started at more of a mass market friendly product. But yeah, just involving all the craft beer industry, I think that took just scrappiness like hard work and over 500 emails and over 80 contracts signed. Yeah.

Jason Hsieh: And you did all that by yourself?

Adam Rehberg: I did, yeah, I did.

Jason Hsieh: That’s pretty crazy. That’s actually one more thing I want to uncover, because is there a, I guess in your entrepreneur journey, is there a reason why you didn’t start hiring more people to help you out with the project?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. I was really really just in a state of life where I wanted to do things part-time. I had had a, at an school, I had an engineering job, and I was still paying the bills with my engineering job, and I, was like let’s have fun on this hobby creating a business was a hobby to me, but now it’s a full-time thing and I’ve always been very serious about it, but I really wanted to find a level of success where I could do a crossover step into the solopreneur, into the or into the business versus taking a big leap of faith, putting risk on the family, putting risk on my social network and stuff like that. I really just wanted to have an easy transition and I eventually got there, [00:07:00] but it took seven years.

Jason Hsieh: I see. And do you now do this full-time now?

Adam Rehberg: I do, yeah. I’ve been almost three years now, full-time. I still have a really awesome support network helping me and, like giving me support along the way. But I think the business will definitely continue. Things are taking off right now, so it’s really nice.

Jason Hsieh: What is your plan for 2025? Are you launching more board games and how many total board game do you have on currently?

Adam Rehberg: So right now in the brand we have about a little 10 to 11 different games with a couple different like expansions and then a lot of different add-on type things like if you make a product, you can potentially, there’s something else that someone might want about that product, but maybe it doesn’t deserve to be in the core offering. I think like over time I’ve really kept focusing on quality over quantity. And I do expect going forward to really just focus on quality. I’m okay at a one, one to two products per year focus ’cause I can really spend a lot of effort developing them into something special.

Jason Hsieh: I see. And for our listener, which a lot of them are also like board game designer or someone that’s getting started in the industry.

How are you currently [00:08:00] structuring your workload? Are you doing all this or do you have freelancer that you partner with or How do you structure the workload?

Adam Rehberg: That’s a great question. I definitely have taken a strategy from the start of surrounding myself with talented people. And so every game, every other game essentially is like an atom design, like an independent, like a, solo design or I reach out to another designer and I publish someone else’s work, and so there’s a nice trade off in terms of do things that I wanna bring to life, but also find something special that someone else is working on and bring that to life as well. What that does is that kind of puts me in different states of the project and process. And so for example, when I’m finishing the Adam design and like sending it to production, I can start thinking about like the development work on someone else’s project that they’ve already done so much design work and I can spend more effort and time into the art direction and all that. I think it just puts me in a different like a different part of the stair, the ladder.

Jason Hsieh: How big is your team right now, by the way?

Adam Rehberg: It’s me and then someone who works for me part-time [00:09:00] for about 20 hours a week. I think you wear all the hats when you choose to run a business like that.

Jason Hsieh: For sure. That’s definitely a lot of different things to cover and balance. And I want to switch some of the focus to talk about the marketing aspect Of the board game because you have created so many different board games.

Can you walk us through your current process when you are getting ready for the co-funding campaign?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. The world of crowdfunding has changed over time. It used to be like, you need a box cover and you like a rule book kind of thing, and like it could fly, but now you really need like a quite polished product and potentially multiple product offerings and potentially like a limited edition, standard edition approach. And there’s a lot more that goes into it these days. But I think when I think about the marketing, I think about first the story that I’m telling about the project, and the product. And I’m saying like who is the audience that would actually want this? And what makes this resonate with them? And so for example, right now, one project that we’re working on is go, like going live on crowdfunding soon is called Tatsumi. And in this one, there’s like a kinda an abstract [00:10:00] strategy game, but it’s with dragons and so tatsu means dragon in Japanese and Umi means sea. And so you are these dragons flying around the sea. And so I think what that does different and, like the story that I’m able to tell a little bit is about who am I as a dragon? You actually play as a dragon of the game. And I now, like I’m an avatar and I get to navigate and collect the resources, all the things. But a lot of those kind of abstracty games are like very abstract, where I feel like putting you as an avatar on the board is like doing something different, interesting. So then you latch onto what’s that specific part of the story you tell? And I make sure that’s crafted in the message along the entire route. Additionally, you teach people how to play the game in some of the marketing messaging that you’re doing. And then lastly, I think the, just like the, strategy that that goes behind crowdfunding essentially is for me, like a two month or three month marketing phase. Sometimes that means, really big exposure at a convention. A big convention get people interested, but also paid advertising just to get in front of people, influencers, like there’s a [00:11:00] multi-pronged approach. Fancy trailer videos, all that kind of stuff.

