Maria Lloyd (00:04.182)
Hello Becky and to the Local Marketer podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. How are you? I am.

Very well, thank you. I've been really looking forward to this. We've already had an amazing conversation, which I wish I had recorded now. Could you please introduce yourself and Eclectic Games? So I'm Becky Ottery. I am co-owner with my husband, Daryl, of Eclectic Games, which is Reading's general specialist board game and tabletop game retailer, which manages to both be

something of a contradiction in terms and very accurate. We sell a whole lot of different things and we generally try and have specialist knowledge about everything we sell, which is one of the bigger challenges of if you want to come and work for me, the product knowledge is huge. You are based in Reading. What do you like about Reading? Have you always been here? I came to Reading because it's where Daryl

went to university and stayed in afterwards and after I finished my degree in Birmingham I came and moved down to move in with him and both of us have gone. Reading is a really good place to be based because it has everything we need pretty much and massively good transport links for if we want to be somewhere else without significant hassle. I mean

Yes, right. Train fares have gone up quite a lot since I used to do Birmingham to Reading for the weekend. But it's still, if you plan enough in advance, it's still you can get anywhere in the country easily enough from Reading. Eclectic Games, started in, I believe it was 2006. So what made you want to start up a specialist and also generic game shop? I had spent the previous

Maria Lloyd (02:25.56)
three or four months as manager of the former game shop in Reading, which was White Knight Games, having landed in that after being made redundant three times in a row from three different telco or IT companies, and I'd basically gone, I need a temporary job of some kind, and having been a customer of the local board game store,

They were looking for a new manager at about the point that I was going, I need a job. So that happened. It was... I was good at it. I took a game store that was suffering somewhat from lack of engagement with its customers and various other things and was beginning to turn it around into a more positive thing right up to the point where I turned up at work and discovered...

Baylifts had changed the locks with my laptop still inside. And it turned out that my employers hadn't actually paid the landlord rent for a year and were in arrears for large numbers of other things, none of which I'd had any news about. I then spent about a month working out how to get my laptop back out of the lock shop, which involved

proving that it was mine and not a company asset and so on and so forth. And I also used that knowledge to reach out to the suppliers who again, hadn't been paid at various points so that they could reclaim the stock that was locked up in the shop. Which meant that when I turned around and went, well, Reading has had a game shop for, since the 80s,

It can definitely support one, I was enjoying doing this. If we do it properly, i.e. not paying rent and things like that, I'm sure this would work. Daryl at the time was gainfully employed in IT, so we had one salary that would happily support both of us, and we attracted a small amount of investment from

Maria Lloyd (04:49.454)
friends and family and basically turned around and went well we can do the usual not make any money for the first year try and break even in the second year make some money in the third year at which point we can see whether Darryl can come out of IT because IT is generally far too stressful etc etc by the time I had in fact got all this started I got far enough in and then went

How much have I just jumped into what is going on? Agh! And then Darryl had a nervous breakdown because IT and we basically had an issue of, well, the only thing we can do is make this a success. So let's keep going. So what advice would you give your younger self looking back? Is there anything, I mean, you said there that you actually were...

Good, when you had before you had your own one, you said you were good at it, so clearly you came into it with some knowledge, so is there anything else you'd tell yourself? To be fair, looking back at the company I worked for at White Nights, I had a very sound, here's what not to do. There were a lot of things that I could see were, this is not working, this is not the way to do it, don't do that. Learning from other people's mistakes is a

great way of absorbing knowledge. Then you get to make all your own different mistakes, and if you are fortunate, it doesn't kill your company. My younger self, I would advise, do not leave the cash in the till drawer overnight. If you get broken into, it will get stolen. I would advise, do not sign up for advertising on

boards next to supermarkets, it will not get you anything despite it appearing to be a good deal. I will advise on not signing up for costly HR services, instead go and talk to the Federation of Small Businesses because it is much more cost effective and you get the same level of support. I don't think I would advise my younger self not to do it because

