Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answers

There’s a room where the fates of retail products are decided. Will they make it onto the shelves of the big box stores? Usually the rest of us can’t get inside the room where decisions are made – until now! Today on the show, we pitch the Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch, to big box retailers. We go behind the scenes to learn about how products end up on big box store shelves, what’s going on inside the minds of the deciders, and find out our board game’s fate. Learn more about the story of Pantone: The company that owns colors https://www.npr.org/2024/07/19/1197961103/pantone-colors-lawrence-herbert-stuart-semple-standards Support: Planet Money+ https://n.pr/3HlREPz Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUB Our weekly Indicator round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicator Follow: Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuws TikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrq YouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3C Facebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez and Jimmy Keeley. Planet Money’s executive producer is Alex Goldmark. Music: NPR Source Audio - "Silly Sevens," "Adventure Time," and "Virtual Machine" Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:17Speaker 01

  This is Planet Money from NPR.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  I have never heard my Planet Money co-host, Erica Barris, this nervous before. Hello, Erica. I'm in the car.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  OK, can everyone in your car hear me?

• 0:32Speaker 02

  No, this is between you and me. Erica had essentially dropped everything to fly to Los Angeles because there was a chance she might get inside the room, inside the system, maybe even participate in the system, where a relatively tiny group of people decide what products we all get to see and choose from when we walk into the country's biggest stores. All right, so where are you right now?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  I am in my hotel room, about two miles from the Exploding Kittens office.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Exploding Kittens is the company we've been working with to create the Planet Money board game. If you're new to this whole project, well, cue the recap. We are making a game, me and you, all listening at home, and Erica Barris, too. Erica, come help me with this recap, yes?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yes, gladly. In previous episodes, we've told you the story of how we partnered with the game company Exploding Kittens to try and design a game inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning economics paper, The Market for Lemons.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  That paper is literally about asymmetric information in the market for used cars. But broadly, it's about how making deals when one side knows more than the other side causes chaos, distrust, and ultimately destroys a market.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Our game version of that is not about used cars. We decided it should be about monsters, and we chose a name. It's called Sell Me a Sasquatch.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Sell Me a Sasquatch. Now, you listeners, you helped us refine this game. And in it, our players have hands of cards with cute little mythical creatures on them. And then the players offer deals to each other, trying to get the best creatures, but also maybe trying to trick their friends into accepting terrible creature cards because asymmetric information, you only ever have to show part of the deal.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  One of the reasons we decided to make this game in the first place is so it could be our Trojan horse to report inside a world that no other Planet Money project has entered, the real shelves at real big-box retail stores. And we think making an Exploding Kittens party game gives us the best chance of sneaking into that world.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  So, yes, that's the deal. And that is why Erica was at Exploding Kittens headquarters in Los Angeles. It's why they had told her essentially to drop everything because two representatives from a humongous big-box company were on their way to visit the Kittens office. Those representatives are board game experts traveling the country, sifting through hundreds of new games to decide which handful of new games will get space on their company's shelves. This is the moment if we want to get the Planet Money board game into big-box retail.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  So I am doing this call with you, and then I'm heading over there.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  OK, and are you going to get in the room for the pitch? Like, where did this land?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  It landed. They emailed me last night and he said that confirmation that you can be in the room for the pitch. So I know, part of me was like, maybe I don't have to do this, but.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  But, yeah, Erica was not just going to be in the room. She was going to have to do the pitch for the Planet Money game.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  This is a pretty big deal. I'm trying not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  It's really big. Is it helpful if I remind you how big it is? It's sort of the whole thing.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  It's not. I have a pitch, though. I like talked myself through it a few times. I was sitting on the airplane, like, kind of mumbling to myself, being like, and the thing you gotta know is our devoted audi-- I was just like, yeah, I got this, I got this. I have arm movements that are going to happen, so, OK.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  You got this, Erica, you got this.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  All right. Bye.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Bye. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  And I'm Erica Barris. And today on the show, we are going inside the secret room that could make or break our Planet Money game.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  And inside the minds of the people who decide what gets to be in big-box stores.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  We get a once-in-a-lifetime front-row seat for the Shark Tank way that essentially all the store shelves get filled at.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Oh, right. Also, we will explain why we cannot say which specific big-box retail company we got unusual access to. Stay tuned.

