Cash flow

A board game business can be profitable on paper and still die, because the industry's timing is brutal. You pay for manufacturing months before you can sell a single copy, freight and fulfillment bills land before most revenue does, and if you sell into distribution, distributors commonly pay 30 to 90 days after receiving stock. Cash flow, the actual money in the account on any given day, is what keeps the lights on, and it is the number new publishers watch least and should watch most.

The standard cycle looks like this: crowdfunding money arrives, then manufacturing deposits go out (often 30 to 50 percent up front with the balance due before the factory ships), then freight, then fulfillment, and only then, months later, does post-campaign revenue start trickling in. Map every known payment onto a calendar before you launch, including the platform's cut, payment processing fees, failed pledges, and refunds. Many first campaigns discover too late that the funding goal covered manufacturing but not the freight bill that arrives six months later.

The classic trap is spending reprint money on new games. The first print run sells out, the cash looks like profit, and it gets committed to the exciting second title, leaving nothing to reprint the game that is actually selling. Disciplined publishers earmark reprint funds for proven sellers before funding anything new, because a reprint of a game with demonstrated demand is the safest bet the business will ever make.

Build a simple month-by-month cash forecast, even a crude spreadsheet, and keep a buffer for the surprises this industry reliably supplies: freight rate spikes, tariff changes, a delayed container, a warehouse fee increase. Publishers rarely fail because a game was bad. They fail because a good game's money arrived four months after the bills did.