Chad DeShon ran a million-dollar Kickstarter, added another half million in add-ons, and made basically nothing โ then turned that wreckage into one of the busiest publishers in board games. He's the founder of ๐ฒ ALLPLAY, formerly ๐ช BOARDGAMETABLES.COM, and he runs the whole thing out of a limestone mine.
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๐๏ธ IN THIS EPISODE:
๐ณ๏ธ The Allplay warehouse is inside a decommissioned limestone mine โ down the road from 750,000 square feet of federal documents
๐ช 2014: he emails a stranger about a furniture order and ends up selling board game tables with zero woodworking experience
๐ฆ THE DUCHESS lands at $499 against a $4,000 market and funds in minutes โ then 25 containers arrive damaged
๐ธ "Everybody had to get their table, or the whole business just went away"
๐ฒ He played QE, emailed the designer to ask if he could publish it, and accidentally became a publisher
๐ท๏ธ Every review started "this is QE by BoardGameTables.com" โ the naming problem that forced the ALLPLAY rebrand
๐งฒ His pitch advice for designers: whatever is unique about your game has to be in the first two sentences
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๐ LINKS
๐ฒ Allplay
โถ https://www.allplay.com/
โค๏ธ Support My Work โ Join Cardboard
โถ https://crdbrd.app/
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๐ง TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!
๐ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165
๐ข Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4
๐ต Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364
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โฑ๏ธ CHAPTERS
00:00 - Cold open
00:57 - Who is Chad DeShon?
01:04 - His office is inside a limestone mine
03:42 - The founder story starts with a furniture order
07:40 - The first table sells the day after the website goes live
09:59 - The Duchess: gamers touch the table and walk away
12:18 - Cold-emailing furniture factories in China
13:18 - $499 against a $4,000 market โ funded in minutes
18:00 - 25 containers of tables arrive damaged
20:20 - A $1M campaign that made basically no money
24:37 - Redesigning the table around the UPS weight limit
27:24 - Dropping table parts in his basement to test the boxes
32:11 - What he learned watching Geek Chic go under
36:19 - Moving production out of China
42:37 - Why BoardGameTables.com became Allplay
46:38 - On Tour, then QE โ how he became a publisher
50:27 - Rescuing Container and Through the Desert
56:01 - The nine-game Kickstarter, and what went wrong
1:00:14 - About 20 games a year, and why that number stops here
1:05:21 - Things in Rings, and still waiting on their Wingspan
1:12:27 - COVID, containers, and forecasting the impossible
1:18:59 - Why QE was never re-themed with animals
1:23:51 - Enchanted Ivy, their first solo game
1:30:58 - The convention booth as a marketing machine
1:34:59 - Jibber Jabble at Gen Con
1:42:04 - Mountain Goats Legacy and Sail Legacy
1:48:20 - Rapid fire: one table, one game forever
#cardboard #bgss #allplay
#cardboard #bgss #dicethrone #wroth
