Steamforged’s Toby Davies on new additions in the tabletop category and amplifying its marketing efforts.
LicensingSource.net catches up with a selection of licensees across a number of categories to find out their expectations for summer trading, how sell-through is going in their respective sectors, concerns and what they are most looking forward to as Q3 approaches.
Today: Toby Davies, commercial director, Steamforged.
“While the tabletop industry experiences seasonal fluctuations, it tends to be less volatile compared to the toy industry, with performance often hinging on product launches that can generally be any time of the year. This summer we’re anticipating a good run with some exciting additions to our plug-and-play Epic Encounters role-playing product range, including some cracking partnership lines with other key role-playing publishers.
I’m still concerned about how many products are being launched each year, and how long this can continue, I think we’re up to about 5,000 p/a not including the more mass games. The abundance means retailers are adopting a wide, but shallow approach which is great for the consumer in terms of choice but harder for the publishers and distributors when it comes to sku bloat and stock risk.
We’ve made a strategic decision to reduce the number of launches this year and instead focus on amplifying our marketing efforts for existing products that are doing well in the market but could be doing a lot better with more attention vs it being sucked away moving from one launch to the next. I’m looking forward to seeing this strategy having paid off putting us in a really strong position for Q4 and beyond.”
This feature originally appeared in the summer 2024 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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