We've all dreamed of turning our idea's/dreams into reality, however very few of us ever have the chance to be able to, so when Sarah started BoardGamesSolutions back in 2017 it originally started as a side business.
Now a few years later Sarah and her husband are hard at work full time for thier business adding solutions and new items as they come up with them. Here we were lucky enough to get some of Sarah's time to answer our starter questionaire...
Sarah, Bag's4Dice: I started BoardGameSolutions in Jan 2017 alongside my 9-5 office job, and in July 2019 I quit my job to run this full time. When we (myself and my husband) were coming up with the name, we were trying to find a name that described the business without being too specific. I knew I wanted to start with bags (hence my twitter name “bags4dice”) but we wanted the store to have room to expand. The reason for starting with bags comes from our first “modern” board game, Eldritch Horror, which needed a bag to draw the monsters from, providing a “solution” to a problem in a board game, leading us to BoardGameSolutions.
TP: What is your business best known for?
S: I feel like our drawstring bags are what people come to us for. We brand them as dice bags, but we have people using them for a whole host of game storage, from growing dice collections, to drawing tokens, tiles and minis in games, even to whole game storage for some smaller games.
TP: Why the TTRPG space?
S: Making accessories for games combines two of my hobbies, crafting and gaming. When we first started, there wasn’t a great deal of options out there, especially in the UK. We wanted to be able to offer functional and affordable accessories, without compromising on quality or design.
TP: What is your favourite product that you produce?
S: Although it started with bags, I do love making our wooden dice trays. It’s very satisfying to put the frames together, and being able to print the liners allows us to have an infinite number of patterns and designs, and it’s particularly interesting working on people’s custom images. I will never get tired of seeing so many cute pets’ photos as the base of a tray!
TP: How do you see the business developing in the next five years?
S: I would love to be able to offer bigger and better products. At the moment the machines we have limit our sizes of playmats and dice trays we can offer, but being able to offer larger items, as well as more custom items like gaming scenery and battle maps etc is our ultimate goal long term.
S: Almost every product we sell comes from us playing a game or campaign, and during gameplay encountering a problem that needs a “solution”, for example our card holders came from playing a game and running out of table space for our hand of cards, so the card holders have a small footprint to hold the cards upright, therefore freeing up table space.
TP: Whilst you do take commissions, what guidelines do you have in place?
S: I am happy to work with the tools I have to create custom orders, all I need is an image or logo and I can use various softwares to turn that into a dice bag, dice tray, playmat, even mugs and coasters, whatever they need for their table. The only main stipulation I have is that I cannot use copyrighted images unless the customer has permission to use them, so I can use your own character art for a dice tray, but I can’t use the Marvel logo or an illustration from a book.
TP: If you were given the time and opportunity to develop something unique for yourselves, what would it be and why?
S: I’d love to be able to make a large playmat for our games table. We bought a Middle Earth map one a few years ago and while it does the job, I’d love to be able to create a custom map with places unique to us and our adventures.
S: I love being able to offer custom work. I’ve worked with everything from custom character art to game shop and guild logos, to photos of families and pets. It’s great to be able to offer a unique item that the customer has a hand in designing, and being able to offer it across all of our items too makes for great gift sets! We have everything in house, from design software, fabric printing, wood cutting and embroidery so it really helps offer unique designs,
TP: Competition between independent business is at an all time high, as a small business what makes you unique that you feel helps show customers why they should do business with you?
S: I think what sets us apart from others is not only do we offer custom work, but we do it all ourselves in house. All I need is a logo/drawing/photo from the customer, and I can design that into whichever item they’re looking for, and make it in house without having to rely on (or charge for) 3rd party suppliers such as fabric printers like spoonflower.
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