• 5:01Speaker 00

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• 5:28Speaker 03

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• 6:10Speaker 02

  I was somewhat stunned to learn that in the United States, 81% of our retail buying is still happening at brick-and-mortar locations. Like, $4 out of every $5 we spend on retail purchases is at a physical store, according to a report from Capital One.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Walmart and Kroger and Costco and Home Depot and Target are still huge parts of our economy and our lives.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  And the secretive world of big-box has been a place we've never gotten an inside look at. You know, when the Planet Money team made a t-shirt from scratch, we did not sell it through Walmart. When we launched a record label, the vinyl record for the Inflation Song was not on shelves at Target. And when we rescued a forgotten superhero who was then licensed for a cheese product, sadly Costco did not offer to carry five-pound blocks of microface-aged Gouda. Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  But seriously, big-box is still this hugely important corner of American life that we just haven't had the chance to understand.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  No, not until now, hopefully. The Planet Money board game project is the first serious chance we've had to try and follow a product into the real world, into big-box in this way. And it's part of why we decided to make a game in the first place. And before any of that can happen, Erica was going to have to convince a big-box company to take our game.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  OK, so I'm here.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  It is six hours before Erica's big pitch meeting.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I arrived extra, extra, extra early at the Exploding Kittens headquarters near West Hollywood. Hey, Thor.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  How are you?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Nice to meet you here. I can put my mic down for two seconds.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  That is Thor Ritz you hear there. He has been helping us for over a year to make our game.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  And the moment he walks me into their big, open-floor office space, you can tell everyone is heads down, preparing for this hugely important meeting.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Any luck see if those work? They might. These are the beanbags for the game.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Thor and I walk past a team huddled over a new dice game that's top secret.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  But it's one of the games that we're pitching, Lightning Dice.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  There's a small team doing last-second experimenting with a new plastic material that sort of explodes in this fun, surprising way. So then I just sort of pop it down? All right. Yeah, the office is full of people putting the final touches on game prototypes. Ours is one of 13 prototype games that Exploding Kittens is planning to pitch to the representatives from.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Ah, yes, we have arrived at the situation. So we are not saying the name of the big-box store coming to the office today because Exploding Kittens told us who they're talking to, the deals they're making. This is the kind of stuff that, you know, makes or breaks their business. And so we agreed to not record the actual pitch meeting and to not reveal the actual name of the big-box store in that meeting.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  But suffice it to say, Exploding Kittens was taking this company's visit very seriously. Yeah, let's go through seating, where everyone should sit.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  It is now T-minus one hour until the meeting.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  And Thor and I jump onto an emergency pitch prep call.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  How's everyone doing?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm good.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  OK.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  I do have a lot of notes.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Elon Lee is the co-founder of Exploding Kittens. He has become our friend, our co- Pilot, our general sage through the Planet Money board game project.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Should I be nervous?

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Um.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  You know, they're, they're actually, they're really good guys. However, they've seen the best games in the world fail without proper marketing support. So our goal today is to say, okay, we all love this game. Everyone who plays this game loves this game. Now we're going to tell you why it's also going to be the best selling game of all time.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, big box companies have small armies of buyers in charge of finding and buying the things for their sections of the store.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  There are baby aisle buyers and cosmetics buyers and food buyers. And today, the Exploding Kittens office is going to be visited by the board game buyers from the big box store that, that shall not be named.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  This whole song and dance is part of something called line review, as in a seasonal review of product lines. Retail buyers have to regularly look at what's on the shelves in their sections of their big box stores and decide what to keep, what to get rid of, and most importantly for us, what new products to add for the upcoming season.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  But, but here's the thing, this line review, this only happens twice a year. This really is our one chance to get a prototype of our game in front of the big box stores and then ask them, do you want to pay us to make tens of thousands of these things for you? And Thor tells Erica, she's going to have very little time to make that case to the big box store.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  We're probably talking between three and five minutes of.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  You're saying do not bring this entire notebook.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think you can aim for the upper end of that, like closer to five minutes.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So Elon explains that the plan is he'll be on a big screen in the room and do the setup. He's built a lot of trust with the buyers at this point. He's not worried about convincing them that the game is good.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  What he cannot do, though, is be beloved co-host of one of the most listened to podcasts in the country, Erica Barris.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Stop, stop, stop, go on.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Although, for real, though, this is kind of the whole ballgame right here. We partnered with Exploding Kittens in part to optimize our chance of getting into big box, but they partnered with us in part because the big box board game world is getting more and more competitive. So Erica's job is to tell these buyers about our advantage, about Planet Money, our incredible audience, our history with projects, and frankly, just to keep their attention.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Do they have tells, like they touch their nose, you're like, success, keep going, keep going?

