Board Game Manufacturers
Looking to print your board game or card game? Here is a comprehensive list of full-service manufacturers, with anonymous, verified, comments by publishers who have printed games with them. By Rustan Håkansson.
Click on a manufacturer name or the -sign to expand and see comments!
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The details about each manufacturer are correct to the best of my knowledge. Please send corrections when if you see anything wrong or incomplete.
Read more about FSC certification.
Read more about ISO 9001 certification.
The Factory listing is marked if the manufacturer owns their own production facitilites. This is a highly flexible property in the industry, even the largest manufacturers will use partners from time to time. Some manufacturers own card printing facilities, but use partners for everything else. Most use partners for dice and plastic figures. Many companies that provide the services of manufacturers, present themselves as manufacturers and are listed as such here, have no facilities they own themselves. This is not neccessarily a problem, and the difference for a publisher between working with such an agent and the customer service department of a company that also owns a facility might be minimal. An agent might be better at finding the most suitable manufacturer, or a manufacturer that can print your game soon, it is impossible to say that one type of manufacturer is always better. But as many publishers are interested in this information it is included here.
The ICTI Ethical Toy Program is a certification for China covering business ethics, employment practices, safety, underage labor and much more. Brands increasingly demand publishers to be certified to license IP, and to use certified manufacturers. To check that factories are certified, use the Factory Lookup Tool. ICTI certification is not available for most countries, so only listed above for China.
About
This website exist to help all board game publishers, big and small. I (Rustan Håkansson) have 15+ years of experience in the industry from many roles (distribution, publishing, design (Nations, Cities: Skylines etc), worked at BGG) and have seen the need for more open information, for new Kickstarter publishers and also for established small publishers. If enough publishers share their information the data will be reliable, but even with few comments you might get some sense about how it is to work with each manufacturer. Comments are anonymous and verified. Note that none of the comments are by me personally.
Why anonymous? To avoid selection bias. If all, or part, of the comments were positive, there would be an incentive to only write about positive experiences. There would also be reluctance to share volumes. Volumes are not exact, but detailed enough to provide context. Comments can also cover a range of years and total volume printed.
Verified how? When a publisher submits information, I will verify that the publisher actually is who they claim. I will not contact the manufacturer to check that this publisher did produce a specific print with them, or check up additional information. The industry is small enough that reputation is really important, and anyone found out to lie about things will quickly find themselves without partners.
James Mathe and Tom Jolly previously maintained similar lists, but they are no longer available. Another list that focuses on card game manufacturers is here, but it was last updated in 2008. Another source of information are sites listing customs data, where you can search for an US importer and see what suppliers they have.
The most actively maintained other list of board game manufacturers that I know of is from the Indie Game Alliance. It currently (June 2024) has 31 manufacturers and 8 reviews in total, including some making related products that are not board games. All of the manufacturers listed there give some benefit or discount to IGA members. There are other types of companies listed separately there that might be of interest as well.
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