A good year for Stonemaier

ICv2 reports that Stonemaier Games had a 40% sales increase in 2020. This would be a notable performance in an ordinary year, but 2020 was anything but that.

Sales of board games, card games and miniatures were up – Magic: the Gathering also has a record sales year in 2020. Some companies have done better than others in taking advantage of the changed market. People were stuck indoors and looking for quality time-spending activities. The typically high street board games were never up to that.

Here’s the most recent sales chart, again from ICv2, and this is based on sales of board games through hobby stores.

Notice Wingspan isn’t top on the chart above. The article notes that 447,150 were sold by Stonemaier in 2020. Unlike the chart above which is restricted to North America, that number from Stonemaier is for global sales. Still though. Almost half a million copies, and it wasn’t the best welling board game throughout the year.

Sometime business is about good preparation, planning, and the right position in the market. Other times it comes down to good fortune. I would say both were at play here, since Wingspan was already established as a top-selling and highly-regarded board game pre-pandemic, and was therefore in a great place to capitalise on people looking for something a bit deeper than Monopoly to pass the time. Stonemaier’s sales had increased 33% in 2019 compared to the year before, so the company was on a growth trajectory they managed to maintain throughout a turbulent time.

A great result from what is still a fairly new company in the market, and one which took the decision a couple of years ago to move away from the Kickstarter platform and instead supply to distributors and retail.