• 12:17Speaker 05

  I've certainly have seen them do things that mean they're definitely not going to buy it, which is like, if they start checking their phones halfway through.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, that's so terrible.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, we've seen all of that.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  They take countless of these, like, we are just one of many people that they do the same sort of meeting with, so.

• 12:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Like, this is it, right? We have like a seven more minutes before, and then that's it. Whatever we figure out now, we, that's what we need for the room. So what else should I know?

• 12:47Speaker 05

  Don't be nervous, smile. They have a very, very difficult job because they're trying to tell the future, and that's not possible. So a lot of times, what the, the best tool they have is to bet on the person instead of the game. And so they want to see this person is going to devote themselves to make it successful because ultimately that's really all they can bet on. This is going to go great. Don't worry about it.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Thanks, Elon.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Well, I'll talk to you both soon.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  All right. See you soon. And with that, I go find an empty little room. Our podcast is, of course, the big part. Turn over my notes. Our listeners are the best of us, which is a great thing that Kenny said earlier. Until they called me in. Okay, is it time? And I turned off my recorder.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Erica?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yes?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Tell me everything. How did it go? I'm so, I'm so excited.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm going to walk you through the whole thing. Immediately afterwards, while Exploding Kittens was pitching its other games, I called Kenny to tell him everything.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  What are the first things that someone says in the room?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Uh, Erica, sit down. What's the first thing I heard?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Were you like standing too long or something? Did you forget to sit?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I was standing there. I wasn't, I was like, do I stand for my presentation? And I was like, what is this? Like, I'm ready to go, you know?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  So I walk in, I sit down eventually.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Elon is up on the screen, and he's like, this collaboration is the thing he's most excited about and so on and so forth. And he's like, and Erica's here. And I was like, oh, that's me, you know? And I don't even know what happened. I was just talking. I just was blah, blah, blah, Microface, blah, blah, blah, Planet Money, blah, blah, blah, devoted audience. So, yeah, so.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  So what did they seem to respond to?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  So this is, this is interesting. They did not respond to anything to do with the actual game.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Oh, what?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Or Planet Money, for that matter. Like, they just took that for granted, and they just kind of nodded and smiled, but they had concerns.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Erica explained, they, they seemed a little worried about who the game was for exactly, kids, teens, adults, and also the number of players. Is there a two-player version? But, but it seemed like the primary concern was about money, the price of the game.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  They were like, it kind of almost feels like it should be one of those $9.99 card games, but it's actually. Yeah, it's tricky. So they're like, it's not a $10 game, but it doesn't seem like a $20 game.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Like, that did not seem great to you and me, Erica, no? Like, it almost, it almost sounded like they did not know what to do with our game or like how to place it exactly.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Right. But the next day, hello, can you hear me?

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Hey, yeah, I can hear you.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  I called Elon, who had heard that price stuff very differently than the way we did.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  They, they did ask one question, and I think it was very telling. They said, how set are you on the price point? And that, for me, that's when like little confetti bombs started going off in my head because that was like, oh, they're not asking about whether or not they should sell this thing. They are now asking about the best way to sell it.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Elon explained that if you think about a board game, our board game, there is a huge range of possibilities for what the final product would or could actually look like on a shelf. You know, we've just got a prototype for now, and at its core, our game is really just a deck of special cards. So there's an incredibly cheap version of that game, I suppose. It's just like, I don't know, here's a little, here's a deck of cards, like Uno.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  On the other end of the spectrum, it's way more fun if we could afford to include a little figurine of like a Sasquatch to help keep track of turns.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Little vinyl guy, I love that.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Why not? Tokens for points and maybe like.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Little metal tokens, like a little clinky clanky, I love it.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  And maybe like a bigger, nicer box to hold all of that stuff.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Right now, the game is still a prototype. So this pricing decision, it will ultimately determine all of that stuff. We will, to some extent, change our per unit production cost to meet the price point we choose right now.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, what it all comes down to is, once you set your price, it is very hard to change.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, like, once the product is on the shelf, it's very hard to change a price.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Because if you raise your price, that's suicide. And if you lower your price, then suddenly it looks like you're discounting it. Like, suddenly you're just trying to get rid of a cheap thing. So it's so important to nail it the first time. We're really setting the stage for the entire global market for that product by picking one price, one time.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  What is the next step? Actually, let me ask you that. What is the next step?