Jason Hsieh: How much marketing budget will you suggest people that’s new to this, to set aside for?

Adam Rehberg: It’s, really different. My marketing budget, looking back at kind of what I’ve come from as a company was just scrapings. It was like hundreds of dollars per project. It was so small and I think if you really wanna be serious though and especially if you have a big project, like lots of components, high price point you’re going to need I would say roughly like a $10,000 marketing budget at minimum to get off the ground. And that’s probably not including things like artwork, graphic design, video creation, all that. But it varies and I think every project’s different. I would say the bigger the project, probably the bigger the budget you need and the smaller the project, probably the smaller the budget you need. And the interesting thing about crowdfunding is the audience has their specific taste, right? Games that are lighter may not do as well, but it might, doesn’t mean it’s a bad game.

Jason Hsieh: Actually that lead to a good question I have, because when I was interviewing other board game designer or entrepreneur, like yourself, sometime they don’t launch everything [00:12:00] on Kickstarter. They’re also being selective on which one, they want to launch. For you, what is your criteria to decide which one to go the Kickstarter round? Which one don’t?

Adam Rehberg: One of my core business principles is like core product strategies, right? Is make sure there’s a unique component that delivers interest in gameplay. If that unique component is like visually attractive and visually appealing, then I think it’s puts it in the right like mode. And then I think it has to have a certain, like minimum threshold of game weight. Not necessarily game price, but like game weight. Some of this kind of boils back to some of the mistakes we’ve made. When crowdfunding a project that was probably too light for the market. Doing things like, oh we’re building this game for the mass market and then we’re putting it into crowdfunding, versus we’re building this game for the hobbyist and then putting it into crowdfunding. And I think like we just learned our lessons to try to match the game weight and, player base that is already there.

Jason Hsieh: So would you say your current focus is more on the hobbyist market?

Adam Rehberg: It is, but I think oftentimes our games are so simple to teach and to play, and that’s what gets under the table. But [00:13:00] we bake enough, like hobbyist, we bake, put enough levers in the game that the hobbyist can really enjoy things too.

Jason Hsieh: When you mentioned about the hobbyist you mentioned about for example the craft beer game that you mentioned earlier. Those are the type of product that you’re looking to for someone that’s very passionate about certain kind of theme?

Adam Rehberg: I think so. I think that’s a really good, that’s probably one circle of the Venn diagram. The other circle of the Venn diagram is just like people that play a lot of games, I would say. And it doesn’t really matter what they play, but they’ve seen it all now and they

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Like the hardcore, a hardcore board gamer.

Adam Rehberg: Yeah, a little bit. But they’re and they want to be, they wanna be surprised, they wanna learn new things. I think humans have this human nature of wanting to learn new things. And then the other part of, I think that Venn diagram that, that we really look for is just products that, like games and products that need to exist that sort of don’t exist yet and finding and developing something that’s gonna really fit into that. And so I think that can apply to cater to the hobbyists. It could be catered to anyone, but I think like we’re looking at places in the hobby [00:14:00] that have just empty spots.

Jason Hsieh: I see. Yeah, I also been to some local meetup where you can go and just play board game with strangers. Yeah.

