ICv2 Interview: Chessex Founder Don Reents

We recently had a chance to interview Chessex founder Don Reents, who’s been in the hobby games business for over 40 years, about the early days of hobby games retail and distribution, the evolution of Chessex, and the company’s latest products and plan for 2025.

ICv2:  Chessex has been around a long time.  When was it founded?
Don Reents:  Chessex itself was probably about 1987, but that was well after I started the store Games of Berkeley in 1980, started Berkeley Game Company in 1981, where one of our first products was the battle match, which is still available now, like 44 or 43‑year later.

Then, in 1982, I started distribution, Berkeley Game Distributors.  Later on, I started to start making some products.  Our first dice were 1987.  I think our first Chessex product was 1984; our first product was chess clocks.  These were things that were out there that were not available, that other people weren’t carrying.

You said you started a retail store, then started distribution.  What happened to those two companies?
We started Games of Berkeley in 1980.  My first real job was working as a clerk at a store called The Gambit.  They had a store in Berkeley and one in San Francisco.  What happened was that they were going to close the store in Berkeley.  I was working there, and I said, “If they’re going to quit, they’re going to let us all go,” so I started my own store in 1980, shortly thereafter.

With one of the former owners of The Gambit, later on, we formed a part owner in Gamescape, which is in San Francisco at 333 Divisadero, and is still in operation.  Bob, myself, and Nick Ballard were the three owners of Gamescape.

Later on, Bob Hamilton was doing most of the work, so Nick and I sold out, you might say, and let him take it on because I got busy.  That was 1986. At that point, I was getting much more focused on accessories and Berkeley Game Distributors, and so I just didn’t have the time for the retail stores anymore.

Then the distribution company, what happened to that?
1982 is when it started.  I started in the basement of Copymat in Berkeley.  That was huge place: it was like 600‑square feet in the basement.

[laughter]

Wow.
It was obviously very small. I got started because I was unhappy with the West Coast distributors.  In 1981, I started doing Battlemats, I started to go to Gen Con, and Origins, so I got to know some of the publishers.

I said I was unhappy with the distributors because I didn’t think they were doing a very good job. I started doing distribution because I knew a bunch of the publishers, saw them at the shows, and they started to sell me as a distributor, and I started to sell to myself [as a retailer].

There were three or four other stores in the Bay Area that were established.  They too didn’t think that their distributors were very good, so they started buying from me.

We were competitors, but I’m in Berkeley, another person’s in Concord, another one’s in San Jose, and of course, The Gambit was in San Francisco.  We’re competitors, but we’re far enough away that we’re not really competitors, if you know what I mean.

Back then, a lot of the distributors were good, but the problem was the good ones were Hobby Games, The Armory, and Greenfield, and Windmill, and they’re like a week away in time, because I place the order on a Monday, I wouldn’t get it next Monday.

In the pre-fax era, pre‑email, you place the order, and if they’re out of stock, I’d be out of stock for three weeks.  I said, “This isn’t making any sense.”

Other stores said, “Hey, this is great.  It’s much easier getting stuff on the West Coast,” because they’d get two orders a week rather than every once in a while.

What happened to the distribution company?
Everything was growing. I’m a distributor, kind of a publisher, and also had a store.  Quite honestly, I could only work about maybe 100 hours a week, it was more than I could handle.  I really had to focus more on the things I wanted to do; I wanted to focus more on the publishing side.

I sold Berkeley Game Distributors in 1988, because I just didn’t have enough money for everything because everything was growing too much.

Then I started Chessex East distribution in Phoenixville (Pennsylvania), because when I was a distributor, none of the other distributors bought my publisher products because they didn’t like the fact that I was a publisher and a distributor.

I wanted to find an eastern location so we could sell our products along with being a distributor.  That’s why we started Chessex East; that’s why we used the name.  It was like 1987, 1988, something like that. We started out with Ed Wimble, who also owned the Theater of the Mind Games doing historical simulation games. He was like the general manager.

Then later on, in 1990, I started Chessex Midwest.  It did well.  By 1992, I think we were the largest in the field, and then number two was Berkeley Game Distributors: the two companies that I started.

Then of course, Magic: The Gathering appeared at the end of 1992, and all hell broke loose, you might say.

Then at some point you did sell the distribution company?
Yeah, what happened was that we had the huge market explosion because of all the collectable card games, and it was doing well, but around 1996, all of a sudden, the whole market imploded because it was overexpanded, and there wasn’t the support for everyone.  In the ’96 to ’98 period, everyone’s having problems financially; almost all of the established distributors, Greenfield and Hobby Games, and Windmill and Liberty, everyone’s having trouble.  I’m sure we were having problems; I’m sure The Armory was.

