We recently connected with Adam Marlar and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Adam, thanks for joining us today. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today

Starting over, we would do a multitude of things differently. One major change would be to launch an Etsy site versus launching our own personal website. Our target market is such a niche group and using a platform such as Etsy would have made our beginnings much easier. Another major change would be how we approached our first Kickstarter campaign and the timing for it. Once we had the idea for Nine Realms Gaming we immediately rushed into creating our products with the ultimate goal of launching on Kickstarter. The issue with this mindset is we did not refine our products enough to be efficient enough in production and did not do enough market research on what our customers truly wanted. Timing was extremely poor since our Kickstarter launched right after Covid appeared. Lastly, we would have spent a majority of our efforts building a presence in the local gaming community. Our goal was to build a high quality product, which we believe we have accomplished, but we lacked the exposure to really make the Kickstarter as successful as we would have liked it to have been.

Adam, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We started with a small assortment of wooden gaming accessories, but as time went on, we began to receive requests for other woodworking projects. Items such as custom signs for businesses, wooden gift boxes for specialty Christmas products, and custom cutting boards and serving trays showed us that we have a much larger potential market to cater to with our woodworking skills. As more commissions came across for a plethora of items we felt it was time to broaden our focus from just gaming to a more generalized woodworking company. The change to Nine Realms Creations is so we can better provide to the needs of our consumers by allowing us to build that unique project suited for them. What we are most proud about is how much we’ve learned and how much our skill as woodworkers has improved in the past three years. The wide variety of custom products that customers have requested has constantly challenged us to develop new skills that we can apply to future projects.

How’d you meet your business partner?

There are three of us; Charlie, Zach, and myself and we honestly just met freshman year in college. We joined the same fraternity and honestly can’t get rid of these guys.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Face-to-face interactions at conventions or local shows. It has been by far the best way for us to display the quality of our products.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ninerealmsgaming.com/
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/ninerealmscreations
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ninerealmscr8