Maria Lloyd (07:14.11)
On balance, it has been much more positive than negative. But I would probably advise my younger self to be prepared for the fact that my business has taken over my life to the extent that I would really, really like to reclaim a better work-life balance because at the moment I have a living-work balance. With an independent business, I think quite a lot of people

do it and get into each thing. yes, they want better work-life balance. But ultimately, that is your life then. That's just inviting work to live with you 24-7 because even when you're on holiday, you're probably thinking about that social plan and actually you've had a really good idea based on what someone's been doing in the cocktail bar. Even worse when it is both you and your partner because it turns out you work together, you live together, you are romantically together.

There are points where I just want to go away from absolutely everything because I do not have enough time just being me as opposed to being the business owner or the partner. Alone time is really valuable. Create time for yourself. think that's, well, think that's mandatory for everyone. I love what you do with your website. Instead of say, like, know, independent struggle with things like Amazon.

for example, you specifically mention Amazon. Could you explain how you think you complement Amazon in a way? Amazon exists because people want things that they can do their own research on and buy a generic widget as cheaply as possible. That is not actually a book or a board game or anything that requires specialist knowledge. I buy a whole bunch of stationery from Amazon.

I buy a whole bunch of cleaning products from Amazon. If I want something like clothes, I want to go into a shop and look at them and feel them and pick them up and try them on, and the same philosophy applies to board games. Anything I sell, you can get online cheaper, at least assuming it's in stock in the supply chain and hasn't gone massively out of print or whatever else. What you can't do is

Maria Lloyd (09:40.064)
try it out ahead of time at one of our events, you can't talk to a person about what this game plays like, who it's good for, what are its good points, what are its bad points. I mean there's a classic example from about a decade ago when Twilight Struggle was the number one game on board game geek, which is a giant database, think like IMDB but for board games, and people would come in and go, I want

Twilight Struggle because it's the number one board game and I would go, what have you played before? How many people are you playing it with? Because it's a two player only game so if you want to play for four of you, don't get this one. If you've only played Scrabble, Monopoly, Catan and Brisk, you might find it a bit of a step up in complexity because there's quite a lot going on with this one and there was a lot of

guiding people to the right game for them because it's not that Twilight Struggle is in any way a bad game. It's great. It's a really fantastic example of its type. However, it may not be appropriate. I think that really nicely, very clearly states why you complement Amazon, which is great. So we need both, we need the independence and we need Amazon.

Are there any challenges that you think you've faced, maybe especially in recent years, facing the high street and other independents and how you've overcome them or tackled them? A lot of what we've found challenging has been the same sort of things that nearly everybody has found challenging. The pandemic was very difficult. That was where I learned very strongly that I do not wish to be an online retailer. Online retailing involves

getting things in in boxes, putting them into other boxes and shipping them out. It does not involve actually interacting with your customers and recommending games and seeing the enthusiasm. When they come back and go, that recommendation was really perfect, it went down so well, can I have another recommendation for this kind of thing? That is the bit that makes it worthwhile for me, retailing.

Maria Lloyd (12:02.828)
During the pandemic, the shop survived on Pokemon and Jigsaws. They were the two things that were massively available, massively saleable, and people wanted. And I spent a long time coming into the shop, receiving deliveries, packing up deliveries, sending them out with the courier, and during that time I went, this is horrible. Online is a volume game. It is not.

something that you can effectively do at full margin generally because of aforementioned Amazon and other online large specialists. It's a volume game. That volume game has a tendency to erode price perception amongst customers. I was not joking when I said pretty much absolutely everything that I sell in the shop you can get cheaper online to the tune of

anywhere between 15 and 30 percent which is on a game that's 20 pounds that's not very much on a game that's a hundred pounds that's a whole second game you could buy for the discount which means we've adjusted away from the really high price items because i can't provide enough value to the customer

to justify why they should spend that extra 40 quid. Because when you have a board game that is 175 quid, which there are some of them out there, and online is selling it day in day out at £100, and I'm looking at it and going, I'm not making enough at £100 to justify its place on my shelf. The choice is quite simple. You go...

