[NL] The Game House: from start-up to major online player

The Game House is the place for those who love Ticket to Ride, Harry Potter, Pokémon, Cluedo and so on… It is the result of founders Sven and Sarah’s driven passion for board games. From their living room, this hobby project grew into a games shop with more than 5,000 board games and 2,000 puzzles. Today, it has the largest online offering in Belgium and the Netherlands. Since the very beginning, RAJA was also involved in this success story as a supplier of boxes, ecological adhesive tape, complete packing tables and so much more. As a one-stop shop, RAJA offered solutions for every new step in the expansion and growth of their webshop. Founder Sven and warehouse manager Steven share their story with us.

How did the story of The Game House ever start?

“The Game House came into being about seven years ago. It’s probably not a big surprise when I say that both myself and my wife Sarah are fond of board games. Of course, there are many online providers for these games, but we noticed that they were often the same games that were popping up everywhere. We therefore decided to start our own webshop and give it our own twist.

With The Game House, we want to bring cosiness back around the table. We want to bring people closer together in the ‘physical world’ and move away from the digital. And we want to do this for both young and old. We are thinking primarily about board games, but there are lots of other things that can provide conviviality. Puzzles or modelling, for example, also fit into this picture. In seven years, our range has grown from a handful of board games to the thousands of products our gaming customers can choose from today. We offer a selection of those games in our physical shop, with the full range found on our webshop in addition.”

How did RAJA play a role in your growth as a webshop?

“RAJA has been a loyal supplier from the very beginning. When we were looking for packaging materials at our start-up, we quickly came across RAJA. What makes RAJA unique in our eyes is that your range is able to grow with a customer. We once started very small, with small purchase volumes. However, the amount of packaging we needed increased significantly along with the growth of the webshop. RAJA was able to respond to this without any problems. The flexibility to switch from small to large volumes was a big advantage for us.

What is even more important to us than flexibility or fast delivery, for example, is reliability. At Het Spelhuis, we work with peak times throughout the year. So one month it can be very quiet, the next month it is all hands on deck because of the many orders. The end-of-year period, for instance, is such a peak moment. If we need extra packaging material quickly then, we know RAJA can definitely help us with that. If we order it today, we often have it ready in our warehouse the very next working day. We know that RAJA has a large stock and can therefore deliver quickly and correctly. For us, that’s always quite a peace of mind.”

How does The Game House handle sustainability when packaging?

“Besides that high degree of flexibility, RAJA offers us the opportunity to work in a sustainable and ecological way. For example, in the past we very consciously switched from plastic tape to a gummed adhesive tape. Such an adhesive tape is made of paper and can be sorted and recycled together with the cardboard box after use. Moreover, we had our adhesive tape personalised with our logo through RAJA so that our brand is nicely highlighted.

To fill our packaging, we also use a cardboard shredder. A lot of our board games and puzzles arrive in large cardboard boxes. We can put that cardboard into the shredder after unpacking, which then turns it into a buffer cushion. A practical solution to give discarded cardboard a new life and reduce resource consumption a bit.”

What RAJA products does The Game House use?

“Whoever says RAJA often thinks of cardboard boxes in the first place. And that was, of course, also true for The Game House. Ever since we started, we have been buying all our boxes, shipping tubes and cross-wrap packaging from RAJA. To protect our products, we use RAJA’s padding material. And to close the boxes, there is of course their gummed adhesive tape.

But RAJA is so much more to us than just packaging… As a one-stop shop, we could also turn to them when we switched to a new warehouse. We called on RAJA for the entire layout. From the packing tables to the warehouse racks, trays, transpallets and trolleys – we could order everything from the same supplier and contact person. Quite a convenience!”

How do you guys look to the future?

“If we continue to grow at the current pace with The Game House, we will undoubtedly have to look more into automating our packaging processes in the future. For example, with new packaging machines. In addition, making the e-commerce sector more sustainable does pose a challenge. We need to make sure we pack our products in the smallest possible volume with as little residual waste as possible. Moreover, couldn’t we more easily reuse the box that surrounds it for the next shipment? These are questions that will require further investigation. Together with RAJA, we have meanwhile already entered a test project to test the reusability of packaging. A new avenue where we are very much looking forward to the results.”