We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brandon Blocker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brandon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I started off with defining the concept for our first product. It was going to be a fully cooperative adventure game that took all the best elements of some of my other favorite titles while leaving behind mechanics that would make it overbearing for someone who might not play a lot of games.

Next, I set aside my budget to fund the operation. I figured, with a lack of market research and a bit of intentional ignorance on my part, that I could fully develop my title and produce a very small batch of roughly 500 copies to launch with $3,000 – $5,000. With my budget in place, I started to build out my team to make this happen. Fortunately, not only is my wife very supportive of all my ideas, but she is incredibly talented in her own right. She applied her skills as an expert of graphic design, website design, and branding to give my business and my game an amazing, professional look that I could never afford with my budget. Additionally, I hired one of my close friends who is an extremely talented, up-and-coming author to design the game with me and fill the technical gaps that I don’t flourish in like adding more depth to the story which I should mention is critical as the game is played as an ever-evolving adventure primarily facilitated by the lore we included in the game. Originally, we planned to use my wife’s talents in the design of our characters. We were going to use “floating head” style art and only our twelve heroes would have any sort of illustration. Fortunately, the rest of my team convinced me that it was worthwhile to bring in illustrators and add substantially more art to give the game a more polished look. Once again, we were blessed to find high quality illustrators willing to take on our project, and a quick timeline, to finish up the beta version of our product. At this point, we had obligated nearly the entire original budget to the creative professionals we had hired to make this dream a reality. I realized that in order to continue moving forward, and justify additional investment, this had to be more than setting up a simple eCommerce site with a bit of passive marketing to casually sell this game we had created. That’s when we sat down to begin formally planning what this looks like as full fledged business versus a small side-hustle.

During this season, my wife and I had our first child. All of the sudden, there was another critical factor to ensure we were investing the appropriate amount of time and energy to growing our baby as well as this business. Within less than a year, we went from an idea for a game to a full team of creative professionals developing what we hope to be one of the greatest tabletop experiences for adventure game lovers. Additionally, we launched our website with an expanded scope to include three titles we partnered with as a retailer and two more games that we partnered with to develop and mass produce.

Brandon, 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?

I’ve dabbled with concepts for creating new games my whole life. My very first creation was when I was about 5 years old and consisted of figurines made of dried Play-Doh with a hand-drawn map in an old shoe box. It was meant to be a medieval-themed, city-building game that was largely inspired by the now classic Stronghold (2001) PC game by Firefly Studios. I still have that game in the same old shoe box today.

Skip a few years. I revisited the concept of creating games more seriously in college. I had already begun to apply my creativity towards entrepreneurship, as this was still more of a hobby. I fleshed out a few concepts and made extremely rough prototype copies to try out with my close friends, but those ideas never went much further. The business I had started in college ultimately failed when I learned that my partner was spending everything the business had on his own personal lifestyle which had eaten up much of my time and energy outside of my current 9-5 job. I continued to pursue entrepreneurship through real estate investing and learning everything I could about various other industries. My full-time job required me to become proficient in government contracting/purchasing which includes a seemingly endless number of rabbit holes when you dig into the rules, regulations, and exceptions that totally negate all the other rules.

However, in 2021, after coming off a high from a successful real estate deal, I wanted to jump back into a more in-depth venture that I could operate and apply my capital towards. I had been reviewing numerous industries, but still hadn’t felt like I found the right one. Much of the advice I had heard from successful entrepreneurs and read about was to find the intersection between passion, purpose, and opportunity. One day it clicked. I realized that I had a passion for creating games that can bring unrelated people together in community with one another. I wanted to pursue a purpose of encouraging other American business leaders that products can still be developed and manufactured within the US in addition to bringing attention to the holistic benefits our nation receives when we do this. While looking through my game shelf, I thought the opportunity would be a total win. Even if I have to sacrifice on my margins to keep my products wholly American-made, I own games that I’ve paid anywhere from $15 to $100. I figured if I could keep my labor costs down while developing the intellectual property, surely a little bit of plastic, cardboard, and ink wouldn’t be too expensive. That was not the case.

