The Manaverse Podcast

New round table episode! Wizard's new $999 Beta booster pack product, The future of the friendly local game store, Are game cafes the natural evolution of the FLGS? What separates good retail from bad, And more. Matthew Vercant and Pat Fuge join me to discuss the future of the friendly local game store and speculate on the future of Magic: the Gathering. Are lawsuits incoming? Is the game cafe mod...

Today we're talking with Jason Garvin. Jason is the manager of Total Escape Games , a premium retailer of tabletop games, carrying a vast array of role-playing games, card games, miniatures games, board games, and more in Broomfield Colorado. Jason is going to give us some insight into the origins of the store, dealing with the day to day operations of running a large retail focused game store, ho...

Hey, welcome back to the Manaverse Podcast! I'm your host Tom Traplin and this is the podcast where we explore what it takes to build a successful friendly local game store. Before we jump into things, Q4 is coming and I'm looking for more game store owners to feature on the podcast, so if you get an email or phone call from me in the near future don't be too surprised. If you want a chance to tel...

Jake Tanner is the owner Unplugged Gaming in Manlius New York. Jake came into the tabletop gaming business from a different angle than most of the game store owners that have been featured on the podcast. Before launching Unplugged Gaming, Jake, along with his business partner, owned and operated a highly lauded digital marketing firm called Digital Hyve that they grew to over 50 employees over a...

For most game store owners, SEO is techno jargon. Something that only the biggest ecommerce businesses need to think about. I've also heard variations of the sentiment that it’s impossible to compete with the big players like BGG and Amazon in the search engines. That’s only half true. SEO definitely sounds like the kind of techno jargon you'd hear from a Priest of the Mechanicum, but your website...

Dustin is the owner and founder of Board Gaming with Education and BGE Tabletop. He has experience teaching English as a second language to a variety of age levels – from kindergarten to university. He also works in the field of education in various capacities. BGE started off as podcast in 2017 and has expanded into a platform for educators to learn how to incorporate games into their curriculum,...

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a great time celebrating the arrival of 2022. One of the things I like to do at the beginning of the year is to look back a bit and see what happened over the past 12 months and establish a bit of a theme for the coming year. So that's what we're doing today. Let's discuss three of the biggest lessons I learned over the past year and how they've changed the...

This is the second podcast in a series that I'm calling Launch Lessons, where I'll be breaking down the Six Pillars of Digital Marketing and show you just how powerful and important they are to your business's growth. If you haven't listened to the last episode on how much your email list is worth, go back and check that one out. Today we're talking about content and why having the right content o...

In the spirit of giving value up front, this is the first podcast in a series that I'm calling Launch Lessons, where I'll be breaking down the Six Pillars of Digital Marketing and show you just how powerful and important they are to your business's growth. First up, we're talking about one of my favourite topics and one area of marketing that almost every game store I've looked at could improve on...

If you're a game store owner, you're ridiculously busy most of the time. You've got inventory to manage, events to organize, people to hire, and a million products to stay on top of. It's a lot to handle... and marketing your game store often becomes an afterthought. Something that always gets pushed onto the back burner. And it doesn't matter what stage of business you're in. If you're just getti...

Today we are talking with Alex Thor and Jonathan Adams. Alex is the Director of Operations at RPG Travel and Jonathan is their resident gaming master. Both of these fine gentlemen were featured at the recent 2021 LGS Success Summit and today we are going to explore what RPG Travel is, how it works, and how you, dear listener, as a game store owner can work with them to offer your customers an unfo...

Athena Games in Norwich, UK In today's episode of the Manaverse Podcast, we're talking with Jamie Grinstead from Athena Games. Athena Games is Norwich's premier tabletop game destination for gamers of all sorts and we dive into their origin story, what sets them apart, and how they have navigated the changing digital landscape over the last two years to create a thriving ecommerce business using S...