I will order this for you if you specifically want to buy it from me, but otherwise we don't stock it, because it's not sensible for you to buy it from me. At the other end of things, on a very small scale, we don't tend to stock a thing called basing glue for miniatures players. This is the glue you use to stick your static grass and tufts so on to your mini. And the reason we don't do that is because it's

Maria Lloyd (14:27.502)
basically just PVA glue repackaged into smaller bottles and charged at a much higher price. So what we do is send them down the road to the works to get a litre of it for £2.99 rather than selling them 100ml at about £9. Because that's not good value and a lot of what I do is supporting the value of what I sell. I like that as well because I think that clearly shows

that you are there to help the customer. You're not there just to get money from them in any way possible. You're not going to sell them with like glue with a margin on. You'll tell them how they can get it at the better price. And the fact that you compliment Amazon again, as you said, if there's something better online, you can't add value. You won't offer it. You'll go for the things that you can actually add value on. So I think that is a brilliant way to approach your business. You said in the pandemic that Pokemon and was it puzzles were really good for you.

What are your most popular items now, would you say? So it's still Pokemon and puzzles. Pokemon is still going very, very strong. Masses of online influencers, people chasing rare cards that are worth lots of money, massive nostalgia factor. The collectible gaming market is a fairly strong segment. We are still massively doing really well with board games.

This Christmas I expect to sell a lot of board games in the 20 to 60 quid range because we will have a lot of people who are looking for value in their presents that they give to people and you can give a family a board game at about, I don't know, 40 quid and they will as a family get more enjoyment and value out of it than

£4, £10 presents to each individual and there's a lot of people making those sorts of choices as we're still in cost of living, electricity going up, all of the things that make things that little bit more difficult. We are seeing a lot of people looking for smaller games because

Maria Lloyd (16:43.604)
It's brilliant if you've got a board that covers the entire table except when you also have to eat dinner off it and all the other things. So you want something that will fit into the space you have. There are a whole load of cooperative games now which are brilliant. Those did very well during the pandemic as well because people wanted structure for interacting with each other while they were locked up at home and cooperative

gives you a much better thing than if you are in a competitive game where you get one winner and lots of losers. If it's all of you against the game, it is much less likely to cause friction within the family. So those are the most popular games. What are your favourite games? I am currently in the middle of playing Ticket to Ride Legends of the West with my gaming group, which is a legacy game.

which means that you play with the same people over a whole bunch of games and the game evolves based on what happens in each game. So in this case, we are pushing train lines to the west from the east coast of the US in about 1880 and there's gold rush happening and various things and I am loving it.

That one is one of the more expensive ones, that one's £100, but if you consider 12 games minimum, because at the end of it you'll end up with a unique to your group board for playing Ticket to Rhydon, it's really good value and the surprise of finding out what happens next after you've completed the game and unlock the next bit of what's going on is wonderful. In terms of

smaller, quicker games. There's a bunch of card games that are basically all in sort of the 15 to 20 quid range that are... The ones I love for the art are Arctic, Sea Salt and Paper and Pixies, and they're all card manipulation and set gathering and so on, but the artwork on them is beautiful. Daryl is absolutely...

Maria Lloyd (19:06.868)
If it's a trick-taking game, so like Hearts or Whist, that kind of thing, he will absolutely go for it. There are quite a few different trick-taking games with interesting twists and quirks to them that are on the shelves at the moment. I do not play them because I cannot card count and he can. And this makes it really, really difficult for me.

in much the same way that he doesn't play Scrabble with me because I just get better letters and better words than he does. So what games do you play together then? They're usually cooperative ones, so there is a trick-taking game that is cooperative that I will play with him and it's called The Crew and what it has is a wonderful mechanism whereby you are given goals to achieve

in the play of the game. So it might be person A has to win a trick with a yellow nine, person B has to win the second and third tricks of the round, person C cannot win a trick, these kinds of things. So instead of just trying to win as many tricks as possible individually, you're working together to play the cards in the order that means you can satisfy the goals and

At that point I don't feel as stupid because I'm working with Daryl as opposed to against him. Hi, that. And just a reminder for everyone, I will put the links to all these games on the landing page. So yeah, if you're interested, go and try them out. Pop into ELECTIC GAMES. Recently went to a conference. Not a conference, what's it? A game. Exhibition. Oh, Essen. Yes. Spiel in Essen happens every year in October and is the biggest board game show in the world.

