The recession and the tepid recovery that followed were a blow to many families’ disposable incomes, but they left one thing unchanged – people still like to be entertained.
What did change was where folks were putting those entertainment dollars. Indeed, while the economy was still struggling to get back on its feet in the late 2000s, companies that sold board games and other low-key, non-electronic fare were off their feet and soaring.
Patch Products of Beloit was no exception.
“With the economy the way it is, board games actually do better,” said Lisa Wuennemann, Patch Products’ director of marketing. “A board game you can buy anywhere from $10 to $25, and you can play it multiple times. I can’t even take my family to the movies or even a minor league sporting event for $25.”
| “With the economy the way it is, board games actually do better.” – Lisa Wuennemann, Patch Products |
The winner of a special “Work Hard – Play Hard” 2012 Wisconsin Family Business of the Year Award, Patch Products is a family operation through and through. Not only does the business manufacture and market family favorites such as Farkle, Buzz Word, Wooly Willy, Bed Bugs, Toss Up, and 5-Second Rule, it also relies on the talents of the Patch family and the family-like loyalty of its employees.
The business was founded in 1985 by brothers Fran and Bryce Patch, and a second generation of family members is now leading the company, including Brian Maxwell, the company’s president, and Erin Patch, the company’s community relations and ecommerce specialist.
Its success is indisputable – it passed 100 million puzzle sales in 2008, for example – and it currently employs 80 in the Beloit area. While some of the company’s products, like Farkle, are public domain games, and others, like many of party its games, are developed by independent inventors who sell the rights to their ideas, a number of Patch’s products are created in-house. In addition, one of the company’s more famous products, Wooly Willy, was acquired when Patch purchased the Smethport Specialty Company of Smethport, Pa. Its offerings also include preschool toys, creative activities, and teaching tools.
The company’s “work hard, play hard” philosophy is reflected in its fun work atmosphere, workplace amenities like an in-house fitness center and day care center, and a healthy work-life balance that puts a priority on the needs of employees.
“It’s always about the work family, too,” said Erin Patch. “Bryce and Fran always wanted to stress that that was very important, and they had an open-door policy … because they wanted their employees to feel comfortable and know that their loyalty is there. Bryce and Fran have always stressed that throughout the years, and it was something that came very naturally to them, but also something that they worked very hard at too.
“I think a big reason that Patch has been so successful is that it has employees who are very committed to the brand, love to put the product out there, and are very proud of what we created here and talk about it and play our games at home with their own families.”
Indeed, loyalty is a two-way street for Patch Products. The company even named its distribution center after one of its longtime employees, a truck driver named Leroy Wymer.
“Yes, Bryce and Fran have always been very loyal to employees, and you see it in things like the Wymer Distribution Center, because Leroy was a very crucial part of the company, and they wanted to honor him and what he brought to the table and all the hard work he did through the years,” said Patch.
Family fun unplugged
The company also reaches out to families outside its immediate sphere of influence. The annual Million Minute Family Challenge is a popular company initiative intended to foster family interaction through play. During last year’s challenge, participating families spent more than 1.2 million minutes playing various games.
Those are gaudy enough numbers to show that board games – which were supposed to have been endangered species by now – are perhaps here to stay.
“With board games, there’s always new threats or things that we think we’re going to lose business to – including video games,” said Wuennemann. “And what we’ve seen with the new technology and the iPad and the apps and stuff is that video games are what’s really suffering.
“I would say the board game industry is really challenged by the apps, but we are learning to work with them. And so the same reason that board games didn’t go away when video games came is the same reason they’re not going to go away now, because you can have a family of four sitting there all playing a different app on their phones and eventually Mom’s going to put her foot down and say we need to spend some time talking and interacting – and that’s what board games do that none of the other games out there do.”
And while it may seem at times that people everywhere are glued to flickering screens and that face-to-face contact is as quaint a commodity as hand-pulled strawberry taffy, Wuennemann has seen up close the renaissance the board game industry has enjoyed. After all, Facebook has been around a mere eight years, while board games go back centuries.
“I don’t know the statistics of how many minutes a day people are on Facebook and playing games on apps and all the other options that are out there, but after a while it gets boring,” said Wuennemann. “You don’t want to play by yourself – you want to have some face-to-face interaction and a tactile experience, like the actual Scrabble and moving the letters around, that you don’t get from an electronic device.”
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