I am most proud of the team that we’ve put together thus far. We successfully designed, developed, and produced two titles that are wholly American-made with a third on the way. We have been so blessed to have found such a talented team of illustrators, fellow developers, and a manufacturer that could meet all of our material and purpose-driven requirements. I am hopeful that the extreme level of effort and dedication to each detail is appropriately displayed in each of our titles and that we continue to find others that support this vision!

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

As a tabletop game publisher, we are responsible for all the business-related aspects of the supply chain in this industry to include manufacturing. Although there are a lot of tabletop game manufacturers, the largest concentrations are found overseas in China, India, and across Europe. Our emphasis on American-made products relied entirely on finding an American manufacturer. We initially started by loosely interpreting American-made to include all of North America (Canada, USA, and Mexico). After researching every US-based manufacturer I could find, I found that only a handful actually manufactured their components in the US as opposed to accepting the purchase order then outsourcing overseas. Many of which used a Print on Demand production model. This was great for very small batch runs or professionally produced beta copies, but economically did not leave much room for profit. I had to find a manufacturer that could mass produce using more traditional production methods.

I searched for weeks and thought I had finally found a winner! Their numbers lined up exactly where I needed them to be, they could produce all the components I needed, their production time was reasonable, everything looked great. We sent over our files to be drafted up, and they replied that we had forgotten to add “made in China” to the exterior box. Our hopes were dashed! Somehow, after all of our discussion the most essential piece of working with them had slipped through the cracks in doing my due diligence. Next, I had found a wonderful company in Canada that was wholly Canadian-made down to using Canadian trees for the paper / cardboard components. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t quite get down to the price we needed and would need to procure our plastic components through a third party. When I thought all hope was lost for the entire principal the business had been built on, my wife called the very first manufacturer we had contacted, but hadn’t heard back from. They answered the phone and the rest is history. We’ve now successfully produced two print runs through them with arguably some of the highest quality materials while still charging an appropriate market rate for our products.

Here are some of the key takeaways from our experience.

If you have a specific goal in mind that is outside of the norm, don’t take “no” for an answer. Keep digging until you find what you’re looking for or truly exhaust all your options. We went as far as getting quotes on leasing commercial-grade printers to produce the materials ourselves if we had to.

Start with the end in mind and work in tandem with your manufacturer. Be intentional while you’re designing your product. Do your best to avoid adding odd one-off components. If you can reduce the raw materials in your finished product from four widgets to three, do it! You’ll save on one-time costs and capture more cost efficiencies. Additionally, ask your manufacturer for their recommendations to save on cost or complexity. They can be so used to receiving designs that must be completed to spec even though there is a simpler, sometimes cheaper option, that they don’t even think to mention it unless you specifically ask.

Communicate clearly and regularly. Check in often to determine the status of the order and make sure everyone is still on the same page. It is very simple for small details to be missed as it travels down the multiple levels to the production floor. Be very clear on your expectations and KEEP YOUR EMAILS. We had an instance in which two different SKUs were unintentionally packaged together due to a miscommunication and vague instructions on the purchase order. Fortunately, we had emails from six months prior very clearly stating our intentions and receiving the agreement from our previous account manager.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Sure thing. As I referenced earlier on, my first real business venture was in college. I already had an nontraditional college route at that point. I had finished high school and started college early. The scholarship I had earned was for engineering and I had to negotiate with the awarding organization to allow me to pursue business (and Russian Studies) instead. I had earned my Florida real estate license at 18 and was ambitious to get into the world of business.

