We're back from holidays and among the first things we have to do at the beginning of the new year is to draw the line and analyze the last 12 months with the goods and the bads, so we can learn and improve.
For NSKN, 2012 was a very busy year, the second in our short history and the year with the greatest growth so far. We released an expansion for our first board game and two new ones, we attended several gaming events and we expanded our market. But, let's take it step by step...
Jan 2012 - NSKN attended GobCon, an event by gamers for gamers in Bologna, Italy. It was our first local gamin convention, we got to meet a lot of great people and we established a long-term relationship with La Tana dei Goblin, the largest board gaming community in Italy.
Feb 2012 - We announced our new games for 2012, Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri on BoardGameGeek. With the aid of the great people, we polished the games, we chose the right names and we organized play-testing sessions.
Apr 2012 - One year after being established, NSKN got a new look. We designed a new logo and a new website in our effort to increase awareness and to give better customer support to all of you who own or are interested in our games.
May 2012 - Our team went all the way to Birmingham, UK to attend for the first time the UK Games Expo. It was a unique experience, we met lots of great people and we discovered a community of great people. We presented to the public for the first time the final prototypes of Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri, our upcoming games for the fall of 2012. The feedback was encouraging and we decided to move further with both board games.
Jun 2012 - June marked our second trip to Italy to meet Tana dei Goblin for and to released the first expansion of Warriors & Traders, Italia. We got a lot of help from our fiends form Italy and we designed this expansion especially for them. The first print sold out immediately and this represented another landmark for NSKN, our first ever sold-out product.
Jul 2012 - The graphic design for Wild Fun West was ready and we announced the game for Spiel '12 Essen.
Aug 2012 - Exodus reach its final state, with all the illustrations and it was ready to go into production. We made the decision to use Indiegogo for crowd-funding and we prepared the projects.
Sep 2012 - In the beginning of September, NSKN celebrated another brand new accomplishment, we were no longer a one-game-publisher, we had Wild Fun West ready and Exodus was getting significant support on Indiegogo, getting ready to be funded. At the same time, our new games were being produced and shipped from China.
Oct 2012 - October was by far the month with the most work, events and accomplishments for NSKN. Just a few days before Essen we reached our goal on Indiegogo. Our year long efforts were repaid by gaming enthusiasts who decided to back Exodus and we even exceeded our goal by 10 %. As soon as our crowd-funding campaign was successful, we shipped more than 130 copies of Exodus, in an effort larger than it looks for a still very small company.
Since the first print of Warriors & Traders: Italia sold out so quickly, we decided to make a second print, also limited to 50 copies. It was the last chance to get this exclusive expansion and we got preorders for more than half of the production.
The second part of October was marked by the mobilization effort for Spiel Essen. We attended the largest board gaming event in Europe for the second year, bringing a team of 8 people, three games and one expansion.
Nov 2012 - NSKN went back to Italy for Lucca Comics & Games, a convention that brought together 138,000 people. We were the only foreign publisher and even though our Italian language skills were limited, we made an impression and sold out the last few copied of Warriors & Traders: Italia.
Dec 2012 - After we got back from Lucca until the end of the year we focus of sales and getting our new games to as many hobby stores as possible. We expanded our distribution network in Asia and Europe and this effort will continue throughout 2013. The year ended with a long overdue vacation from which we have just returned.
After we drew the line, 2012 was a good year with many highlights but also some mistakes. We managed to expand, we designed and produced two new board games, but we also encountered some production quality issues that we'e still fighting to solve. We have big plans for 2013 but we want to stay a small, friendly company which is capable to respond to any request in a matter of hours or days, putting our fans and customers first. We're still learning and every day we realized how special and amazing the board games industry is.
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