Adam Rehberg: Used to run those. Yeah. That’s the crowd that mostly will fund you on Kickstarter, I would say too, if you’re just getting started out, you’re gonna look, rely on your friends and family to help get you off the ground and get help get your idea off the ground and your ideas, the thing you make should take that into a consideration. But like your second project and your third project, your friends and family will take start to taper off a little bit. So you may not see your Aunt Sally show up to your second crowdfunding event, just because she wanted to see a succeed.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. What are some of the biggest challenge in creating game that blend in like new mechanism and with different theme? Any particular story that you can share that you’d like to share?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. I have a game right here. That was an interesting challenge. So this game’s called Sword Crafters. And you literally build a three dimensional sword as you play. And you literally do you literally build a three dimensional ga [00:15:00] sword as you play. And I think one of the biggest challenges on that one was people didn’t trust that the thing you built was going to be sturdy and stable. And so like they, you run into these interesting, like consumer objections that you just wouldn’t necessarily predict because you have now seen it, you have now experienced it, and that objection is gone. So you need to be open minded in what objections people are gonna have and then craft marketing and craft your story in a way that solves those consumer objections and, that may never get solved. For example, a Sword Crafters is our least successful crowdfunding project. And I would probably attribute that to those com, those objections of yeah, this will never work. You’re, building a three dimensional sword and by the time you’re done, you’re all holding swords and it has sold a lot of copies, but it was probably something that you needed to see and believe to make that purchase decision.

Jason Hsieh: How does that 3D store actually work?

Adam Rehberg: Let me unpack a couple components for you. But

Jason Hsieh: do they stack on top of each other?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah, it is. So for example, every player has starts [00:16:00] with a hilt. Okay. Like this?

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

Adam Rehberg: Okay. And then essentially you would’ve a couple more components that go in, but essentially what you’re doing is you’re slotting in a dual slotted component. Okay. Like this, and then like this, okay. And then you would do it again. But now it’s it changes direction. It’s really quite stable. And but I had to go into a lot of the engineering of the thickness of the cardboard, the coating of the cardboard. So this would all hold up. And so then what you care about is because you have this three dimensional puzzle, you’re looking for like your sword quality. How many purple gems did you get on one side, how many red gems did you get on one side? And then there’s also a gem economy as you play. So if I am the one that gets all the red, like maybe we’re going for red this game, or it changes the changes how you would play as well.

Jason Hsieh: I see. And one thing I know was very curious is as a game designer, how do you come up with the right balance with the rule and like who wins? How do you like come up with a point system?

Adam Rehberg: That is play testing For sure. A lot of times I like some of the [00:17:00] initial tests are really funny because you’ll, be doing something and you know it’s fun, you know it’s gonna be cool. And people are gonna like it, but you’re like, eh, we don’t know what it’s gonna score yet. So just assume that this was worth points or tell me what you thought this would, should have been worth. And I think too, one of the things in my process that I see a lot of other creators, the good ones te tend to do this is they have big wide swings from like idea to idea and then they start to really narrow down over time. And then like you start to like hone in and focus in on what’s the best thing here, versus making tiny little incremental changes over the course of the project. And then you realize that like maybe an awesome idea existed that was really far away, and now you had to go do all that again.

So I think like just big wide swings gets you to find what’s fun here? What’s the vision of the product? What does the game want to be? Not every game is gonna be everything to everyone. And so you need to play into what are the strengths here?

Jason Hsieh: I see, And go back to the business aspect of the things here. And of course a lot of people will start with the Kickstarters, the crowd founding, but the [00:18:00] after you finish founding it, a lot of the people will start considering is how do you actually do ongoing marketing? For example, Amazon is like one of the biggest like people platform that people always talk about. What was your experience as far as digital marketing goes post crowd funding?

Adam Rehberg: It’s tough. I’m the kind of person that really loves the front end development and I also like the manufacturing part of it because I feel like there like the devil’s in the details and those kind of things if you’re really gonna focus on the quality to make a good thing but then you have to do it again, especially when you like have gone through crowdfunding and now you’re over in launching a product. You need to like, get excited to launch this thing to the world and, realize that people seeing this are completely fresh eyed. Yeah. And you need to tell the story all over again. And I think to me, my experience has been hit and miss. I’ve tried a direct to retail approach a couple times. I’ve tried the re-release on the crowdfunding a couple times. And I think just the thing that I found maybe the most important as a small business that it first caters to hobbyists is to first off, [00:19:00] find your like evangelists and make, find them early during that crowdfunding event. Then when the game comes out in retail, they can help shout the praises of the game. And like that helps create that initial demand. But I think the second takeaway message that I’ve learned is if you just launched the same thing through the entire world that you launched on the crowdfunding project, the world controls the demand at that point. So you very quickly lose the controls from your side because now you’re you’re working with retailers, you working with distributors hopefully right? It may take a little bit to get there, but there’s a lot of other parties in the mix and so what I can do as a creator is carve off a couple of those really special ideas that we had and keep them exclusive to our own company.

