Two long-time Asmodee managers just bought out Miniature Market from their employer

Asmodee has sold Miniature Market, the US tabletop retailer it bought three years ago, to a pair of the board game publishing giant’s long-serving managers.

The sale comes four months after it emerged that “restructuring” had begun at Asmodee, with its parent business Embracer launching a massive cost-cutting programme to cut its $1.4bn debt pile.

Asmodee would not answer questions on whether the sale was related to the restructuring, with a spokesperson only able to confirm to BoardGameWire that Miniature Market was no longer part of the company.

Miniature Market is now 100% owned by board game industry veterans Christophe Arnoult and Maud Decombe, who have both had long careers with Asmodee.

Arnoult, who ran a group of specialised game stores in France from 1996, founded Asmodee LLC with the board game publisher in 2005, and Asmodee Inc a year later, with the aim of establishing a foothold for the distribution of European board games in North America.

He returned to France in 2015 to become CEO of Asmodee France, and in 2022 was named director of development to help support companies in the group to structure and reinvent themselves – a role that saw him work with Miniature Market and fellow Asmodee-owned retailer Philibert, which it bought in 2020.

Decombe worked alongside Arnoult in 2015 across project management and operations, and also worked as a project manager for Asmodee France, founding a new entity for the company and helping in acquisition projects.

She was named a business development manager at Asmodee in Arnoult’s team in 2022, working with Asmodee North America, Miniature Market and Philibert.

Decombe told BoardGameWire she and Arnoult “saw an opportunity to invest in what we knew to be an amazing online retail store”, adding that Square One Capital, a company owned by the pair, is now the sole owner of Miniature Market.

She said she had relocated to Miniature Market’s headquarters in Missouri to oversee day-to-day operations, adding that the company’s first big project will be the opening of a new flagship retail store in St Louis later this year, as well as “exploring additional markets for potential expansion in the future”.

Miniature Market closed its original retail site last month, leaving it with a single remaining retail store in addition to its well-known online presence.

Asmodee has continued to shine amid Embracer’s woes, having become Embracer’s biggest earner after overtaking its PC and Console Games segment for net sales last year.

BoardGameWire reported last month that the tabletop arm had avoided large-scale job losses so far, with its internal headcount falling by 82 to 2,500 people since Embracer began restructuring last summer.

That is in stark contrast to the wider Embracer Group, which has shuttered a string of video games studios and projects and cut more than 1,300 jobs since last summer.

Earlier this month Asmodee confirmed to BoardGameWire that it has a string of projects in development at the Canada arm of its Plan B Games studio, in the wake of the publisher moving Camel Up, Village and the entire Great Western Trail series to subsidiary Lookout Spiele.