• 17:46Speaker 05

  Oh, next steps unfortunately are waiting. Now we wait. I, I never think of anything as a done deal until we get the paperwork, which means that as enthusiastic as they are and as excited as they are, who knows? Maybe the next meeting will be, will present 20 games and every single one of them is triple A and we just get knocked away. So all of that's possible, and now we wait.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  And that wait, it did give us some time to do some reporting because, you know, sure, we'd been inside the room with the buyers, but we wanted to know what was inside the mind of those buyers when Erica was pitching. So we made some phone calls.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Okay, so you essentially have sat on the other side of that table. Like, I come, I give a pitch, you're the one who sits on the other side.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yes, correct. That was me. Okay, it wasn't literally him.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  No, that is Matt Adelman, but his job was exactly like those people I sat across from. Specifically, Matt was a big box buyer.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, Matt worked for Target, and he sat through hundreds of these types of line review meetings. And you know, for Erica, she was a nervous wreck. We asked Matt, what is this moment like from your perspective, from a buyer's perspective?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  What are you thinking?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'm like, here we go again. Where is this conversation going to go? It, it's very routine. If there's 100 line review submissions, about 30 of them actually get a line review meeting. Of the 30 that get a line review meeting, three to six of, of those brands ultimately get on the shelf.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  That's it?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  It's, it's tough.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Now, Matt was not a board game buyer specifically. When he worked at Target, he was in charge of deciding what to buy for the deli and prepared foods aisles.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Hummus, charcuterie, potato salad, regular salads. But he told us, honestly, when it comes to big box, hummus, board games, it's all the same.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  It's the same process. Like, it's putting a box on a shelf, whether that's food, whether that's beauty, whether that's a game, like, the same thoughts go into it, the same analysis goes into it, the same, is this going to work or not? The same financials on the backend, right? Like, how many dollars did you generate? How much margin did you return? Is it working or not working? It's all the same. So our question for Matt was, in a pitch meeting like Erica's, pitching a brand new game, what would the buyers on the other side of the table be thinking? At the end of the day, what am I really thinking? Is, is this going to sell? If I bring this in, I have to replace something, right? You're going to take a spot on the shelf at the expense of some.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Are you going to do better than that thing that I take out and put you in for? And there is a set amount of space in a store for this category. And I need to make that space as productive as I possibly can.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Big box retailers will use these like blueprints of store shelves called planograms. And Matt says that's one of the things in his mind during line review pitches. He's kind of mentally playing retail Tetris.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  And then when the meeting's over, yeah, we are waiting. But this is when the buyers like Matt have to really get to work. If they like something, if they like our pitch, they still have to then make a pitch to their bosses. Remember the nerves you had, I'm sure, sitting in the line of view pitching to the buyer?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Well, now the buyers get to go to their VPs or their SVPs and say, here's my planogram. Here's what I want to do. And now the VPs and all the senior leaders get to go, what about this? And they challenge you like crazy. And so now I need to pitch my stuff to them, just like you had to pitch to me. And there's tons of pushback and there's tons of, I don't know, I don't agree. What about this? What about that? That you have to defend as a merchant. And if you can't defend it, you better go fix it.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  So just to recap the path to a big box shelf, there are like 5,000 new board games every year. A tiny, tiny fraction will actually get to be part of a line review pitch. An even tinier fraction will get the buyer's attention. And those still have to go into planograms that get pitched to VPs and SVPs before games actually get ordered for the real shelves.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  But, but none of those games had Erica Barris in the room for their line review.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  How often do you have like somebody who is not in the industry, like say a podcast host pitching the retailers on an item?

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, 10 years ago, not very often in today's world. If you think about all of the creators and all of the influencers and all the people that have built a following. You know, it's, a lot of them are spinning out products.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And they show up.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  They show up.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Okay, hmm, maybe not as special as we were hoping.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Anyway, all of that, that is why getting into big box is a very serious business. And apparently why we have to wait so long to hear anything about how our pitch meeting went.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  It was months and months and months of nothing. During that time, Exploding Kittens did do a similar line review pitch process with other big box retailers. You know, more pitches, better chance someone picks us up and tells us, you know, go forth, make a bunch of games for us.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And then nearly five months after I'd been in LA pitching the buyers, Alon from Exploding Kittens got in touch and said, we have to meet.