And so what that does is it still offers a really strong product at retail, but as a company we can retain some of that like conversation, some of the traffic, some of the digital sales because we offer something different than somebody else’s, right? And I think at the end of the [00:20:00] day, a lot of these products can compete on price and that is not a fund competition. Yeah. And so having something that’s a little bit more exclusive and unique that allows you to not have to just go straight to price.

Jason Hsieh: For sure. And how’s your experience working with Amazon so far?

Adam Rehberg: We had a great start on Amazon. I was a very strong platform back in 20 15, and I focused on it myself. I handed it off in 2017 maybe to a consolidator that had taken us in and helped get us exposure to the hobby distribution industry and the hobby board game industry. And while that decision was good for the long term success of the kind of our, success in distribution. We have taken a back step on Amazon. So I think we’re in a position where if I could call myself, I would probably love to take it on again. But I realistically, I really need to focus on what is right for the business just to create that like sustainable product sales channel on Amazon, because I do know it’s important. It’s just like a high searchability, highly search place. Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of like time and energy spent on, and every year I reopen [00:21:00] the case and I’m like what am I gonna do with Amazon? And for now it is just like a status quo, but I think this is like the next step that the business needs to take is to really start excelling on some of these digital platforms that are,

Jason Hsieh: yeah, I think for successful Amazon, if you wanna take it back, you really need at least five specialists on your side that can handle it. One is that can do the inventory management for Amazon purposes to make sure you never run outta stock shipping in your inventory. Also you need a catalog troubleshooting specialist, because Amazon catalog always break. It does impression, it is broken, pretty many. Update, title doesn’t get update. All kind of weird stuff always happen. Then the third person I will also recommend is to have a creative designer on your side. That can update images, but just not just one app, but ongoingly. You need to create different images and do AB testing on the Amazon platform to see keyword images will actually convert better. Secondary images is gonna convert better, [00:22:00] which a plus content is gonna convert better and you need to swap it out and constant testing on an ongoing basis. Then the fourth person you want is a search engine optimization specialist that know how to do search engine, know how to find the keywords. Where you put the keyword across the entire page because at the end of the day, Amazon’s really a search engine if and if you’re not being indexed or ranked it’s really hard for people to find you. And last but not least, the final person you need is a advertising specialist that know how to run the ads on Amazon, because Amazon’s ad platform just keep on getting more and more complex and more and more advanced over the years. So based on our experience launching a lot of the product over the years on Amazon, those are the five very unique skillset that you want to have on your side.

Adam Rehberg: I think that resonates with me. I think that’s why I’ll let every time there’s just so many little mountains to climb on the road to success on Amazon. And they keep like changing where they exist. So you might be on the way to the [00:23:00] peak on one and then the next day you’re like, oh, this the mountain moved. So that it resonates with a lot of those whole, especially like the cleaning up the product catalog and all that. It’s just basic layer stuff that needs to be in place that then you can start spending money on marketing.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, the foundation is really important. But, it’s also a lot of time to take it back too because of the situation you have set up as a consolidator and actually I have never worked as a consolidator myself. So I didn’t really fully understand exactly how that business arrangement worked. Mind sharing a little bit?

Adam Rehberg: Let me explain. So the, I am a solopreneur mainly and you could imagine so, maybe starting from like the industry, like the small amount of projects. So these small retailers are might have three copies of each product in their store, right? And they may order like three at a time. It’s pretty tough to call Adam and be like, Hey, we need three more copies of Sword Crafters. And so they’re, now calling someone in the middle who is saying, okay, we you want three sword crafters? You want [00:24:00] three of this, three of that? And they can make a big basket and send it to the retailer. And so even us small retailers, small publishers calling a distributor and saying Hey, we have new production coming your way. Take a look at us. There’s so many games coming out these days. That there’s even one step in between the big distributor and the small publisher. And that is called the consolidator. And the consolidator takes a lot of hopefully talented small publishers and groups them up. So now they have a little more power and they can call that distributor and be like, Hey our clients are doing this and we can have a big conversation each month because their clients are very active, right? And they might have 10 or 20 releases a month. And now that’s someone that the distributor wants to talk to. It’s almost like a big business.

