Wood Poker Chips - Feedback Sought (1 Viewer)

Moxie Mike

Moxie Mike

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Hi All!

Long time lurker here. First off I just want to comment on what a cool community you all have cultivated here. Thanks for providing such amazing information :)

Synopsys:

My name is Mike and I run a marketing agency in Grand Rapids, MI. I am currently in discussions with a state-side manufacturer to develop a wood poker chip product. I'm hoping to learn more about what's important to you guys, and if you would ever be willing to consider purchasing such a product.

I also would like to know if some of you would like free samples to review, should we decide to move forward with a prototype.

A few notes:

The chips will be of the standard 39mm x 3 mm thick size.

The chips will be weighted to between 9.5 & 11.5 grams.

The chips will have the ability to be laser engraved with standard product lines as well as customer provided designs. It is also possible the chips will be printed upon.

No inlays or applied labels are planned at this time.

Marketing strategy would be to avoid competing with mass produced, ultra-low price point products.



Questions:

How important are inlays in general?

What would you be willing to pay for something like this?

Is there a price point in the marketplace that you consider to be under-served?

Would you be willing to review a sample?

Thanks in advance for your feedback - your time is appreciated.

MJ
 
I wouldn't be interested. The feel and sound would be completely different than the standard clay chips that I use. And what about stackability? It seems that wood poker chips would be slippery?
 
Moxie Mike said:
Hi All!

Long time lurker here. First off I just want to comment on what a cool community you all have cultivated here. Thanks for providing such amazing information :)

Synopsys:

My name is Mike and I run a marketing agency in Grand Rapids, MI. I am currently in discussions with a state-side manufacturer to develop a wood poker chip product. I'm hoping to learn more about what's important to you guys, and if you would ever be willing to consider purchasing such a product.

I also would like to know if some of you would like free samples to review, should we decide to move forward with a prototype.

A few notes:

The chips will be of the standard 39mm x 3 mm thick size.

The chips will be weighted to between 9.5 & 11.5 grams.

The chips will have the ability to be laser engraved with standard product lines as well as customer provided designs. It is also possible the chips will be printed upon.

No inlays or applied labels are planned at this time.

Marketing strategy would be to avoid competing with mass produced, ultra-low price point products.



Questions:

How important are inlays in general?

What would you be willing to pay for something like this?

Is there a price point in the marketplace that you consider to be under-served?

Would you be willing to review a sample?

Thanks in advance for your feedback - your time is appreciated.

MJ
Click to expand...
A useful sample would be multiple chips, preferably 8 or 10 or more. That's the only way people will get a sense of how they feel, sound, and handle. And that won't give a sense of how well they stack, perhaps the most important function of poker chips. For that, you'd need 20 or more.
Personally, I'm not interested.
Good luck!
 
Thanks for the feedback so far.

As to stacking, that's been considered and the plan is to engineer the chips for a textured surface of some sort.
 
First blush reaction was "not interested". However, after reflecting I think that is hasty without actually testing samples. Sure, wooden chips might not be the same as "ceramic" or "clay" but that doesn't mean they don't have a market. There will be issues about durability, slippery vs stackable, the quality of the graphics that can be achieved on the media. Obviously price point matters a lot.

Don't be discouraged by the negative reaction you get from many of us. People will change their tune once they get a look at a fine product. Wood has a lot of nice features that might prove to be desirable.

I strongly encourage alpha testing to select the types of finish the give the best feel / sound / stackability etc. Wood finishing has a huge range of outcomes that could likely end up with an acceptable product.

"inlays" aren't that important, but the look of an inlay can be. Inlayed chips are a luxury feature and as such they command a higher price - - - - sometimes. Inlays were also a security feature, basically increasing the cost to counterfeit a chip but that isn't a big issue in a home poker game.

Pricing - - well we know mint casino chips can fetch $2+ each at the moment. Not always though. Custom clay chips can be even more expensive. Custom ceramic chips can run $1 +/-. I think a good product at a buck a chip might be a place to start. The critical issue will be how your products stack up to other custom options. It isn't crazy to contemplate a high end product to compete with customer clay chips, but there will be resistance.

