Industry News: dV Giochi Buying Ghenos, Asmodee Bought Philibert

• Italian publisher daVinci Editrice S.r.l. — a.k.a. dV Giochi — plans to purchase fellow Italian publisher Ghenos S.r.l., which operates under the brand "Ghenos Games".

To quote from the press release, "With this new combination, dV Giochi aims to strengthen its presence in the Italian and global board game market through an expansion of its offerings, an extension of its commercial network, and a merger of the two company's teams." The dV Giochi brand will be used globally for games aimed at families and casual players, while the Ghenos Games brand will go on "hard-core" games that are localized for the Italian market or original to the entire world.

More from the press release:

Quote:

"The acquisition of Ghenos Games is the result of an intense year of work on a joint project. Thanks to the commitment of the entire team, today we are now a unique market player, with strong know-how, a structured corporate organization, and a highly ambitious growth plan," commented Roberto Corbelli, dV Giochi's CEO. "Therefore, we give our warm welcome to our new colleagues."

Alfredo Genovese, from Ghenos S.r.l., declared: "We were absolutely convinced to join the dV Giochi group, aiming to build a leading company in the board game industry. We will offer our contributions to this project, imbued with our history, our style, and our expertise. Ghenos and dV Giochi are perfectly complementary, like two pieces of a puzzle: one is focused on importation and it's 'geek-oriented', while the other is fully committed to exportation and it's aimed towards families. We also share vision, values, and attitudes. We just created a company with great potential, made up of people with remarkable skills."

• Old news, but something I missed earlier: In July 2020, according to French game site Ludovox, the Asmodee Group purchased French online retailer Philibert, which also runs three stores in Strasbourg. Ludovox notes that Philibert employs 78 people with annual revenue of €16 million. A (Google translated) excerpt from the Ludovox article about the purchase:

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By buying a large online sales site in this way, Asmodee can already save on a portion of its game sales by reintegrating the direct sales margin into the group. Given the depth of Asmodee's catalog and Philibert's turnover, we can bet that this is a very good operation for them. Publishers recently told us that when a game was launched, Philibert could represent up to 30% of French sales, or even up to 50% on expert games.

• And here's another older item for you — one that seems relevant following the news of a large publisher purchasing a large retailer — a February 2020 article from Nick Bentley about the direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales system used by his current employer Underdog Games, which released Trekking the World from company co-founder Charlie Bink in September 2020. DTC sales already take place for a number of small publishers, not to mention those who use Kickstarter and forgo distribution, but Bentley was interested in finding a publisher aiming for large sales to a mainstream market, which is how he ended up working for Underdog.