She stuck with her game plan

Abstract

IT TOOK the young inventor Emily McDonald eight years to get her board game, Oz Crawl, from the drawing board to store shelves around the country. However, the 31-year-old can take heart Trivial Pursuit, one of the biggest selling games ever, reportedly took only a year less.

IT TOOK the young inventor Emily McDonald eight years to get her board game, Oz Crawl, from the drawing board to store shelves around the country. However, the 31-year-old can take heart Trivial Pursuit, one of the biggest selling games ever, reportedly took only a year less.

In a market dominated by such favourites as Monopoly and Scrabble, industry experts say only the most persistent Australian inventors, who have a genuinely unique idea, stand any chance of getting a game to on family tables.

The Australian Toy Association's chief executive, Beverly Jenkin, says there is no shortage of would-be board game inventors pitching their products.

"We often get calls on a Monday after a wet weekend," she says. "We don't want to quash anyone's enthusiasm but I do say, 'You realise it took Trivial Pursuit seven years to get to the market?"'

The country's biggest Australian-owned board games company, Crown and Andrews, also receives floods of ideas. "Sometimes we get a piece of paper the size of toilet paper," says its sales and marketing director, Audrey New. "We very rarely pick up an Australian game."

McDonald came up with her idea for Oz Crawl at 23. Packaged in an oversized beer tinnie, the game involves 12 characters, including Shazza, Dazza and Bruce the poetry-writing truckie, who travel around Australia towards the Crawler's Ball. Players have to answer trivia questions and win other challenges such as singing contests to gain entry to the ball.

The idea felt like a solid bet but McDonald soon found out there was much more involved.

"I think everyone wants to create a board game but doesn't realise how hard it is; I was the stupid one that kept going," she says.

She resisted offers to sell the rights to the game, deciding it would be more profitable to form her own company with a couple of main investors, including herself.

But a few years of hard slog almost came undone when the Australian dollar started its freefall against the greenback. When McDonald placed her first manufacturing order in China, the Australian dollar was at US92 cents. By the time the bill came it was at US59 cents, almost doubling the price of production.

Her main investor, along with the illustrator, Keiron Pratt, kept the faith.

"It's a big financial outlay, a big financial risk as well," McDonald says. "I've been really lucky with my investors; they've had a lot of trust."

The first batch of 1000 games began making its way into stores such as Toyworld about three months ago.

"We launched it officially in March and it grew from about two stores to about 53 to date," she says.

Oz Crawl is competing for dollars in what Crown and Andrews's New describes as a conservative market.

"If you get hold of any toy catalogue you'll say, 'There are so many of them I used to play when I was a child,"' she says.

"Our most popular goes back to about 27 years ago, a game called Test Match. It still sells heaps because it's a terrific game."

(There was an earlier John Sands game of the same name.)

Though McDonald hardly expects to become a millionaire overnight, she expects sales to grow in the second year, which happens with most successful board games once people play with friends and word-of-mouth spreads.

She is directly approaching potential buyers such as ski lodges at Thredbo and bed-and-breakfasts, and hopes to get Oz Crawl into medium-sized stores around Australia. "We won't be going to the massive Kmarts and Big Ws we'll be going to the Australian Geographics and Myers and perhaps the souvenir shops, she says. Plans are well under way to launch versions for the United States and Britain. A children's version is soon to be test-marketed.

After eight years McDonald says it has been worth persisting. "Sometimes I have to take a step back and think 'Wow, it's so exciting, it's actually happening,"' she says.

Top five board games in Australia last year

1 Bakugan Starter Pack Moose Enterprise

2 Monopoly Here & Now Electronic Australian Edition Hasbro

3 Scrabble Original Mattel

4 Bakugan Booster Pack Moose Enterprise

5 Monopoly Here & Now Australian Edition Hasbro

Illustration

Caption: PHOTO: Crawled before she walked ... Emily McDonald persisted for eight years.