• 23:08Speaker 05

  We have so much stuff to talk about.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  We have some updates maybe from retailers if you want to start there.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  That is Stephanie Pesta, Senior Creative Operations Manager at Exploding Kittens. Erica and I and our boss, Alex Goldmark, also on the call. We all start to lean into our Zoom screens and Exploding Kittens cut straight to the chase.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  The exciting retailer news is that for the two big retailers in the US, the Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch, has been accepted full chain throughout North America.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Holy moly.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  That sounds big. Is that big?

• 23:48Speaker 05

  It's literally as big as a thing could be. Yes.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Both retailers.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  Both, yes.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Two of the biggest big box retailers in the country both placed orders to buy and carry Sell Me a Sasquatch on their shelves. Did they say how important it was that Erica did the greatest presentation of all time?

• 24:11Speaker 05

  Or? I, I don't think, okay, so look, I don't think they're used to that. I think that was brand new for them. I think like those, those meetings are normally so dry and so boring. And it's, it's just, you know, it's the same people having the same discussions over and over. But we like, we had a celebrity in the room.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Oh, my, who?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  It was you, Erica. When we talked to the former buyer, Matt, he had told us that, that having a special person with a special product was getting more and more common. And it turns out that that's way more true in the food and cosmetic space. You know, think Rihanna's makeup line or Mr. Beast's chocolate bars. Apparently for board games, though, it was still genuinely novel and exciting to have the one and only Erica Barris from Planet Money in the room.

• 25:00Speaker 05

  And Erica, Erica pitched her little heart out and like they were amazed. And I think they walked away from that just thinking like, wow, this is, this is new. Nobody's doing this. We, this isn't the same meeting we've had 20 times before.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  I have no memory of anything that happened in that room, so.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  All told, Exploding Kittens got a first round of orders for about 100,000 units of our game.

• 25:28Speaker 05

  Anyway, it is now official, like absolutely official, done deal. The orders have been placed.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  I wish I had confetti.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  I'm going to blow this mic out if I'm not careful. This is so exciting.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's all kinds of things that come next. But none of those happen until those boats get on the water.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Oh, we still have to actually make and get the games to and.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  After the break, a whole new clock starts ticking.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Plus, where you can buy the game, how much it costs, and why we really, really hope that you appreciate our purple box.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Babson College. The world needs entrepreneurial leaders and you can become one at Babson College. Gain the skills to lead, motivate, and inspire through a specialized master's or MBA program with full time, part time, and online options. Turn ideas into action with a graduate program that caters to your professional needs and fits your lifestyle. Ranked number one in entrepreneurship by US News and World Report. Visit babson.edu/gradprograms.

• 26:54Speaker 00

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• 27:21Speaker 03

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  One month after learning the great big box news, Kenny and I were both summoned to Exploding Kittens headquarters.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  All right, Alon, where are we going?

• 27:56Speaker 05

  Uh, let's go in here. Welcome to the Planet Money Conference Room.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Wait, the Planet Money Conference Room?

• 28:04Speaker 02

  The whole room is devoted to the Planet Money game. Covering the biggest conference table you've ever seen, cards showing all kinds of mythical monsters and, and boxes with our Sasquatch and our game logo. And oh my goodness, so many versions of instruction booklets.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  These are very nearly the final prototypes. But apparently we still have a gazillion small decisions to make.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  And like at the end of today, that's it?

• 28:33Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  We're locked?

• 28:33Speaker 05

  We're locked.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  We have to be locked, actually. We need to send files to the factory tomorrow.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  So this is a speak now or forever hold your peace moment.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, tomorrow. Why the rush? Well, Chinese New Year is a big reason, apparently.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Right, so the day we got the news that the two big box retailers wanted our game was Monday, January 12th, exactly 36 days before the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Lunar New Year is a massive event for the global economy. Chinese factories often shut down for two or three weeks. And, and leading up to the shutdown, factories start to slow production for even more weeks.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  And then following the shutdown, it's even more weeks until all workers are back and factories are running full force.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Exploding Kittens told us if we wanted our Our game, to be done and in stores in time for the holidays, we needed to be ready to go for that post Lunar New Year factory restart. And Exploding Kittens had a spot in the factory queue, and we needed to make sure we did not miss it.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  We had the narrowest window. And so began one of the most frantic home stretches of a project I can remember.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  24 hours to get the game files to China and a mad dash to handle a bunch of other tasks.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Which, which is why we have brought into the studio here, this here, Egg Timer, just to give you all listening at home a sense of the stress and the chaos and also the learning about taking a product to market that we experienced as a clock, a time bomb, really, tick, tick, ticking towards our due date.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  So many tasks we still had to get done. Here we go. Task one.

