Alex Radcliffe
United States
Charlotte
North Carolina
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BoardGameCo:
www.boardgameco.com
www.youtube.com/boardgameco
Welcome to BoardGameCo,
Whether you're stumbling upon our profile randomly, have been sent by a friend, or are an old customer just browsing again, here's a quick breakdown of who we are and what we do;
According to boardgamegeek, the average user spends roughly $500 a year on board games. What they don't say, is that the average user wants a lot more than $500 worth of board games each year but has to balance those wants with food, housing, school, or dozens of other things in their life.
At the same time, most users have another problem, they regularly get games that they either tire of, don't like after one play, or someone else in the group has a copy anyway, and their own copy just gathers dust on the shelf.
The end result is that we have two problems; a lack of financially being able to buy all the games you'd like, plus the problem of what to do with games that aren't justifying their place in your collection. There are a few ways to handle this problem, but none are ideal. You can run an auction on the geek or sell your games on ebay, but you'll usually wind up with far less cash back then you want, for a lot more effort than you thought. You can donate them to goodwill or the like, only to have them picked up by someone who doesn't appreciate what a designer board game is, and after 2 pages of rules it gets tossed in the trash. Or you can try to trade them with other users, but with nearly 90% of trades taking place consisting of one game for one game, it's simply not efficient. By the time you finally get ahold of someone willing to trade (no easy feat in itself, as most users tend to get frustrated by having most attempts to trade result in a lack of response at all, let alone a positive response), you wind up paying $10-$20 in shipping, plus giving up a game, all in order to get a single $30-$40 game in return.
That's where we come in. Since we trade as a business, we offer a HUGE overlap in wants and haves, all of which enable you to trade anywhere from 2-3 games, to as many as 20-30 all at one time. And we respond 100% of the time. We do ask for more game value in return for this service, but you'll walk away a whole lot better off than shipping a dozen different trades and paying for each one, as well as the savings in time and energy from just trying to make a trade happen.
We've helped thousands of users on the geek easily convert old and unused games for the latest hotness, in a quick an efficient manner that leaves everyone happy, and if you haven't traded with us yet, we'd love to welcome you to the club.
To make things even easier, we even offer you access to our shipping discount with fedex to cut down your costs even further! (the larger the package the bigger the savings...on packages under 10 lbs priority is sometimes cheaper)
We're looking forward to serving you and hope to provide the best possible service that we can!
With best regards,
Alex Radcliffe
boardgameco
trading.selling.gaming.geeks.
www.boardgameco.com
Some quick background on who I am:
In 2012 I was merely a gamer who had sunk deeply into games and had nearly 500 games of which I had only played 150 or so. I ran a large auction to get rid of them and due to the way I had previously acquired things in trade and sales, found I actually made money. I then decided to try making this a bit of a money earning hobby on the site, and started trading heavily with other users, offering my games for theirs in exchange for more value, e.g. I give you $100 worth of games and you give me $130. I thought this would work as I had noticed it was very hard to trade effectively on BGG, as most trades were 1 to 1, and paying $10-$15 in shipping for a $30 game swap isn't that beneficial. I figured by offering two hundred popular games for trade and marking a few hundred as wanted, I'd have larger overlaps with people, allowing them to save money on shipping and convenience but giving up game value for that.
While I was right that this was a niche that needed filling, I didn't realize to what extent. Over the past two years the sheer quantity of trades, nearly all of which are through others approaching me, astounded me. Currently we process roughly 8% of BGG's domestic trades, and close to 50% of the games (meaning that since the average trade for others is 1 or 2 titles, our 5-10 game trades means that we're only 8% of the trade count market, but 50% of the title count market). Of course you can't make money unless you're selling stuff, and so the end goal of everything we trade is to eventually run it through an auction or sale of some sort, and we started on BGG auctions which is where we still sell 2 years later.
Around a year ago, due to the volume we had and my limited personal space, we had to make the move from my basement to a facility, hired some employees and are now running a legitimate business, licenses, building, employees, expenses the whole 9 yards. The flip side is we're still new in a lot of other areas. We just barely launched our website to sell there, and are still growing and improving processes where and when we can. The main problem I have is that ever since the move and the increase in expenses, we're barely making money. We're covering our costs which is awesome considering how high they are, but since the move I haven't taken a paycheck while I try to grow my company into something I can do full time. That lack of a paycheck means I've had to keep my day job and earn money there while I attempt to improve this business. We do have a surplus of games, which is why over the next few auctions I'll be slowly lowering prices until I find that sweet spot that balances our inventory levels, brings in more money but without depleting everything.
Once the cash flow comes in more heavily we plan on going where all the other game stores go...and stock new games in addition to all the cheaper used titles we sell. If I wanted to take out a loan I could do this tomorrow, but I want to get more traffic to the website, start getting sales there, preferably contribute some cash in addition to whatever loan etc. I've seen too many people try to turn their love of games into a business and lose their shirts, that I'm trying to do it slowly and carefully, and in a way that enables me to spend my life in the hobby I love, but without losing money or my home on a struggling business.
So that's pretty much where I am (shortish doesn't really cover that I guess). I am a retailer, but also just a guy growing a business. As JJ says, there's been talk about me both good and bad, mostly before I went more official as the biggest complaint many had is they (rightfully) felt it made them uncomfortable that I was trading as a business without declaring or acting like a business officially. So sure, I'd love to be the next CSI or Miniature Market, but I'm also trying to do it my way, with trading and used games as my specialty. It's a difficult field, especially when you consider how many things can go wrong with a used board game, but we're doing what we can to streamline things, keep issues to a minimum and deal with them professionally when they do occur. I do firmly believe that I can save other gamers money, through either trades or selling used games cheaper, and if I can hold true to that while growing in size, that would keep me doing what I love while helping the hobby. I couldn't ask for more!
Youtube
I've also started doing content creation on Youtube, come on by and check it out 
https://www.youtube.com/boardgameco
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