On Friday March 14, 2014 Geekers Keep will launch its crowd funding campaign. What follows is a partial press release for anyone interested in learning more about the project.
Who Are We?
Daniel
The mad genius behind Geekers Keep. Or perhaps he’s just mad. Either way… Daniel started the group about two years ago after becoming interested in tabletop games. He collected a small group of minions who would gather together, eat pizza, and play games like Munchkin, Settlers of Catan, and other well known tabletop games.
Favorite Game: Settlers of Catan
Favorite Food: Sushi!
Franz
Franz handles the IT work at Geekers Keep. He worked on setting up the Geekers Keep main site. He will also be involved in testing our first game: “Don’t Hack Me Bro!” which is based on IT terminology.
Favorite Game: Battlestar Galactica
Favorite Food: Battlestar Galactica (Not an error. Franz’ words)
Melissa
Melissa is one of our main writers. She also doubles as the company’s secretary.
Favorite Game: Wise or Otherwise
Favorite Food: Pasta
Jess
Jess primarily works as our editor. She also helps keep us in line.
Favorite Game: Cards Against Humanity
Favorite Food: Pizza
Our Goals
We have goals and then we have dreams. Our goal is to get enough funding to start an eCommerce site focused on selling the items we review. Our dream is to start an entire game shop, and possibly even a themed restaurant. Oh and of course there’s a dream of world conquest, but that’s going to be on the back burner for a while.
Use of Funds
Funds will be used for a few different purposes. Most of the funding will go to purchasing the merchandise to sell.
We don’t have to spend much on software because we have programmers (me) in house. We’re creating our own eCommerce system for the online store. If you want to take a look at our early rough draft, you can check it out at http://socialmarket.ag. Please note that the site is our test platform and we break it… a lot, so if it’s down at one point, don’t be concerned.
Some of the money will go to producing branded products like t-shirts. And some of the money will go into advertising and related expenses, including convention expenses. We plan on hitting a few conventions over the next year or so, and seriously, it is not cheap. Vender spots are expensive as are the flights and hotel rooms.
Custom Cards by Element Soul
Geek Package #1
** We’ve decided to wait until we reach at least 25% of our goal or 50 backers in order to create the Geek Package in order to ensure that we can fulfill our obligations to our backers. If you want to see the Geek Package, let your friends know so they can back as well.
Geek Package #1 will include the following items
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Geekers Keep backer t-shirt
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Geekers Keep coffee mug
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Steampunk Cthulhu Playing Cards
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Maze Master Card Game
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ERA: Convergence Graphic Novel
Membership
As part of the Geekers Keep eCommerce solution, we are going to provide paid membership options. The first tier to be released is the bronze membership which is listed as follows…
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$4.99 per month or $49.99 per year
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Membership status listed on profile
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Physical Geekers Keep membership card
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Member t-shirt
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Access to special events
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Free standard shipping on all orders (excludes special orders)**
** Notes:
1. For monthly subscriptions, the membership card and t-shirt will be delivered along with the first physical purchase.
2. Free shipping excludes special orders as well as certain overweight items
Note on shipping locations: Currently we are only shipping to the United States and to Canada. Shipping to other countries will depend on the number of requests for international shipping.
For Producers
If you are a producer of a crowd funded game or any other product which you think may fit in with Geekers Keep and want us to carry your product, email us at [email protected]. If you back Geekers Keep and have your product listed on our site, your product will be added to a special backer exclusive category!
Stretch Goal
These will be added as the project moves forward.
Super Stretch Goals
These are dream goals: what our group would love to do if we can get enough support. They’re lofty dreams, but you have to chase your dreams, right?
Brick and Mortar Store: $500,000
Selling products through our eCommerce system is just the beginning. We really want to have a physical storefront and game shop set up. This obviously is not going to be cheap. We’re in New Paltz, NY which has ridiculously high rent. However, if we can get enough, it would be really fantastic. We could set up an hourly rate for a person to play any game that’s available at the time. There will be plenty of games to choose from, most of which will be games that have created successful crowd funding campaigns.
Risks
The main risks at the moment are going to be related to getting the items for our thank you package. Since these items are being produced by independent developers, there may be delays in distribution or they may run out before we can order our wholesale block. If this happens, we will do everything we can to find a substitute item that people will like just as much.
Related to that, if we end up below our funding goal, it may be difficult to reach the minimum number of units for a wholesale purchase, this would set us back and we would probably have to draw from outside funding.
Since we are writing our own eCommerce system from the ground up, there could be delays with that. However, the system has already been in development for a while and we don’t see any problems with having it ready by the final release date.