Making makeshift cards, scribbling rules, and thrusting *very* homemade versions of a card game on to people to try out is all well and good, but at some point, the very grown-up practicalities of making a product to sell have to be worked around. Yes, we worked out pretty quickly that hours of googling manufacturers and getting quotes would be a good start, but how would we market the game? What’s the best way to make a website? How on Earth do you get it into a shop? And what the hell does it mean to be an LLP?

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At the start of things getting serious with our game, last summer, we reached out to Business Gateway, and met (over Microsoft Teams) our very lovely advisor Lisa -who has been endlessly supportive and patient with our many questions and queries. The service at Business Gateway has allowed us access to knowledge from accountants, specialists in online presence, marketing and legal advice, along with being a general soundboard for our thoughts.

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Through Business Gateway, we applied to the Glasgow Business Support Programme, and won time with specialists to help us on our journey to board game greatness. We split our time in half – the first half consisting of work with Matrix and a focus on marketing. This helped us re-frame our understanding of a marketing campaign, and we were delighted to work with Jamie from Matrix on this, who impressed on us the importance of our customer promise, the tangible, and the financial.

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Most recently, and using the second half of our allocated time, we have been working with the company Intend, who we reached out to in search of advice on how to get our product in to shops and in touch with distributors. This has always been something of a mystery process to us, and we are so pleased that Stuart from Intend has been helping us so much already – even after one meeting!

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Where all this goes next is for us to find out. However, we do have exciting plans and grand intentions. A huge thank you to all the experts who we have worked with so far. Watch this space!