Price point for bulk production runs needs to be less than a buck a chip.

Speed of production matters. Custom clay chips can take months and months to get done. The vendors have historically seemed disinterested due to the low profit margins vs the effort to get a custom order done. The ceramic vendors have been faster, but often even these can be really slow. There are people who will be strongly swayed by delivery this year vs "sometime in 2019, we hope"

I encourage you to have an open mind about labels. We get VERY good results from @Gear . This is a fine way to get custom results by using bulk made blanks and custom labels. My uneducated guess is that custom labels are going to work better than laser engraving.

Please don't "save money" on design costs. A top notch chip art specialist is worth his/her weight in gold.

The "side art" on a chip is critical. Think how chips look in stacks - more of the sides are visible in a 20 chip stack than the face of the chip. We separate and count chips based on their edges not the faces. I shudder to think about sorting chips only based on the face of the chip. It is 100% absolutely not-negotiable that a chip and its value can be determined solely by the art on the edge of the chip. "art" might be different colored woods or finishes vs paint/spots/printing. I can not say this strongly enough. Fail here, and you will not succeed in the venture.

I have a suggestion for getting a product test done. We hold meet-ups something like 6-10 times a year. When you are ready to debut your product, make a set for the meet-up to use in one of their games, let us use the chips in play and watch the results in person. This isn't an alpha test or even a beta test - this is a ready for taking orders marketing effort. Succeed here and you could cut a year off your product acceptance time line.

We aren't a trivial market. Some of our group purchases have been for 100,000+ chips. We aren't the mass market either, but I can say if you make this group happy it will be an excellent benchmark for your product's market appeal.

Other people have noted that we need 10-20 chips to make an evaluation. One chip is better than none, but not as useful as you might think. However, lots of less selective customers will make a decision just from looking at a picture of a single chip. We know better because of previous bad experiences, buying pretty looking chips that end up unused.

Be patient, it will take a lot of iterations to get to the best answers. We will work with you and likely be a pain in the butt sometimes. It will be worth it in the end.

It would be a shame to sell fine wooden poker chips and not sell a fine line of wooden cases. (Please don't cheap out on the hinges and hardware, chips are heavy).

Good luck! -=- DrStrange
 
Last edited:
DrStrange said:
First blush reaction was "not interested". However, after reflecting I think that is hasty without actually testing samples. Sure, wooden chips might not be the same as "ceramic" or "clay" but that doesn't mean they don't have a market. There will be issues about durability, slippery vs stackable, the quality of the graphics that can be achieved on the media. Obviously price point matters a lot.

Don't be discouraged by the negative reaction you get from many of us. People will change their tune once they get a look at a fine product. Wood has a lot of nice features that might prove to be desirable.

I strongly encourage alpha testing to select the types of finish the give the best feel / sound / stackability etc. Wood finishing has a huge range of outcomes that could likely end up with an acceptable product.

"inlays" aren't that important, but the look of an inlay can be. Inlayed chips are a luxury feature and as such they command a higher price - - - - sometimes. Inlays were also a security feature, basically increasing the cost to counterfeit a chip but that isn't a big issue in a home poker game.

Pricing - - well we know mint casino chips can fetch $2+ each at the moment. Not always though. Custom clay chips can be even more expensive. Custom ceramic chips can run $1 +/-. I think a good product at a buck a chip might be a place to start. The critical issue will be how your products stack up to other custom options. It isn't crazy to contemplate a high end product to compete with customer clay chips, but there will be resistance.

Price point for bulk production runs needs to be less than a buck a chip.

Speed of production matters. Custom clay chips can take months and months to get done. The vendors have historically seemed disinterested due to the low profit margins vs the effort to get a custom order done. The ceramic vendors have been faster, but often even these can be really slow. There are people who will be strongly swayed by delivery this year vs "sometime in 2019, we hope"

I encourage you to have an open mind about labels. We get VERY good results from @Gear . This is a fine way to get custom results by using bulk made blanks and custom labels. My uneducated guess is that custom labels are going to work better than laser engraving.