It is something the size of the NEC complex, basically more or less completely dedicated to board games. It's amazing. So I imagine you have to stay up to date with the industry, the latest games, things that are coming up. So how would you do it? Is it just by going to things like Essen? Are there other ways that you keep up to date? This is Daryl's specialist subject. He is the one who absolutely has the encyclopaedic knowledge of nearly everything.

Maria Lloyd (21:28.824)
and he does it by reading designer blogs from board game designers, talking with other retailers, talking with publishers that we've developed a relationship with over the nearly 20 years we've been doing this. We do attend trade shows, we do keep an eye on the trade press such as it is. There is a lot of just generally being aware of

information and what people are working on and a lot of it builds on what it's done. So if we know that a studio has produced these four games already and they were all sort of like this, we can make a reasonable guess that the fifth one is probably going to be similar in these ways, it'll be different based on that. The other thing we do is listen to our customers a lot because whilst we know

of things about lots of things, they tend to be focused on specifically the thing they are interested in and they will know everything about that thing. So I do a lot of crowd sourcing of the what should I be interested in and go and read for myself based on the enthusiasms of my customers because they're going to tell me what they want to buy because they will have gone

This has just been announced! This is coming in! When can I pre-order it for you?" And I'm going, okay, I have just learned about this. I will go and find which distributor has it, when it's coming out, what the thing is, all that kind of thing. The board game crowdfunding side of things is huge. Games are Kickstarter's second largest category and

It is important for us to keep an eye on what is going on there, but we very, very rarely back anything on Kickstarter ourselves, and we usually have a filter that goes either, this is going to turn up through distribution in good time and be readily available, or this is going to satisfy all of the demand for it through Kickstarter.

Maria Lloyd (23:45.622)
and therefore we do not need to pay attention to it because it's the kind of product that should be a direct-to-consumer via Kickstarter sort of product. The classic ones for that are the board games Gloomhaven and Frosthaven because Gloomhaven is a board game with a 180 quid something price tag, weighs 10 kilos and

really is not the kind of thing that I want on my shop shelves and Frost Haven its sequel is a 250 quid board game and weighs 16 kilos and to me these things belong in a direct-to-consumer channel not in a my shop is selling them however they have produced gloom haven jaws of the lion and gloom haven bugs and buttons which I think are

really good retail products because Jaws of the Lion is a more or less standard size board game at £50 and Bugs and Buttons is a solo play one at £20. Ari, I'm just so impressed with your knowledge of games, which makes sense. You run a game shop, so naturally you should have a very good knowledge of games. But how do you manage to get people to come to you? What's your marketing strategy? Because obviously having that knowledge is one thing, but getting the people to come to you, that's...

separate. Successful marketing for us is when our customers go and tell other people. It is the best marketing money can't buy. Secondary to that, we do a reasonable amount of outreach to go supporting board game events at venues that aren't the shop. Every Tuesday evening at the moment, we're running a board games evening at the Sirencraft

taproom on Friar Street. We have just done a outreach event with Wokingham Town Council. We did a Saturday at Wokingham Town Hall playing a small selection of board games and introducing them to other people. I will generally talk to any radio that phones me up and says, we're having a segment about board games, because my general tip for radio is

Maria Lloyd (26:13.822)
Any time the researcher phones you up, say yes unless you're going to have to be at the dentist or having the car dealt with or anything like that. If it's just a, it would be 20 minutes of your time, then say yes. It's worthwhile. Radio reach is an awful lot of people. Have you found that radio has brought people to you then? Have you found that or you find you just know it's good for reach?

