Inkwell Ideas 2013 Review & 2014 Going Forward

As we did last year, I want to take a step back and go over Inkwell Ideas’ 2013 and 2014 plans. But before we get into all of that: Happy new year!

Overall, 2013 was financially probably flat or a little up when compared to 2014. Our online sales were up a modest amount (10-15%) and GenCon was nearly double what it was in 2012 (more on that below) but we only did one successful Kickstarter this year and its final funding wasn’t as high as other past Kickstarters (more info below). We also did well selling a large number of dice to/through ThinkGeek.

The Blog

So at the start of the year we wanted to write a blog post every day to keep the site interesting and because, frankly, I believe it is the best way to remind people of our products.  That went well in January and February but fell off in March as we focused on fulfilling our Kickstarters.  We still updated about weekly (sometimes less) but I think daily or nearly every day posts are needed to keep our name out there most effectively.  We picked the frequency back up in October and I think we’ve done it in a smart way that complements our other projects:

• Mondays we have done battlemat maps, which will serve as the basis (with many additions) of our pdf of buildings battlemats which is one of the two last remaining parts of our Cityographer (city map editor and generator) Kickstarter.
• Wednesdays have featured some other free content for use with Hexographer.  We plan to include a set of Dungeonographer icons too and there will likely be some things for Cityographer down the line.
• Fridays post our “Friday Foes” where we are in the process of creating/converting many creatures into Labyrinth Lord for use in our next set of Creature Decks.
• Tuesday and Thursday are for highlighting projects and news and cool stuff from other websites and companies.  But they can also be for a post that doesn’t fit the above, like this one.
• Saturday and Sunday are usually off from new posts unless there is something significant, but that just gives us a chance to catch up on larger projects.

That approach allows us to have regular updates of new free stuff on the blog and make progress on our other projects.

Kickstarters

Next a few words on our outstanding Kickstarters:

Cityographer

The software itself is in good shape.  There are a few things I’d like to add, but overall I think we’re at a point that is comparable to where I envisioned “1.0” and I foresee doing that in the next month.  So if you’ve got it, use it! It has been in use for most of the year and we’ve been adding features and fixing bugs throughout.  That will continue.

The two outstanding tasks are to release the fantasy map items/icons/objects (aka “medieval set 2”).  This has come along very nicely and has buildings that are more fantastical than the other medieval icon set.  I’ve asked Keith Curtis (the artist for the project) for a few revisions.  After they are done I’ll be making some variant map objects and then we’ll release it.  It should be ready in January.  The other outstanding task is a pdf of battlemats.  As mentioned, we’ve been putting out some on Mondays here on the blog.  At the end of January we should be ready to take those and add a bunch of variants and create the PDF for release later in February.

Creature & Encounter Cards

Our other outstanding Kickstarter is “Creature and Encounter Cards”.  Many part of this are done and in the hands of backers: The stock art, the encounter cards, and the system neutral creature cards. The 3.75/PF creature cards are done and in the process of printing.  Backers will be getting them in the next couple of weeks.

We still have to create the Creature Cards for 1E/Labyrinth Lord (70% done, and the drafts of non-official LL creatures are part of our Friday Foes blog posts), Dungeon World (25% done) and Fate (essentially not yet started beyond a few mock-ups.)  When I pitched the project I thought each version could be done in a month, but we’re seeing it takes 3-4 months, unfortunately. We’re also in the middle of updating our monster stand-ins product.  It will have all the new creatures/art.

GenCon

GenCon 2013 was very good to us.  As an exhibitor, there are a lot of costs that add up: the booth itself, hotel room(s), travel, advertising, booth fixtures, etc. But with all these expenses we were able to double 2012’s GenCon sales and for the first time make a profit straight-up. (Otherwise, you have to write the loss off as a marketing expense.)

What made the difference? While Cityographer was available this year and not at 2012’s GenCon, that was probably only 15% of our sales. Having a corner booth and putting a coupon in the coupon book made the real difference. In 2012 our location was near the front but in the middle of an aisle.  Plus one neighbor put a wall up blocking anyone from that direction from seeing us until they were nearly past us.  In 2013, while that happened naturally by how the booths are laid out on one side, it didn’t happen on the other side.  Plus we had two large views of the booth due to it being a corner.  As for the coupon book, yes we gave out a bunch of stuff that were sort of extras (probably 1200 items) it gave people a reason to get to our booth and interact with us which often led to sales once people saw how cool some of the items were/are.  The full page ad we did probably wasn’t worthwhile.

Other Existing Products

DungeonMorphs (Dice/Cards)

We’re down to about 50 of our two remaining sets of dice of Dungeonmorphs.  (The third sold out at GenCon.)  We had already sold a bunch through ThinkGeek, but now we are stuck waiting to see when we can get more made.  Our manufacturer is waiting on new machinery to make them in a better way, but that has been dragging out for the past few several months already.  I’m looking into other manufacturers/processes to make them, but haven’t yet found a good fit. (If you know of a manufacturer besides the usual suspects–q-workshop, chessex, gamescience, crystal caste–let us know!)

But a side effect of that is we may make some related items such as a pretty cool dice roller or a tray to keep the dice all lined up. If you’ve got any thoughts on the tray pictured here, please take the survey!

Coat of Arms Design Studio

I’d love to get back to this.  It hasn’t been updated in a year now, and there are several features I’d like to add. Before GenCon we had a number of new symbols to add, but ran out of time.  They still haven’t been added yet. With support for Java on the Desktop getting worse and worse (more difficult to install) I’m exploring porting it to different platform.  Maybe web based or a chrome app or something else. I’m not sure yet.  Hopefully we’ll get a small update soon and a larger overhaul in a few months.

Hexographer/Dungeonographer

A lot of what was written for the Coat of Arms Design Studio also apply to these two programs.  They have been updated a bit more than the Coat of Arms program and the timeframe of overhauls is further out, but the lack of improvements to Java on the desktop is frustrating. But there are many, many features we can add until we’re ready for a larger effort.

Summary

In 2014 we want to:

• Finish off our Kickstarters in the early part of the year.
• Blog each weekday to keep showing progress and to build our name.
• Stay focused on improving the products we have.
• Not branch out to other new projects unless they are small or very complementary or have some other special circumstance.
• Get our great stuff into more stores, on-line & physical.
• Better advertise our existing products.