JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Our Planet Money podcast has spent the last two years designing a game, like a board game, based on Nobel Prize-winning economics. The designing, it turned out, was maybe the easy part. Then they had to convince stores to sell it. Here's NPR's Kenny Malone and Erika Beras.
ERIKA BERAS, BYLINE: We got word that two big-box retail reps were headed to see our game-making partners, the company Exploding Kittens.
KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: Erika would have a few short minutes to pitch our Planet Money game to those reps.
BERAS: Before the meeting, game designers Elan Lee and Thor Ritz prepped me.
Do they have tells? Like, they touch their nose; you're like, success - keep going.
ELAN LEE: I certainly have seen them do things that mean they're definitely not going to buy it, like if they start checking their phones.
THOR RITZ: We are just one of many people that they do the same sort of meeting with, so.
LEE: Yeah.
MALONE: These "Shark Tank"-style pitch meetings are highly sensitive, so we agreed to not record the meeting or reveal which major big box store was visiting.
BERAS: And so...
Here we go.
...I headed for the meeting room and turned off my recorder.
MALONE: Erika?
BERAS: Yes.
MALONE: Tell me everything. How did it go? I'm so excited.
BERAS: Immediately afterwards, I called Kenny to tell him everything.
MALONE: What are the first things that someone says in the room?
BERAS: Erika, sit down. (Inaudible).
MALONE: Were you, like, standing too long or something?
BERAS: I was standing, but I wasn't - I was like, do I stand for my presentation? And I was like...
MALONE: (Laughter).
Erika explained that the buyers didn't check their phones while she made the case that we have a loyal audience who would love a smart, fun party game. But the big box reps, they seemed to want to talk about price.
BERAS: They were like, it kind of almost feels like it should be one of those 9.99 card games.
MALONE: Ooh, that's too cheap.
BERAS: (Inaudible). Yeah, it's tricky. So they're like, it's not a $10 game, but it doesn't seem like a $20 game.
MALONE: Like, that did not seem great to you and me, Erika.
BERAS: But Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens later told us that he heard that price stuff very differently.
LEE: They said, how set are you on the price point? And that - 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.
BERAS: We couldn't ask our specific big box buyers what they were thinking, so we called Matt Adelmann, a former buyer for Target.
MALONE: He was a buyer for deli and prepared foods, but, you know, buying hummus, charcuterie is no different than board games when it comes to big box, he says.
MATT ADELMANN: Like, it's putting a box on a shelf. Like, the same analysis goes into it. How many dollars did you generate? How much margin did you return?
MALONE: Big box retailers will use these blueprints of store shelves called planograms.
ADELMANN: If I bring this in, I have to replace something. And I need to make that space as productive as I possibly can.
MALONE: Hopefully, we'd made that productivity case to the reps Erika met with about our game which, by the way, is called Sell Me A Sasquatch.
BERAS: A few months after that meeting, we got a call from Elan Lee.
LEE: The exciting retailer news is that for the two big retailers in the U.S., the Planet Money game, Sell Me A Sasquatch, has been accepted full chain throughout North America.
BERAS: Holy moly. (Laughter) I wish I had confetti.
MALONE: I'm going to blow this mic out if I'm not careful. This is so exciting.
BERAS: Matt Adelmann, the former buyer, told us that of 100 pitches he gets, just 30 get a meeting, and of those, just three to six get on the shelf.
MALONE: Kenny Malone.
BERAS: Erika Beras.
MALONE: NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