I have had customers go, did I hear you on the radio after I've spoken to them? Because of course the voice is familiar. And generally speaking, provided you are not going and err a lot, voices on the radio have a certain amount of authority and expertise because that's why they're on the radio, so you should listen to them. And there's that whole subconscious

This person must know what they're talking about. They were on the radio, which hopefully is backed up by me actually knowing what I'm talking about and not something like my utterly dismal performance on whichever random trivia quiz it was at the point where I scored something like four out of 10. Now, what I think I know the answer to this, I'm going to ask anyway, what is your favourite part about running a game shop? It's my customers. It absolutely is.

I sell fun. I sell fun in boxes. It's amazing. How much better can it be than going, I am going to enable you to have loads of fun. It's improving the world. I sell fun. That's your tagline right there. Is there something that you haven't done so far that you think you'd like to try? On the marketing front, I don't know because I mostly don't know what the next...

big marketing thing will be. I'm usually a slightly later adopter just because I'm slightly older and therefore I don't tend to keep up with the really quick trends. In terms of what we want to provide, we are looking at how we can increase mostly our role playing side of things because there is a massive demand out there for people to run

Maria Lloyd (28:36.62)
role-playing games of all types, but especially Dungeons and Dragons, so that people can play, because there is inevitably a massive shortage of people to run the games. There's tons and tons of players. There is never anywhere near as many people who are willing to step up and do the Dungeon Master, the Games Master role, and therefore that is something we can provide.

What I would love to be in a position to do is effectively teach people how to be a games master and send them out there, because frankly, that's the easiest way to create more customers. If I teach people, here is how to do this thing, you can now run the game for your four other friends. Suddenly, I have five people who want to buy all the material associated with that.

From a purely cold, hard, self-interested business point of view, this is the quickest and easiest way to get more customers. Teach them. That seems like a great marketing strategy to me. Not only are they then coming to you for your games, but like I you are enabling them to have fun. Now, what are your goals for eclectic games going forward? I would very much like us to become debt-free of our

covid loans because we took on a lot of debt to get through the pandemic, mostly that's scheduled for the end of 2025, and at that point I want to give everyone working for me a pay rise above minimum wage, including myself, because it turns out that running a business, or at least running this business, does not tend to make you a millionaire. It really doesn't. That said,

I want us to be able to continue to support everything we're doing and expand the number of people we can support in terms of the games that we sell. Nearly everything we sell, we have some form of event or community that supports it. So if I can generate more calendar space,

Maria Lloyd (30:55.166)
and more physical space in some way, then I can support more things. And that is my ongoing goal for the next three years, is to try and support some of the games and communities that I just don't have space for at the moment. And exactly how we do that is going to be a little bit up in the air, because there are several different ways we could do so from...

setting up more off-site things like the Sirencraft collaboration to working out whether or not I can be in a different location that is bigger to varieties of things I haven't thought of yet. I know you're very focused on community and you do a lot in Reading which I think is great. Not only does it bring you customers but you're actually giving something back and I think that is very clearly why you want Retailer of the Year this year, Pride of Reading.

I remain so chuffed about this because this one was a public nomination and then a judges shortlist and then a public vote. So basically my customers have come through and gone, you're amazing and we think you should win. And that is one of the best feelings. It's all well and good experts and people who think I've done good, but mass public approval is basically this.

really, really warm glow. Congratulations again. I think it's just amazing. Do you have any message that you'd like to leave our listeners with? Board games are amazingly good fun, amazingly good value, and there is almost certainly a board game out there for anybody who wants one. So come along and find out. Come along and try some at one of our events.

because we would much rather sell you the right board game that you like than have you waste money on something that might be a great board game but not the right one for you. A testament to your focus on customer service. Becky, thank you so much for your time today. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and many congratulations again. Thank you so much.