Asmodee bought Miniature Market some time ago. It’s taken a mention in a presentation about something else for the world to notice.
Asmodee made itself (in)famous by buying a legion of board game companies. This month the holding company itself announced it will be bought as the Embracer Group puts $3.1bn on the table for them.
And that was just one of many deals Embracer closed this month, including but not limited to Perfect World Entertainment and Dark Horse.
It was Embracer’s deal to buy Asmodee that surfaced the Miniature Market news.
W. Eric Martin of BoardGameGeek noticed. When BGG reveals a piece of news; consider that news broken.
It’s been about vertical expansion for Asmodee. They already did logistics, the bit about moving games around from warehouses to retailers. Of course, they also owned many of the companies that made the games.
Buying Miniature Market isn’t the only bit of vertical expansion into retail Asmodee has done. Board Game Arena, a site for playing digital versions of games with friends, was bought by them at the start of the year.
The Miniature Market acquisition means Asmodee owns every inch of some board games’ journey from the designer’s table, to yours, except for the courier.
Interestingly, the about us timeline on Miniature Market goes up to 2021, noting the second physical retail store they opened but stops there without mentioning Asmodee.
Perhaps the timeline was done to ensure the site looked shiny for the acquisition. It’s just odd neither Miniature Market nor Asmodee would be so silent about the deal. Could there have been concerns about customers’ reactions?
It’s certainly not straightforward moving minis around. At the start of the month, the mighty Games Workshop had a profitability wobble due to freight costs and foreign exchanges. Shares there were down 18%. Asmodee will have different financial pressures as, when, and if the deal with Embracer comes true.
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