Jason Hsieh: Do they focus in mostly on retail channel or

Adam Rehberg: they focus on three different tiers. In every consolidator has its own specialty, right? So the first tier is the the Hobby Tier, so the Mom and Pops board game store, the second tier is called Specialty, [00:25:00] and that is your smaller retail stores, like your books million, your Barnes and Noble that kind of stuff book. And then you have the mass market, and so these consolidators will often have a person who is their job to identify the best products coming outta their clients and then pitch those to the Walmarts and the Targets of the world. And we actually I actually have been fortunate enough to get one product placed in Target for a hot moment. And as a result of being in this consolidator relationship, and I don’t think I would’ve had that, had I not.

Jason Hsieh: I see, and do they buy the product from you or is it on consignment? How does that financial arrangement usually?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. The financial arrange arrangement is probably a little bit different everywhere. But I think the general basis is like, it’s like you pay for storage at their warehouse it’s kinda like a they sometimes offer you fulfillment services as well, so you can send games out as needed for your direct to customer fulfillment. But then, if something sells to distribution or into specialty or into mass, they just take it from the inventory sitting in their warehouse. And then [00:26:00] that’s when they pay for those games based on the payment that was given to them. So it is a middleman approach. But it comes with some benefits and it definitely comes with some drawbacks as well. I

Jason Hsieh: see. I see. But so it sounds like it’s mostly on the traditional brick and mortar channel, but do they also represent your brand on Amazon as well?

Adam Rehberg: They can, yeah. It just depends, but I would say on Amazon, you probably are one of a hundred. Clients that are trying to that you’re having someone manage. And so if they are really well set up to manage Amazon, it can be effective. But if you are, if you’re working with another third party that or if you have it yourself like you are one-on-one, right? It’s a little more focused on your business. Someone is more attentive to your business and I think that’s maybe part of you know what I’ve the struggles that I face on Amazon. Yeah.

Jason Hsieh: Like their main focus is mostly brick and mortar. They might be just showing your product on Amazon without almost no optimization whatsoever because their main teamwork, their core competencies not designed to do that.[00:27:00]

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. It’s really not designed to do that. Yeah, I think these consolidators are trying to probably it’s an opportunity area, right? If you were to talk to them, they probably would say the same thing. Just like I say, my Amazon business is not at its best game. They would probably say the same thing and say, that is not our strongest suit right now.

Jason Hsieh: I see. I see. And the other thing I want to ask you, because in my experience in the toy industry at least, there’s a lot of sales rep group that they can represent your brand and they negotiate and sell it to the specialty store in mom and pop store. And they charge you a commission. Have you tried that versus a consolidator that you mentioned?

Adam Rehberg: I have not. I have worked with a couple different, like third party agencies a little bit from a marketing standpoint. I’ve had good success not with sales agents but with localization agents. And so when I have a game idea that is printed in English, it potentially would have some popularity in other parts of the world in a different language. And so those are the recent unlocks for the past two, three years that have come across my door. And I, it was like they’re tough conversations. [00:28:00] ’cause you’re like, is this the right fit for the company? I’m not quite sure. And then you sometimes you just have to take a chance and reevaluate and we’ve partnered with a localization agent within the past three years, and it’s been fruitful. We’ve had probably, I don’t know, just a lot more printing coming through our control. And what’s nice about that is we can offset our costs of product because now our print runs are a little bit bigger ’cause we’re combining the English edition with maybe the Spanish edition for example.

Jason Hsieh: What are some of the main languages that you are also publishing right now?

Adam Rehberg: We have all over the board, but our biggest game plan on unknown right now is 14 or 15 different languages. It has localizations in yeah. And a couple of them have been reprinted. That one has been really fruitful. And then all the other games, there’s always one or two or three that are interested. But they’re a little it, I think you, the big crowdfunding project if you have a whopper of a crowdfunding project, that means that there’s demand for your product. And so that’s when the localization companies open up their minds and say, Hey, see real sales data here.[00:29:00]

Jason Hsieh: Do they charge you per each of the languages or do they charge you for the time for the project or how?