Please don't "save money" on design costs. A top notch chip art specialist is worth his/her weight in gold.

The "side art" on a chip is critical. Think how chips look in stacks - more of the sides are visible in a 20 chip stack than the face of the chip. We separate and count chips based on their edges not the faces. I shudder to think about sorting chips only based on the face of the chip. It is 100% absolutely not-negotiable that a chip and its value can be determined solely by the art on the edge of the chip. "art" might be different colored woods or finishes vs paint/spots/printing. I can not say this strongly enough. Fail here, and you will not succeed in the venture.

I have a suggestion for getting a product test done. We hold meet-ups something like 6-10 times a year. When you are ready to debut your product, make a set for the meet-up to use in one of their games, let us use the chips in play and watch the results in person. This isn't an alpha test or even a beta test - this is a ready for taking orders marketing effort. Succeed here and you could cut a year off your product acceptance time line.

We aren't a trivial market. Some of our group purchases have been for 100,000+ chips. We aren't the mass market either, but I can say if you make this group happy it will be an excellent benchmark for your product's market appeal.

Other people have noted that we need 10-20 chips to make an evaluation. One chip is better than none, but not as useful as you might think. However, lots of less selective customers will make a decision just from looking at a picture of a single chip. We know better because of previous bad experiences, buying pretty looking chips that end up unused.

Be patient, it will take a lot of iterations to get to the best answers. We will work with you and likely be a pain in the butt sometimes. It will be worth it in the end.

It would be a shame to sell fine wooden poker chips and not sell a fine line of wooden cases. (Please don't cheap out on the hinges and hardware, chips are heavy).

Good luck! -=- DrStrange
Click to expand...

Fantastic reply
 
I've had wooden tokens the size of poker chips before, but they didn't come anywhere close to the 10g weight.

They stacked fine, but they were super light. Makes for a good card capper though.

I would be interested, but have to admit I am extremely skeptical. I am not one of those people that hates to be wrong though, so prove me wrong.
 
Last edited:
Same as PZ, interested but extremely skeptical with so many questions.

How do you plan to incorporate colors?

I can look over and at a glance with colors gauge how much a person has in front of them. I'm picturing just wooden chips and having to actually read the engraving to determine the value.
 
Inlays would be important to some people, but that doesn't mean you have to do them. You could make a premade area for us to label as needed.

I do think if you do it right, some might be Interested. But I also think we are a picky group, so a new idea might not always be the right one. Most here would rather have some 60s-70s trks then brand new crisp chips. New isn't always better for us. But, I am a wood fan myself, and could see where it might be something.... Just not sure if it would fufill the need...

I'd give it a shot tho!
 
From a business point of view I would discourage you from entering this market.

China Clay are about $0.39 - $0.42/ea
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/dunes-clay-poker-chips/
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/majestic-poker-chips/

Used Casino Chips are about $1.20 - $3.00/ea.
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/aztar-paulson-poker-chips/
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/paradice-casino-paulson-poker-chips/
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/argosy-casino-paulson-poker-chips/
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/grand-victoria-paulson-poker-chips/

Fantasy Chips are about $2.50/ea - $4.50/ea
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/top-hat-and-cane-paulson-poker-chips/
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/classic-paulson-poker-chips/

The real game changer in the market is the Paulson Elite chips at $1.00/ea. These are casino quality chips with a simple design. Now anyone can have brand new casino quality chips at a very low price of $1.00/ea.
https://www.apachepokerchips.com/product/paulson-elite-poker-chips/

The other game changer is the Sun-Fly hybrid chips that can vary in price but seem to come in around $0.55/ea. - $0.75/ea +/-.
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/1000-43mm-sunfly-tournament-set.30225/#post-565488

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...-casino-43mm-sun-fly-hybrids-group-buy.29829/

I assume your product will be priced between 30 cents to a dollar per chip. If that is the case then you have some stiff competition between china clays, ceramics, and Paulson Elites which all come in under a buck per chip. As it is the market is glutted with so many beautiful chips that people are already "over budget" on chip spending. If people are going to splurge it will most often be on a "grail set" (whatever that may be to you...) Lakeshore Inn, Tropicana, Star Chips, Mapes, TRK etc.