Let's have a quick chat about the allocation situation and how distribution can help support game stores that spend years building the communities that create the demand for the products in the first place. Grab your ticket to the LGS Success Summit >> https://lgssuccesssummit.com Follow Dave Salisbury on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/dave.salisbury.fanboy3

Jess Carrier is the featured guest on the Manaverse Podcast today. Jess is the Head of Marketing and Events at Noble Knight Games in Wisconsin and we're going to dig into my favourite topic, which as you probably know by now, is marketing. We're going to discuss her experience jumping in as the head of marketing at Noble Knight, some of the trends we've been seeing over the past year, content crea...

The 2nd LGS Success Summit is scheduled for September 7th to 9th, 2021 and we're going bigger and better for this one. Just like last time, this summit is a virtual event so you don't have to worry about spending thousands of dollars on airfare and travel and accommodations and food. You can attend the summit and listen to the expert speakers from the comfort of anywhere with an internet connectio...

Does Your Game Store Need an SEO Specialist? If you've been in business for any length of time you've probably been pitched SEO services at least a few times by people promising to get you on page 1 of Google. That sounds pretty good right? The trouble is hiring someone for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be very hit or miss. Some people are great and others will try to rip you off completely...

In today's episode we are going straight to the source and exploring what makes the WPN program tick, how to achieve that coveted Premium status for your game store, and how to make the most it. Luke May is the Retail Experience Specialist for Wizards of the Coast in the UK and Nelson Brown is the Wizards Play Network Community Manager in Seattle, and they join me today to discuss the Premium prog...

Curt Covert is the founder, creative force and jack-of-all-trades at Smirk & Dagger. He’s worn all the hats including art director, copywriter, marketer and concept director, and in a past life he was also a creative director and marketing planner for promotion agencies servicing Fortune 500 companies and brands like M&Ms, Jameson, Dannon, Unilever, Disney theme park eateries, and more. To...

On May 13th, 2021, Wizards of the Coast announced plans to move away from it's current iteration of Organized Play and phase out the MPL and Rivals leagues. The 2021-2022 season will be the final season of Wizard's foray into e-sports in it's current form, and it looks like they will be refocusing on in-person and local level play more closely in the future. Wizards Announces Major Changes To Prof...

Molly Zeff, the cofounder of Flying Leap Games is on the Manaverse Podcast to talk about getting into the game publishing business and what she learned by visiting over 250 game stores all over the world. If you're interested in discovering how to get your game published, Molly shares a number of valuable lessons on how to take a game from concept to manufactured product and then getting that prod...

Jouni Jussilla is on the Manaverse Podcast to talk about Dized, a digital companion designed to be used next to physical tabletop games. We all know that one of the biggest obstacles to picking up a new game is learning the rules, which is why we often refer to our friends to teach us. It creates a much better learning experience and gets us into the game faster. Imagine having that exact same exp...

GAMA EXPO 2021 has come and gone so let's talk about what went well and what could be improved on. Today, I'm breaking down my experience with the Expo and some of the difficulties I ran into while registering for the event, as well as talking about some of the advantages of the Spatial Chat system and how it can be made even better for next years Expo. If you want to be part of a community on you...

If you’ve been open for any length of time in this business you’ve probably run into someone who thinks they deserve a special deal. Maybe they’ve been a long time customer, maybe they’ve just rolled in off the street and feel like you owe them cheaper prices. At the moment of this recording there is a surge of speculation in the Pokémon market with a huge number of people buying up product in ord...

Devon Chulick is the Founder and COO of Start Playing Games, a service that helps connect tabletop RPG gamers and professional game masters together to create amazing gaming experiences. Devon has been involved in the eCommerce industry for over a decade with a number of businesses under his belt. He enjoys reading, volleyball, pizza, and Dungeons and Dragons, and today we're going to get to know...

Steve Port joins me on the podcast to discuss his latest project, Melee.gg and the future of Magic tournaments, online and offline. Learn how Melee.gg can allow your game store to run Magic tournaments more efficiently than ever, both in store and on Magic: Arena. Find out how the platform works, how you can run events with minimal staffing and still have a smooth tournament experience for your cu...