Amazon has more than 600,000 toys and games in their webstore. Each day they rank the best sellers in specific categories, Toys and Games, being one of those categories. To reach the top spot you have to have one hot toy. After all, you are competing with every toy, every game, every doll, truck, or flying shark that Amazon sells.
In January of 2011, Max Temkin and 7 other friends had their card game idea successfully fund on Kickstarter. At the time, the $15,000 they raised was considered a lot of money and extremely successful. Cards of Against Humanity went to print, with about 800 copies going to Kickstarter backers. The rest were put on Amazon using Amazon's FBA system. After all, Max and friends all had real jobs and sitting around fulfilling orders off the web wasn't something they wanted to be doing in their spare time.
It took 3 months to sell the 1500 copies of the game. So they ordered a couple of thousand more...and sold out in less than a month. They upped the order by a few more thousand and then sold out in a week. Up above 6,000 was the next order and they sold out in hours.
In the meantime, Cards Against Humanity had climbed to become the top selling toy or game on Amazon...that is when they could keep it in stock. As of this writing, there is a ship heading from China with a really big pallet of games. So big, that they can't truck it to the warehouse anymore, it has to go by train. When the pallet gets to Amazon's fulfillment warehouse you will be able to get Cards Against Humanity. In the meantime, you can order from those who have bought their own copies and now are selling them for $60 to $90 online.
Max talks about this experience of having a successful project and the difficulty of believing that something can just keep growing when you think everyone who wants a copy of your game has a copy of your game.
We thank Max for taking some time to join us on Funding the Dream on Kickstarter.
Listen to Episode 46 of Funding the Dream on Kickstarter here
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