I am not intending to discourage you but just provide a realistic picture. To get people to spend $500-$1,000 per set it will have to really be impressive. The problem is the Paulson Elites already provide the exact feel and weight that is generally desired. Wood is not the "right" material for poker chips...well that is the prevailing thought right now at least. The best way to make waves would be to have some designs/colours that just blow people away.
 
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Thanks again everyone - especially @DrStrange for the incredible insights.

A few additional remarks:

I'm a poker player myself so I have a good understanding of how they'll be used.

The chips will be dyed colors consistent with casino denominations. You won't have to read the face to count chips.

The dyeing process will allow for edgespots.

The point of using wood at all is the natural beauty of the material. I've always been a believer that a market will generally accept a quality product. In this industry, mass market ceramic chips are a relatively new phenomenon relatively speaking - and they in many respects filled the gap between the El Cheapos and the Paulson Purists.

Quality accessories are in the pipeline.

If Amazon and eBay data is any indicator of the overall market, about 80% of people spend less than $100 on their chip sets. We're not after that market. My general assumption is that if someone wants Paulsons, they're going to buy Paulsons and our my intention isn't to compete with that. What I really want to know is if there's a middle market somewhere for a high quality, unique product.

Building a brand that is respected in the marketplace is a long term goal if we can come up with a viable product.
 
Is there a middle market, yes... There has to be, but is that market big enough to validate making them, that I am not sure.....
 
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Reactions: Nex
Good luck on your venture. I will be interested to see what you come up with but I'm not so sure there is that big a need to reinvent the wheel.

Full customization (colors, edge spot patterns, inlay/label/artwork design) is the biggest key, people here will need to have that capability, stock designs will have a limited appeal. If it's a good product though people will buy it. :)
 
Have you seen the wooden chips made by Wyrmwood Gaming for the Name of the Wind playing cards Kickstarter?

e4659f70959746faa80d51d6e34c7cf5_original.jpg


They look nice, but I have no idea how they would be to play with.

Edit: link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/882053899/the-name-of-the-wind-art-deck
 
Last edited:
Interesting nice find :)

No I hadn't seen this - to be honest it seems like kind of an unusual item for a kickstarter project.

No decisions have been made as to whether we're going to pursue this. It doesn't need to be a big market - but there needs to be a willingness to try something new... something that is difficult to predict.
 
T.R. King once made pressed paper chips on the large crown mold so why not wood? I would be interested in buying a sample set and/or a stack. Maybe use an image of a termite on the bounty chip?

Best of luck with your venture and please keep us posted!
 
I’m kind of curious to see what the final product would be. As others have said I think this would be a tough nut to crack.
 
While I'm skeptical as hell, I would love to see something come to fruition. I venture to estate sales to find old heavy wood furniture, wooden inlays on my pocket knives, etc.

I'm really interested to see how this pans out.
 
I'd be interested in testing out samples. I'm not sure if there is a poker chip market for this product, but my initial thought is that dealer buttons and card protectors might be real cool. BUT, I might get them and might be impressed. Who knows.
 
Seeking Alpha Social Club said:
I'd be interested in testing out samples. I'm not sure if there is a poker chip market for this product, but my initial thought is that dealer buttons and card protectors might be real cool. BUT, I might get them and might be impressed. Who knows.
Click to expand...
Woodent-ya like too know!!! Hehehe see what I did there
 
I'd be interested in a sample set as well.

I share the general skepticism above, but who knows.

Also, I agree that you should reconsider labels or something on the face more than laser engraving. Laser engraving sounds like hotstamping, which is cool, but probably a much smaller market than full-color face art.
 
Thanks everyone once again for your interest in this discussion and for contributing your thoughts and insights. No decisions will be made whether to move forward with prototypes until probably around the end of the month. We need to study the market some more (including consideration of the valuable advice dispensed here), as well as consider our designs from an engineering standpoint.

I will absolutely post updates including possible artist renderings if and when we get that far.
 

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