Legendary, Games, Inc., is the world’s primary manufacturer of Farkel games and is known in gaming circles as “THE FARKEL FACTORY”
Legendary Games, Inc. (LGI) grew out of my idea to sell a great dice game in a film can. Charlie and Mary Potter had no facilities, no marketing or business plans, and no job. But he had the entire project in my head, $4,000 in savings and 35 years of graphic design experience with manufacturing companies.
With no internet available to him at the time, he visited the local library for books to source my game parts and packaging. A machinist wanted over $80,000 to make film cans so he found a supplier in Korea. A Korean friend was my interpreter as we made the call overseas to buy a thousand film cans. Trade publications of the game industry provided a source for dice. New game instructions with updated scores were written and sent to the printer. Charlie designed point-of-purchase displays on heavy paper stock and cut them out by hand. With a few friends and family, he and his wife Mary set up a production line on the kitchen table and finally assembled the first run of The Original Pocket Farkel® in September of 1996. That month’s sales would pay for the next month’s inventory.
LGI sold around 8,000 games in four months of 1996. I thought that was a good performance (we were selling with no advertising or marketing) and we had a good product. To date we’ve only had two years out of fourteen that didn’t beat the previous year. In 2008 I took our sales chart to our banker. He told me I was going to need bigger paper.
In 2009 our “Classic” Farkel game was in the top 10 best selling games in Barnes & Noble and the company has grown from 2 employees to 14. We don’t want to be huge and successful. Just being successful is enough.
LGI produces Pocket Farkel®, Flat Pack Farkel™, 6-Dice Classic Farkel®, Spicy! Farkel®, the large Farkel Party®, the NEW Twisted Farkel®, Ninety-Nine or Bust®, Jumbulaya and Ship, Captain & Crew.
|
