Greenville’s The Good Game Company delivers analog enjoyable in a digital world

Board recreation inventor and entrepreneur Dave Yearick needs the general public to know his business continues to be alive — and doing fairly effectively.

“People may not realize this, but the board-game industry is thriving,” mentioned Yearick, whose Greenville-based The Good Game Company markets a full line of traditional board games together with an outside pitch-and-catch recreation named Djubi.

It feels counterintuitive to counsel board video games are nonetheless in vogue in a world overwhelmed with digital choices. Yearick mentioned board video games signify a reprieve.

“Everyday life has become so digitized, but people still enjoy and respond to analog things — sand timers, dice, cards, checkers, pawns, etc.,” he mentioned. “And they enjoy connecting with one another in-person, not in a virtual gaming room.”

Yearick’s initiation into the business got here throughout his time attending Colgate University within the Nineties.

“Together with two of my buddies, we came up with a game named Tribond, which was a riff on Trivial Pursuit, whose inventor had also gone to Colgate,” he mentioned. “The object of the game is to guess what three random items have in common. For example, if you ask about a car, a tree and an elephant, they all have one thing in common: a trunk.”

Tribond bought greater than 3 million copies.

“Call it beginner’s luck,” Yearick mentioned, chuckling.

Eventually, the boys brokered a deal to promote the rights to Tribond. Yearick mentioned that firm just lately went bankrupt.

“So maybe now’s the time to go get the rights to Tribond back?” Yearick observes. “We’ll see. I’m thinking about it. There is some nostalgic value to it. People recall playing it, and there would be some unique workarounds.”

When did the Good Game Company launch?

Yearick launched The Good Game Company in 2019. These days, he runs it with son Rudiger out of an area in an previous textile mill-turned-commercial house on Bramlett Road in West Greenville.

While the corporate has a sturdy e-commerce web site — thegoodgamecompany.com — for its nearly 20 traces, you’ll additionally discover the corporate’s merchandise in shops.

“We sell to specialty shops — mom-and-pops, small chains, independent retailers,” Yearick mentioned. “But we also sell to mid-tiers like Barnes & Noble and Kohl’s, and mass-market retailers like Walmart and Target.”

A cube tower household recreation named Not It is an enormous vendor proper now, he mentioned, together with a celebration recreation named Fuzzy Logic.

“Fuzzy Logic is always a crowd-pleaser,” Yearick mentioned.

As for the financial forces at work within the business, Yearick mentioned tariffs and stiff competitors from Europe are the at present challenges.

“We’re paying 30% in tariffs and have had to adjust our wholesale prices,” Yearick mentioned. “We recognize pricing is important, and we can’t price them beyond their value. So we’ve had to approach the issue delicately.”

Yearick says the European affect has to do with high-level technique board video games which have an enormous viewers within the U.S.

“It’s a very, very competitive global market,” he mentioned. “We do effectively, we make a very good product, however we’re all competing for shelf house and e-commerce clicks with all the opposite corporations. It’s not all that tough to invent and take a very good recreation to market. The problem is promoting it.