SMOOSH JUICE
Tariff Talk from Stonemaier, Cephalofair, Game Trayz Lab, and Steve Jackson Games | BoardGameGeek News
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If you’re tired of all the tariff talk, click away to somewhere else on this site. If not, let’s survey what publishers are posting on the topic on their websites and elsewhere, keeping in mind that many of these posts refer to a 54% tariff on goods from China to the U.S. compared to the 104% tariff that is in place as of April 9, 2025.
[Update just prior to publication: On April 9, U.S. President Trump raised the tariff on goods from China to 125%, while placing a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs announced on April 2 and imposing “only” a 10% tariff on other countries.]
āŖļø In “The Math of Tariffs“, published on April 7, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games runs through the numbers of how tariffs could impact the retail price of a game based on the additional cost that a publisher must pay thanks to the tariff.
Let me highlight one detail from his post:
In response to a reader asking why publishers don’t vary prices globally, stating “It’s just hard to accept that my games in Aus[tralia] will be increased at the retail level to help cover the cost of the tariff for U.S. based customers”, Stegmaier responds, “You’re currently paying less than those in the U.S. (based on the cost to games to you in Australia ā fewer games sent there at higher freight shipping costs per unit), and that’s been the case for a long time. So if retail prices go up a few dollars, it evens out.”
As that detail makes clear, unless you have experience managing an international business, you might not be aware of all the factors that go into the costs of running that business and what owners have to account for when setting prices.
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āŖļø In a prior post on April 3, “The Darkest Timeline“, Stegmaier states what many other publishers have: “Manufacturing the types of games we make is not an option in the U.S.” He then links to a story I’ve run across a few times, but haven’t yet shared: “My Year in Manufacturing & Games“, a February 17, 2025 article by Steve Heumann that details the fruitless efforts by publisher Quimbley’s Toys & Games to produce games in the U.S. Excerpts:
We were going to put our money where our mouth was and produce right here at home…
We found that producing a board game here in the states would cost us almost double what it would in China, meaning we would have to charge double in order to pay for everything…
Even with the machines we had bought, we still couldn’t compete with Chinese prices. We tried different products and fun RPG battle mats, but we always came back to the same conclusion. We were able to produce some things pretty well, like wooden accessories and such, but not at the scale that would make them viable mass market products.
What was Quimbley’s trying to produce?
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And then we started looking more closely at what had been promised to the backers and how much it would cost to fulfill in the real world. The prices they had paid on the Kickstarter would barely cover production on one of the more complicated games, let alone shipping costs and having any profits left over. There were so many plastic miniatures in the game that tooling alone was a crushing financial burden that would cripple the merchandise line commercially before anything else was even produced.
What we thought would catapult us into the stratosphere turned out to be digging our grave.
So that was two giant mistakes undertaken by Quimbley’s: trying to manufacture in the U.S. without understanding the costs involved, and trying to resuscitate an underwater project without understanding the costs involved…and yet Heumann writes, “Just because it didn’t work out exactly the way we’d hoped doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success. Success is measured in a lot of different ways, and for me, Quimbley’s hits too many of them to be considered anything less than a triumph of grit, determination, and the desire to bring good into people’s lives.” We had grit, determination, and desire ā that’s three successes!
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āŖļø In an April 3, 2025 post titled “Tariffs Are Driving Up Game Prices Now“, Steve Jackson Games CEO Meredith Placko writes:
Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math.
Note that with a 104% tariff, the game manufactured for $3.00 would now cost $6.12, so that once-$25 game would now be…$50?
I realize that I’ve posted statements like this from publishers many times. I’m posting it again (and again) to try to get people to understand that the people involved with the production of these games have investigated alternatives and not found them. Instead of saying “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” yet again, listen to those who have already looked into this possibility, with Placko’s final paragraph summing up the problem:
Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there’s a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. [emphasis added] This isn’t about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it’s going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.
“There is no national plan” ā to a large degree, U.S. state and federal government seems to mirror the approach of corporations in their focus on quarterly benefits for stockholders. Most activity focuses on immediate gains, with no thought as to what will make things better for citizens over time. These tariffs are a prime example of this behavior.
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āŖļø In mid-2023, Cephalofair Games ran a US$5 million crowdfunding campaign for various –haven items, anticipating that Gloomhaven (Second Edition) would be delivered by mid-2024, but the game finished manufacturing only in early 2025 with shipping scheduled to start…in mid-April 2025, which means the price of that project will now essentially double.
On April 9, Cephalofair COO Price Johnson posted a tariff-related update on the company, with this being the bottom line: “Our next steps are uncertain and being forced to change daily.” In more detail:
The impact that 104% tariffs will have on our industry, and our company, are nothing short of devastating and are already having immediate consequences that will be felt knowingly and unknowingly by everyone who enjoys this industry – from the hobbyist, the retail store owner, the publisher, and ultimately our communities…
Board games are HIGHLY custom, and include a magnitude of custom parts made from a wide range of custom materials ā made available to us under a single partner and project manager in China. Domestically, we’d have to bid individual producers for each custom good (assuming our print run is large enough to earn their attention), import raw materials, then provide or seek out our own assembly labor to bring it all together. This (if possible) would lead to exponentially higher prices than anywhere currently found in tabletop.
To repeat myself:
The reality is that China has been our industry’s gold standard for quality for decades, and continues leading the way in innovative new processes, materials, and capabilities. I’ve visited our facilities in person. I meet with our teams multiple times per year. We can bid a project with well over two dozen reputable and specialized board game manufacturers internationally on a new project. We don’t have anything that resembles that level of availability, competition, or experience here in the United States that could support our products, let alone those of our entire industry.
And to second the lack of a plan:
Imagine Price Johnson’s sharp intake of breath when contemplating the following:
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āŖļø In an April 5 Kickstarter update for Forsaken from Game Trayz Lab, co-designer Michael Mihealsick writes: “This represents an existential threat to every American board game publisher on par with a Thanos snap ā and it will only be that gentle if nothing gets worse.” (Narrator: It got worse.)
More from Mihealsick:
The game industry is certainly not the only one to be affected, but we are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of importing shake-ups because of the nature of our cash flow.
Game Trayz Lab plans to drop its print run from 10,000 copies to “significantly” less so that it reduces the tariff cost, while also turning to a focus on direct sales (and away from retail) since the margins on retail sales are much smaller. They also plan to create a promo pack of playable content “to raise cash in advance to cover current tariffs (and prepare for any more in the future)”.
Mihealsick then goes on to detail the many reasons why board games won’t be manufactured in the U.S. anytime soon:
In a vacuum, if you don’t know the first thing about anything else, then it might feel like there’s a numbers-based carrot-and/or-stick solution that will push U.S. publishers to manufacture in the U.S. Unfortunately, in reality there are a lot of other barriers.
Mihealsick then details aspects of game production that do not exist in the U.S. or that require imports (mostly from China). This is the link to share with anyone who still asks “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” He concludes:
Americans have been reaping the rewards and eating that cake for the last 75 years, but now America wants to have that cake, too. Unfortunately, at least for the game industry, that’s just not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future.