• 30:22Speaker 05

  Shall we look at a spreadsheet?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  The answer is always yes, we want to look at.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Contracts. Like, how much money will NPR/Planet Money make off this thing?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  The thing that we will eventually negotiate is this number here that you're looking at royalty. But before.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Royalty deals, licensing deals. For board games, that tends to be like 3% to 7% of something called net revenue.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  After months and months of negotiating, we landed right square in that industry standard with, though, a couple of sweeteners, I will say.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. For one, we get a small guaranteed upfront fee. But more importantly, our royalty percentage goes way up if our game is a runaway hit. If, when we hit 200,000 units sold, with your help, of course, our royalty nearly doubles.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, we built in that incentive so that the more we sell, the bigger cut Exploding Kittens gives to NPR.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Now, if 3%, 5%, 7% sound like small percentages, it's because Exploding Kittens takes virtually all the risk in this deal. They are eating the cost of development and prototyping and manufacturing of this game. They're starting in the hole for all that money.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, when the big boxes and other companies actually start paying Exploding Kittens for games, then we get to scoop our cup into that sweet, sweet stream of money and take our percentage, minus a relatively narrow set of expenses that have to do with the selling of our specific game, basically.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, like maybe we offer customers a rebate at some point, or maybe we end up paying for a fancy display and the end cap, you know, at the end of the aisle.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  It's, it's your paying rent. Like, they literally charge rent for those placements.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Okay, task two, game price.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  We were worried that Big Box was seeing us as a cheap $9.99 card game. Apparently, Exploding Kittens had also been worried about this.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  We fought that fight fiercely.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  That's Kelly Voplik, VP of Creative Operations at Exploding Kittens, by the way.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  We're looking at a, it's a $20 price point, and that screams multi-generational family party game.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  In the end, Exploding Kittens got Big Box to agree to an MSRP, a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $19.99.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Does that result in more profit for us? Or?

• 32:35Speaker 05

  It is possible for that to result in more profit for us, but we opted to spend that money on the product.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  I mean, I would have done the same thing.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we poured all of that increased price into making a nicer version of the game. We splurged on a high-quality material for the cards that Alon loves.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  We upgraded to a higher-quality box that signals, you know, this is a game that requires a little time, and it's worth it.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  And it meant we could afford to make our box the Pantone Purple, not just everyday purple.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  The Pantone Purple.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  This is kind of getting in the weeds of like art, but this is printing CMYK 4C. And when we tested it, like, in the office, it was just kind of dull and not bright and looking really muddy. So we made the decision to, like, go forward with the Pantone, a little bit more expensive, but like, you can see how much impact it has.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  It's glorious.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Pantone is a whole color system where you pay extra because the colors can be perfectly reproduced by anyone in the Pantone world. Check out our Planet Money episode about this.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  So that purple, it was going to cost, like, 3 cents extra per unit, but I would have paid so much more after seeing it during task three. Ah, so a little time. Task three, the real-world shelf test. Feels like we're about to do something bad.

• 33:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, it does. It feels like clandestine somehow, but.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  I mean, it kind of is.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  You're about to hijack some very valuable store shelf. Before Exploding Kittens starts printing any game, they, often Alon, will sneak into a Big Box store.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It's going to be the spot right here. You just put it up there.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  And just put their game on the shelf to just see.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Okay. Does it stand out enough? Too much?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Does it read well from far away?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Does it look okay when it inevitably gets knocked over?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Or gets shoved back into the shadows of the shelves?

• 34:21Speaker 05

  I would argue that still stands up in shadow, like, which is a tough position to be in. The lighter colors on there still pop right out.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Do you see anything else that's our Pantone purple?

• 34:33Speaker 05

  Nothing.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  That's really interesting. Is that good or bad?

