Announcing the Canadian Heritage Collection

As I alluded to in my previous post, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Canadian board game industry, its long history of innovation, and the robust and very active state in which it currently finds itself. Despite that long tradition and current health, however, there appears to be a bit of a disconnect at the retailer level. In speaking to retailers, I've found that many are unaware of the full extent of that heritage and all of the exciting new developments that are occurring right here at home. Rather than simply blog about that disconnect, I've decided to take action and tackle it head on.


So, without further ado, I'm very happy to announce the Canadian Heritage Collection, a Canadian content education and labeling initiative for the specialty games market. The initiative consists of two parts:

1. an annual catalog of Canadian designed and published games that are currently in print; and
2. attractive 1" Canadian Heritage Collection promotional stickers that retailers can apply to Canadian games already on their store shelves. 

Retailers can order both types of materials right here on my blog. They're currently en route and I'll be able to start mailing them out to retailers shortly. In future years, I intend to attract the support of various Canadian game distributors so that the Canadian Heritage Collection materials are readily available as part of their regular restocking process but, for now, this gets the ball rolling in time for the Christmas rush. I'll also be working with some local retailers to ensure the program gets rolled out successfully here in Edmonton.

As part of this whole process, my existing readership (hi Mom!) may notice that I've been doing some more redecorating around here. I've renamed the blog, added a whole new page, and put up a nice maple leaf background to celebrate the collection's launch.

How can all of you help out? Well, you can start by subscribing to the Canadian Heritage Collection newsletter and notifying others who you think would be interested in receiving it (particularly Canadian game retailers). Also, the catalog is available as a free download and you're welcome to send it around to anyone you think might be interested. So hold onto your hats and let's see where this journey takes us.

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