Adam Rehberg: It is mostly a commission base. So it’s whenever, like whenever we print. Because particularly because my, you can do a couple different ways, you can say the localization publisher in Spain. You guys here are the art files. You do the printing and just pay us based on it. Like each unit that you print.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, like a royalty almost.

Adam Rehberg: Yeah, like a royalty. And then the other way that happens is my components are really unique, so I’m producing ’em in the factory that works with Adams apple games. And then my production runs are bigger, my costs go down a little bit. I then charge the publisher in Spain, for example, to pick the games up from the production facility. And so there’s a different number there as well. And I think it’s the difference mainly is I’m doing a lot more of the, like the management, like the micromanagement of the actual production and relationship and getting the thing made correctly. And that does probably take a lot of work off the kind of the localization publisher. And so we’ll charge a little bit more when we do it in-house just because you [00:30:00] know a lot more responsibility comes on my shoulders, and if something goes wrong, I generally am responsible to fix it.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that aspect of the business. As well, winding down in today’s interview, thank you so much for sharing all your tips and stories For what you have accomplished so far.

If you had to share just one piece of advice with someone that’s getting started in the toys, and the game industry what would that be?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah, so the one I shared earlier was interesting, right? Like the make big swings on your product designs. But I would say this one is maybe most important, most true for pretty much anyone getting into the industry or into the hobby or creating stuff in general. Like when you share with someone, so 2 nuggets. The first one is your first design is your pitch. Your first prototype is your pitch. So you really need to like, continue to iterate on your pitch even before you build the, like the product, like the prototype or like the, put it on the table, get that pitch so that someone wants to play or someone wants to check it out and you’ve done your homework. Number [00:31:00] one. Number two is, as you go on your product design or creation journey, remember to take note of who is, like checking it out and just ask the simple question like, would you like me to let you know when this is a real thing? If you’re not doing that, you’re just like leaving your fans, these people are invested in like the product, right? They’re giving you feedback, they’re giving you your time, and if you’re not like capturing if you’re not letting them know, you’re just like doing them a disservice to be honest. Yeah they can make a purchase decision later for themselves, but a lot of times they’re excited to see, oh, what I wonder what’s in it. I remember testing this really early and it’s amazing how many people come to me with product ideas that have zero, literally zero people that would be excited to hear about their thing right now. And I’m just like, what have you been doing? Why are you not asking that question? You were just like not doing your job.

Jason Hsieh: It’s all in their head.

Adam Rehberg: yeah everyone’s like it becomes a little bit of a business interaction. It’s like you give me email address, I give you [00:32:00] information later. Stuff like that. People feel weird about asking that question. I really do think that most people are just giving you feedback based on their kindness and their, offering their, kindness and their time. And they actually do, they’re invested in, the

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. They know too. Yeah.

Adam Rehberg: Yeah. And I’ve had people say this play test is not for me. I’m gonna head out. And that person, I probably wouldn’t ask that for that information. But the people that are just giving me words and words and feedback and so much of that, it’s like, Hey, can I let you know when this is ready? And how would I do that?

Jason Hsieh: You, if you phrase it like correctly, there’s nothing strange about it.

Adam Rehberg: It’s not, a strange thing. And if they say no, then say, Hey. Alright, that’s right. Thanks for your time. And so I think if you don’t ask the question you don’t know.

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that’s a really good tips. So where can people find you online?

Adam Rehberg: Yeah we’re on the internet adamsapplegames.com. All of our handles are set up like that, like at Adams Apple Games on Twitter. And our crowdfunding projects are running through Kickstarter and Game Found. And we’re also all our products are on Amazon in it, and a lot of Hobby game stores as well. So if you see something with a [00:33:00] Adams Apple Games, check it out. Try to find unique components and give it a shot.

Jason Hsieh: Okay, sounds good.

And for our audience, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Toy Business Unbox podcast. We really hope you have enjoyed the conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss a episode. We really appreciate your support and we love it you leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleague.

For more resource tips and the latest update in the toys and game industry, visit our website at toy-launch.com. Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using hashtag #ToyBusinessUnboxed. We’ll really love to hear your feedback and suggestion for future episode. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, and keep bringing Joy to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unbox podcast and we’ll see you in the next episode.