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Really good.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Really good.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  Like, it is very hard to go through this process and get a definitive yes, we're doing it right.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  I think, at the very least, we can definitively say, this is not broken.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Ah, okay, okay, we're running out of time here. Speed round, Erica. Task four, box finish.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  We decided to switch the box from glossy finish to matte finish to signal grown-up game.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Apparently, kids' games have been using glossy finishes as a fancy cover-up for the fact that they skimped on cardboard quality and spent on expensive plastic toy things for, for the game.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Ah, so much to do. Task five, what's on the back of the box?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  At the 11th hour, we land on a comic strip format.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  I think we need a speech level here.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Back of the box just has to explain enough about the game to give people the feel of the game.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Tasks six, seven, eight, nine, 10, tweaks to the instructions.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  A QR code to send people to our board game podcast series.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  A different QR code that sends people to a video of the, ah! Sends you to a video of the game.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  And we didn't even tell you about the long discussion over punctuation on the front of the box.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  It was a long discussion. I do think that period has to go inside the parenthesis stylistically.

• 35:49Speaker 05

  We have this argument every single day here.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  After all of this was done, Alon and the Exploding Kittens walked us over to a gigantic bell in the middle of their offices.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  This is the bell that they ring when they finish and ship a game, and they felt like it was our time.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  All right, do I say anything? Is it like, is it like a birthday handle? We did it?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  We did it. The source files for our game, Sell Me a Sasquatch, were sent off to the factory in China. And very soon after that. Oh, my gosh. It's all there, Tori.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  So Kenny, this is the machine I was telling you about.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  I was FaceTiming with Exploding Kittens' global sourcing person, Tori Welch, from the floor of the factory in Shanghai. And all of that noise, like, that is the sound of thousands and thousands of our game coming off of the printing press, you know, cards and boxes. And, and she is specifically showing me the tool that the factory has for quality control, to make sure that our Pantone Purple is exactly right.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  It's going to scan and tell you whether or not it's the perfect purple.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, it's the purple meter.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Can he show me? Can he do this?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Sorry, I blew my, yeah, this is so exciting. Oh, my gosh. It's so loud, it's so loud. Oh, they've got the swatches. There's the Pantone swatches. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so they're pointing at the Pantone. And look, maybe it was the fact that it was like 2:00 AM my time, but seeing this tiny portal to the other side of the world, to our game, choked me up a little bit. Four months later. Wait, where are the board games? I walked into a Big Box retailer with my six-year-old daughter. Oh. Oh, my goodness. All right, there it is. Here, turn around and look up at it. Point to it.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's the game, the game that everyone at your school wants? No, you got to say yes. Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  And listen, we still cannot say exactly which Big Box retailer I got into the room with. But what we can tell you is the Planet Money Exploding Kittens game, Sell Me a Sasquatch, is now available on shelves at Target and Walmart and lots of other places that sell board games, including the NPR shop.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, we saved the best news for last, Erica.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  You, listeners, you're in this game.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Not only did you spend hundreds and hundreds of hours testing prototypes of this game.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  And sending us your incredibly useful and thoughtful feedback.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  But you also sent us more than 1,000 amazing ideas for what mythical creatures we should include in this game.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  We love them so much. The local cryptids you told us about, the deep-cut econ cryptids you invented.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And here is a sampling of what successfully we convinced Exploding Kittens to include in the actual game.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  You're going to find the Veblen, the Bull Bear, the Lafer. If you know, you know. The Ogo Pogo. Send me notes about pronunciation. I totally accept them, I'm sorry. And Australia, you came out preposterously strong for this challenge. And we have, we've seen you, and we have included the Drop Bear, which is a very real thing that you should be scared of in Australia.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  When you buy the game and look at the cards, you will see that Exploding Kittens included a little symbol on those cards so you can see which ones came from you.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  We are so, so proud of this.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  If you still want to help out on this project, there's going to be a lot of opportunities. But right now, the most important thing to do is honestly rate and review the game. Verified purchases matter a lot more in the rating and reviewing system. And so if you buy the game, review it where you bought it. And post a game night, tell your friends about it, be a smug econ person and trick them into learning the econ, and then you can produce the paper, The Market for Lemons, and then read from it to them. It'll be a blast. And, you know, send us an email. Maybe we'll zoom into your game night, who knows? This episode was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Marian McEwen. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Planet Money's executive producer is Alex Goldmark.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  By the way, you can get our game and lots of other merch at the NPR shop at shopnpr.org. I'm Erica Barris.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  I'm Kenny Malone. This is NPR, and I have purchased a Sasquatch costume. So watch the socials.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab. Financial decisions can be tricky. Your biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/financialdecoder.