I talked to The Armory and said, “Hey, the problem is that the market is overextended. People are falling off, they’re just dying.”  I felt sorry for all the publishers because the distributors were going bankrupt. It was a tough time.  I thought it was much better if we worked it out to merge Chessex Distribution and The Armory to reduce the overall capacity so it could be more stable.  I didn’t want to go bankrupt and owe all our publishers a lot of money, because they’re going to need to survive.

Also, I was really unhappy with the way the market changed with all the collectible card games.  The way it was in the 80s, you were there because you wanted to help other people to grow.  “We like games, hey let’s do this and get it so that it’s better for everyone.”  We’re in it together to help grow the market, so we’re all working together for a positive future.

When Magic happened (not so much with Wizards of the Coast, of course), a lot of these other companies, they would produce a collectible card game., and they didn’t care, it was all about money.  I had many times when people would say, “Buy plenty of this new product we have it coming out.”

“OK.  I’m not sure it’s going to sell that well.  I’m pretty concerned.”

“We’ll take product back if it doesn’t sell.”

It started happening time and time again, I would do that.  They would say, “Oh, there’s no contract; that person is no longer working here;” or “We can’t do that.”  It changed from doing something where you’re doing gaming and you’re trying to expand it because you liked it to it’s all about money.  My interest dropped off a lot.

I think that I can claim that I’m the one who came up with the name Alliance as the name of the distribution company when we did the merge.

What year was that?
I think it was November of 1998.

Then let’s bring it up to the present. What are your thoughts on what the hobby games market looks like today?
The market is so much larger than when I first started in the field.  I think it’s great.  It’s strange recently because of COVID, it’s like a boom period.  It’s not like between 2011 to, let’s say, 2019, it grew every year.  Then all of a sudden there was a huge increase because there are more people playing.  The past year or two have stabilized, but the market’s bigger now than it was five years ago.  That’s good.  The bad side is that it just a lot of companies may be in a situation where they’ve oversupplied, so there has to be adjustments.

Let’s talk just about dice because our observation is that in the last 10 years, it seems like the number of manufacturers has exploded.  The high end has exploded, or the range between the top and the bottom of the dice market has expanded.  What are your thoughts on what’s going on with dice?
I think it’s pretty incredible all these different products that are out there.  I think it’s great that people are liking dice.  Obviously, there’s all these new companies out there.  It used to be there were four or five dice sellers 15 years ago, now there’s 20 or 30 dice sellers at Gen Con, so you get nervous because there’s more competition.

It doesn’t really bother me too much because people still like our products.  I just try to keep on making interesting stuff for people.  There really haven’t been any changes per se; I just want to focus on fill ratio, accuracy, speed of processing orders, producing new colors that are popular that people like, and try to do some new ideas.

We’re doing these Advent calendars (see “Chessex Will Release ‘2024 Holiday Calendar’“).  I like the packaging much better than the average Advent calendar.  It’s a little bit more interesting.

I don’t really follow too much about the overall market; that’s not what’s important.  What’s important is good quality products that have a reasonable price, making the delivery happen, keep it in stock, all the normal logistics things.  I don’t really follow that much about the market per se because our sales are OK; that’s all I really can focus on.

You mentioned your Advent calendar.  It’s very different than the way this has been done before.  How did you come up with this approach?
We were talking to the factory in Germany that we get the dice from, and they thought that because six-sided dice are a cube, what about making it in the format of a cube.  “It’s going to be dice-related, it makes sense, right?”  That was their idea, and I thought it was great.  Then we’re talking to other people and one of the guys at the warehouse thought, “Hey, maybe we should do it like a gelatinous cube.”  Well, that’s a good idea, too, because it’s Christmas-related, but it’s a role-playing Christmas item.”

I think it’s a lot more fun.  We made some of these 12‑inch square metal signs that will be selling as a promotional item for people, and if someone buys four of the cubes, we’ll throw in one of the metal signs.  It’ll be great to hang in your game den, or hang in retail stores.

In general, what do you expect from 2025 for your business?
The factory in Denmark has some really interesting colors coming up soon, and they’re able to expand their operation.  The people in Germany, they built a new factory, now they’re going to be able to increase their capacity and do a lot more.  Finally, we’re able to do a lot of new things.  We just came out with the large dice and we’re going to do more colors as well.  We’re going to do more Lab Dice. We also started doing some dice cups.

I think that it’s looking positive in the future.