We recently connected with Jamey Stegmaier and have shared our conversation below.

Jamey, appreciate you joining us today. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?

This is the core of our business; every choice we make is about serving our customers and bringing joy to their tabletops. I’ll share one recent example and one ongoing example.

The recent example is that we recently celebrated our 10th year of existence as a company. Instead of using this as an opportunity to sell more games, we decided to thank our customers by giving them a game for free. I designed a 1-2 player game called Smitten that pays homage to many of our games, and we gave it away for free throughout our anniversary month (September 2022).

The ongoing example is how we serve customers through replacement parts. We produce millions of games, so sometimes a component is missing when a customer opens a game; other times, a customer plays a game so much that the components wear down. Also, like many of us at Stonemaier Games, some customers have pets who alter the fate of game pieces. We have stashes of replacement parts around the world to serve these customers at any time, no matter from whom they bought their game.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up playing and designing games as a hobby, and in 2009 I became enamored with the Kickstarter platform–specifically, that I could connect directly with the people who shared my passion for games. I researched and backed other projects for a few years before designing and launching Viticulture. That first game grew into a full-fledged business based around bringing joy to tabletops worldwide, mostly through tabletop games, but also through a variety of content geared towards adding value to other creators, gamers, and entrepreneurs.

I’m the most proud of any game that has brought joy to people, and I hold a special place in my heart for the games designed by others (instead of myself)–I appreciate the opportunity to bring their visions to life while having a hand in developing it to be as fun, functional, intuitive, and balanced as possible. For example, our bestselling game, Wingspan, was designed by Elizabeth Hargrave.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Hand in hand with the growth of Stonemaier Games’ sales is our marketing strategy, which is almost entirely focused on adding value to people through the content I create. Social media isn’t about us–its about you, the person who chooses to follow @jameystegmaier on Instagram, subscribe to our e-newsletter or YouTube channel, or read the blog. Specifically, I use these platforms to talk about things that the audience finds value in (or are at least curious about): I talk about my favorite mechanisms in a vast variety of games, only sometimes mentioning the games we make. I talk about crowdfunding, marketing strategies, and entrepreneurship on the blog, sharing specific behind-the-scenes examples and mistakes I’ve made in the hopes that other creators can avoid the same mistakes. And so on: My focus for social media– whether it’s day 1 or day 500–is on the person on the other side of the screen.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We’ve had a few pivots at Stonemaier Games. One is in regards to the types of games we publish: For a while we thought we’d try to make a game in every category and genre–cast a wide net so there would be something for everyone. But we realized that after our first few games, our audience wanted games in a specific category; plus, that happened to be the category that my co-founder and I most enjoyed playing and designing. So we decided to stay focused on that category (medium-weight Euro games).

The other is that from very early on, we became known for including super high-quality components in our games without charging extravagant prices. This led to us creating a line of premium resource tokens that could be used in any games. It sold very well for us, but we weren’t giving it the attention it deserved, and it felt like we were diverging from our core competency. So we sold that line of products to a company that specializes in those types of game upgrades.

Another big pivot was our choice to stop using Kickstarter as a creator (I’m still an avid crowdfunding backer). I really appreciate the platform for helping the inception and growth of Stonemaier Games, but following our $1.8 million campaign for Scythe in 2015, we decided to simply invest in great products, heavily test them, make them, and sell them to people in a variety of ways (opposed to asking for someone’s money and then waiting 8-12 months before shipping the product to them). This was a big shift, but it has been immensely successful for us. Our total Kickstarter-era revenue was around $4 million total; our post-Kickstarter era revenue is over $100 million.     

Contact Info:

• Website: stonemaiergames.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/jameystegmaier/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StonemaierGames
• Twitter: @stonemaiergames
• Youtube: youtube.com/c/JameyStegmaier/featured
• Other: https://stonemaiergames.com/e-newsletter/blog/

Image Credits
Tim Chuon