[FR] Het Spelhuis: from start-up to major e-commerce player

Het Spelhuis is the ideal place for those who love Ticket to Ride, Harry Potter, Pokémon, Cluedo, etc. The shop is the result of founders Sven and Sarah’s passion for board games. Starting in their living room, this project has grown into a shop with over 5,000 board games and 2,000 puzzles. Today, it is the largest online offering in Belgium and the Netherlands. From the outset, RAJA has been part of this success story as a supplier of crates, environmentally friendly tape, complete packing tables and much more. As a one-stop shop, RAJA has offered solutions for every new stage in the growth of their webshop. Founder Sven and warehouse manager Steven tell us their story.

How did the story of Het Spelhuis begin?

” Het Spelhuis (” The House of Games “) was founded around seven years ago. It’s probably no great surprise that my wife Sarah and I love board games. Of course, there are lots of online game providers, but we noticed that they were often the same games that you find everywhere. So we decided to set up our own online shop and add our own personal touch.

With Het Spelhuis, we want to bring conviviality back to the table. We want to bring people together in the physical world and take a step back from the digital world. And we want to do this for young and old alike. We’re obviously thinking of board games, but there are many other games that can bring people together. Puzzles and modelling, for example, fall into this category. In seven years, our range has grown from a handful of board games to thousands of products. We offer only a selection of these games in our physical shop, and our full range is available in full in our online shop.”

How has RAJA played a role in your growth as an online shop?

“RAJA has been a loyal supplier since the beginning. When we were looking for packaging materials for our start-up, we quickly came across RAJA. What makes RAJA unique for us is that the offer can evolve along with the customer. We started out very modestly, with small purchasing volumes. However, the amount of packaging we needed increased significantly as the online shop grew. RAJA was able to support us and meet our needs. The flexibility to move from small to large volumes has been a great advantage for us.

What’s even more important to us than flexibility or speed of delivery, for example, is reliability. At Het Spelhuis, we can have a totally different workload in different months. We can have a very quiet month, while the following month will be a frenzy. The end-of-year period, for example, is a busy time, as you’d expect. If we need extra packaging material quickly, we know that RAJA can help. If we order it today, it’s often delivered to our warehouse the next working day. We know that RAJA has a large stock and can therefore deliver quickly and correctly. That gives us a lot of confidence.”

How is Het Spelhuis tackling the issue of sustainable development in packaging?

“In addition to this great flexibility, RAJA offers us the opportunity to work in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. We have already consciously abandoned plastic adhesive tape in favour of gummed tape. The latter is made of paper and can be sorted and recycled with the cardboard box after use. What’s more, we had our tape personalised with our logo via RAJA so that our brand would stand out.

We also use a cardboard padding machine to fill our packaging. Many of our board games and puzzles come in large cardboard boxes. We insert these large cardboard sheets into the padder, which transforms them into cushioning material. It’s a practical way of giving cardboard a new lease of life and reducing the consumption of raw materials.

Which RAJA products does Het Spelhuis use?

“When you think of RAJA, you often think of cardboard boxes. And this is of course also the case for Het Spelhuis. Right from the start, we bought all our cartons, shipping tubes and cases from RAJA. We use RAJA cushioning material to protect our products. And, of course, we use gummed tape to seal the boxes.

But for us, RAJA is much more than just packaging… As a one-stop shop, we were also able to turn to them when we set up our new warehouse. We put our trust in RAJA for the entire installation. Packaging tables, shelving, bins, pallet trucks and stacking trolleys… we were able to order everything from a single supplier via a single contact person. It was so easy!

How do you see the future?

“If we continue to grow at the current rate with Het Spelhuis, we will undoubtedly have to look more closely at automating our packaging processes. With new packaging machines, for example. The sustainability of the e-commerce sector is also a challenge. We have to ensure that we pack our products in the smallest possible volumes, with the least possible waste. What’s more, couldn’t we reuse the surrounding crate more easily for the next shipment? These are questions that need to be analysed in greater depth. In collaboration with RAJA, we have already launched a test project to study the reuse of packaging. We’re looking forward to the results of this new challenge.