I had been connected with another seemingly ambitious go-getter that was a similar age and we decided that we wanted to go into business together. We were naive and probably a bit prideful, that despite our youth and lack of experience, our creativity would propel us to success offering professional services and business development consulting. I was studying professional sales and leadership, my partner told me he was running a successful hedge fund, so the roles seemed clearly laid out. I would act as CEO, handling all external matters, he would act as CFO, responsible for our internal development. We were 50/50. I quickly got to work selling anything I could from our over encumbered line up of offerings which mostly included marketing material and apparel with a website or two and associated graphics. Meanwhile, my partner told me he was working on building our own website and internal processes / workflow. After a few months without much substantial progress, we decided we wanted to take the business to the next level. I invited him to come live with my wife and I in the spare bedroom while we worked on building the business because at that point he was in Texas and I was in Florida. We figured our most significant limiting factor was the distance and time difference.

Around that same time, he told me some of the most tragic stories I had ever heard. Not only had his apartment burnt down, but he had been a victim of identity theft. All of his assets, including those in his hedge fund business, were being investigated by the FBI and were frozen for the foreseeable future. We had become close friends and he begged me not to tell anyone as the whole situation was just too embarrassing for him. In the meantime, he began using our business’ resources to fund his lifestyle. Everything from paying for his phone bill to eating at restaurants sometimes three or four times a day to buying himself a set of brand new golf clubs. With each purchase, he continued to ask for my trust and patience, promising that he would pay it all back. We devised a plan that in order to really become profitable, we needed an infusion of capital to execute on a bit of expansion; hiring contractors, performing improved marketing, and purchasing some much needed IT equipment. We received private debt investment from someone close to me and were on the way with fresh capital and great terms. Unfortunately, only the IT equipment was ever purchased from our original plan. The majority and remainder of the funds was quickly depleted within a matter of two – three months due to my partner’s lavish lifestyle. We never had a true budget in place and my partner continued to never quite get around to giving me a report on our accounting. Finally, after he had packed up and left my home to go on a multi-week vacation with his girlfriend (still using the business’ money along the way) I decided to go through the transactions myself. Not only had he spent every penny of profit the business had made, but he had depleted the entire debt investment we had received. When I saw the total number for the first time, I felt physically ill and almost vomited. Additionally, he had gone behind my back to purchase equipment for the business on credit using only my personal information to secure the loan (instead of being tied to the business as agreed upon). After a few additional promises of “the check is in the mail”, my partner went silent.

I would spend the next year, half of my senior year of college and about eight months in my new job, trying to dig myself out of the hole he had left me in. I was left to finish fulfilling orders with only my resources as a college student. I tried to warn the bank that they needed to freeze the business’ accounts before we went into a deficit. I had to negotiate the return of the equipment that the business had purchased and paid out of pocket to cover a large portion of the cost. I stood outside of Walmart for about an hour trying to explain to the investor what had happened over the phone, promising that I would eventually find a way to make them whole again. I pursued legal action against my partner for a full twelve months with numerous hiccups and additional costs incurred ultimately resulting in dismissal from the judge because the value of the case was higher than his jurisdiction allowed. Additionally, I should mention that during the entire period of operating the business, my wife and I were paid less than $300 for our efforts. So there were not large personal cash reserves to resolve these crises.

In the end, after many tears and sleepless nights, I satisfied all of the business’ customers and creditors. Even the investor was kind enough to forgive my association with the debt. Although I never saw even a penny back from my efforts, I earned an MBA from the School of Hard-Knocks in the American civil legal system and what it takes to wind down an unsuccessful venture. I’m still working to this day to find success in business so that I might repay what I still feel like I owe to that investor.

My faith in Jesus Christ carried me through it all and allowed me to get to a point where I could forgive my partner’s actions and stop pursuing retribution. Instead, I was led to leave it behind and focus that energy on moving forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oakloungegames.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oakloungegames/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Oak-Lounge-Games
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-b-591832144/
• Other: Board Game Geek – https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepublisher/51667/oak-lounge-games

Image Credits
Breanna Blocker, Faith Paull