Restoration Games staffs up again, says boosting marketing and sales proved ‘prescient’ amid tariffs chaos
Restoration Games, the US board game publisher focused on reviving and rejuvenating classic titles, is benefiting from foresight in staffing up across the last year as the impact of tariffs continues to make itself felt upon the industry.
The publisher behind the Unmatched series, Return to Dark Tower and Thunder Road: Vendetta brought in ‘lead marketing alchemist’ Beth Erikson and ‘warehouse warlock’ Paul Marchbanks in the latter part of last year, and has followed that up since with ‘supreme adjudicator of mirth’ Justin Kemppainen and ‘graphic artificer’ Jasmine Radue.
Those hires have bolstered Restoration’s team to 16 people – and mark a notable series of additions amid a difficult trading environment, which has already led to some tabletop publishers lay off staff and cut back on their operations.
Recent hire Kemppainen previously spent more than nine years as a game developer, designer and brand manager at Asmodee and its studio Z-Man Games, before leaving to co-found Leviathan Wilds publishing house Moon Crab Games in 2021.
New graphic designer Radue also worked at Asmodee between 2013 and 2021, doing graphic design for Fantasy Flight Games and Z-Man, before spending a couple of years working on visual marketing assets for Bad Robot Games and its IPs.
Erikson also kicked off her board game career at Z-Man, spending almost four years as the studio’s marketing manager before switching to a similar role at Pegasus North America in 2021. She has also worked for video game publisher Rogue Games and MonsDRAWsity and Crystallo publisher Friendly Skeleton Games.
She was hired by Restoration to work with ‘master-of-fireworks’ Suzanne Sheldon to drive interest and awareness of the company’s games.
Marchbanks, meanwhile, was formerly an account manager working in crowdfunding fulfillment at Quartermaster logistics. He will oversee inventory management, warehousing and other similar duties at Restoration.
Other hires within the last couple of years have included Josh Willenbrink to manage sales and Josh Heake to head up customer service.
Restoration co-founder Justin Jacobson told BoardGameWire, “We feel like we’ve always done a good job of making games.
“Coming into this year, we wanted to put resources into making sure folks know about them and can get them, i.e. marketing and sales. This was a long-term strategy before all of the tariff complications arose, but it’s proven to be a bit prescient and more important than ever.”
Jacobsen said in a recent update addressing the US tariff situation that years of investing in strong team members and a focus on efficiency, cost reduction and diversification post-pandemic had left it in a robust position to manage the situation, albeit with the need to raise prices on some of its products.
He added, “We previously had online exclusivity periods, where some of our games were available earlier on our website and with exclusive promotional items.
“We plan on using this approach with more games and for longer periods. The improved margins on direct sales and crowdfunded projects are a critical way for us to maintain our cashflow even in the face of uncertainty.”
Jacobsen has previously said he and fellow co-founder Rob Daviau launched Restoration with the aim of making it a ‘two-year company’ in its first year, and a ‘five-year company’ in year two.
A core part of that push was bringing in veterans in their specialisms from within the board game industry and without, in an attempt to help the company avoid common mistakes made by other newly-launched publishers.
Following a small-ish crowdfund for Stop Thief, which raised just over $100,000, Restoration quickly hit its stride, sealing a $2.8m Kickstarter campaign for a renewed version of 80s game Fireball Island in 2018, and following that by collecting more than $4m during its Return to Dark Tower Kickstarter two years later.
Other big successes for the company to date have included Thunder Road: Vendetta and the Unmatched Series, the most recent of installment of which – Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – raised about $1.4m from over 11,000 backers last October.
The company has just wrapped up raising money for its latest Kickstarter, Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong – a restoration of 1992 game Battle Masters. That campaign raised just under $600,000.
