The board game Monopoly has always taught some important economic lessons: The benefits of owning real estate.The profit potential of railroad mergers.
The value of a get-out-of-jail-free card.Now a special edition of the board game is teaching a new lesson—about how hard it is to make things in the USA.
The game is being marketed by the WS Game Company, which produces most of its high-end board games in China, just like almost every other toy maker.After getting hit with a seven-figure tariff bill last year, CEO Jonathan Silva decided to see if it was possible to produce a profitable board game in the United States.He opted for a custom version of Monopoly, pegged to the country's 250th birthday.
But the experiment almost didn't pass go.One big problem: No dice.
"We turned over every single leaf trying to find someone who would make 10,000 dice for us in the U.S.," Silva says."It requires special machinery.
It requires investment.And that type of stuff just can't happen on a random Tuesday and be ready in a couple of months." Silva ultimately had to settle for imported dice.He was able to find the rest of what he needed domestically, but it wasn't easy.
A former Hasbro factory in Massachusetts prints the Monopoly board.A company called Pioneer Packaging makes the tray that holds he Monopoly money.
And a small business in Indiana cranked out custom metal game tokens, in all-American shapes like a cowboy hat, a covered wagon and an apple pie.Just assembling all those different players took more than a year, so Silva missed the first half of the 250th birthday selling season.And the cost to manufacture the games — which retail for $80 — was at least double what it would have been in China.
"When I place a purchase order in China, they have all those capabilities under one roof," Silva says."For one item, it took up way too much of our resources and time to bring it to market."There's a reason nearly 80% of all toys and games sold in the U.S.
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