The Upside Agency’s Jaime Wolanski reveals the surprising truth about getting games into Target

Thanks for making time, Jaime. Before we do anything else… How do people pronounce your name? It’s not like the Mexican? High-me…
Ah! No, it’s pronounced Jay-me – but spelled J, A, I, M, E. Actually, I was named after the Bionic Woman who is Jaime Sommers…

No?!
Yes! I was really lucky actually because I have a twin brother, and our names were supposed to be Michael and Michelle…

But now he’s Steve? Or Austin? After the Bionic Man?
Ha! No, mum wanted another J name… So he’s Jason! Jaime and Jason.

Well, this is already the best interview of the week! So… Let’s start with your LinkedIn profile: you’re the founder of The Upside Agency; you describe yourself as a manufacturer’s representative… First question some UK readers are going to ask is: what the heck is a manufacturer’s representative?!
Right… So Europeans and people from the UK don’t necessarily deal with reps. In the US marketplace though, especially at mass retail – and complicated retailers like Target – it’s useful to have a middle person. So we’re basically a broker for the brands we represent; we represent the manufacturers to the retailer.

And why is that useful?
It’s useful because the back end is so complicated, and retailers like Target expect every vendor to be up to snuff. They want perfect execution and positive partners – and getting a product in store is a very expensive process to go through if you make a mistake. At The Upside Agency, we speak Targetish: we steer people through it; we make it seamless for Target to say yes. I always say our commission rate pays for itself by the amount of money we save vendors from chargebacks and vendor income.

What a summary! Great! Now, The Upside Agency is quite a new company – but you’ve been doing this a long time…
Yes, I founded The Upside Agency in 2021 – during the pandemic… But I was with the Wilko group for 15 years before that. So I’ve been a rep for 20 years. Before that, I was director of sales for a musical instruments company called First Act – which Jazwares has now acquired. Back then, I was a musician; a singer and songwriter working at a little marketing company in Austin, Texas. One day, this guy that had recorded a demo told me he was helping this company in Boston develop a line of amplifiers and electric guitars and that they were looking for a salesperson. And he asked me, “Would you want do that?”

How old would you have been at that point?
I think I was 25, 26! Old enough to know I’d want to own my own company someday. And I’d read that – to run your own company – you had to have sales, marketing and management experience. So I thought: sure, let’s go check that sales box! The next thing I knew I was on the road every day for three years selling to every retailer in the country except for Toys R Us. I hit 49 out of the 50 states and really cut my teeth.

Just selling musical instruments?
Exactly. Kids recorders, harmonicas, tiny drum sets and acoustic guitars… I didn’t know what I was doing when I started! I’d sit at a booth in different trade shows and play guitar and sing just to kind of like demo the instruments. It was just really fun! So that’s how I got into it. Then, when I moved to Nashville, I met Neil Kohler… He ran the Wilko group and was managing the Cranium board game business. And he tried to get me to come over on the rep side and I was like, no, absolutely not! Reps are lazy and they’re liars and I don’t want to be be a part of the dark side.

Ha! So what turned you?
He kept asking me to try it! It took a couple of months, and I eventually said okay because I was kind of tired of the travel. And Neil and I worked together for 15 years – it really was huge fun. Over that time, I built some of the best relationships… I’m still friends with some of the buyers I called on at Target back then, some of whom have climbed the ranks. Actually, I think one of the benefits reps offer is that continuity… Even when the buyers transition every two to three years, we’re able to help keep the businesses level, scaling and growing.

And for context, tell us about some of the toys, games, and collectibles in your portfolio… What are you proud of?
I’m proud of lots of things! One thing that comes to mind, though, is helping to launch Funko at Target. Early days, they had one Green Lantern Pop in the boys’ action aisle. When we took on the account, we presented this three-foot end cap called Collector’s World… And the buyer said yes! To then watch them go to the license shop in the back of the wall and be part of that and be a part of that family and team was fantastic! I loved seeing how we all just rolled up our sleeves… I remember going into showrooms and spray painting the fixtures green – just to show how we could do things differently. This was when Funko’s founder, Brian Mariotti, was just a mad scientist and it was just so much fun!

So you helped grow Funko from underdog to top dog! And at what point did you exit that?
Well, that’s one of the sad parts of what we do… The better the job we do, the greater the likelihood is – as we grow a vendor to 20, 30, $40 million – that they can hire a really amazing sales team internally for a lot cheaper than they can hire us!

Yes! You know you’re completely successful when you’re redundant!
That’s exactly right. But, you know, Funko still treated us wonderfully even as we exited. Great people! And launching those underdog brands and seeing the potential is what gives me the creative drive to represent all my other vendors. Around that same time, we also launched Moose Toys at Target… They were only in Toys R Us at the time; we were renting hotel showrooms to try and get one foot in the door. But we helped them launch a girls’ brand and a boys’ brand. And again, some really great moments in my career.

You talk about it very passionately; I’ve noticed too that you use the word fun a lot…
Yes, we’ll – this really is where my heart is! I love toys and I LOVE boardgaming, I love helping people, I love knowing there’s a secret sauce to getting a game on the Target shelf and selling… I love selling experiences and a connection for families, kids, men, women – everybody! I love all that.

And you say, “secret sauce”… In what way might a board game benefit from the secret sauce?
With a boardgame, it is – as you know – very hard to place a bet on what will and won’t work. It’s a game of roulette! You could have the best gameplay out there, with great artwork, a great title, a great subtitle and perfect retail… And it could just sit on the shelf at Target! Because you have three feet of space, and about three seconds, to attract somebody to pick up the game, consider it, and put it in their cart.

The environment there is harder to sell in? Even for a great game?
Exactly right, Deej. And I’ll give you a good example… Until recently, Tapple from The Op was one of the hardest games to push! It’s a fantastic game, but when it first went in, six or seven years ago, it was selling maybe 130 units a week! And it was NCF the next season…

NCF?
Sorry – Non-Carry Forward. Then, over the pandemic, all the game companies were having a really hard time finding newness… They couldn’t get their teams together to role play and figure out mechanics. And because of that, I jokingly said to the leadership team, “Let’s bring back Tapple!”

And was that entirely a joke? Or could you see a way forward for it?
I hoped to see a way forward! Because it’s a fantastic game… I was thinking – I don’t know – we could put it in a different-coloured box or change the name maybe. Just bring it back and see if it sells now! And when we did, of course, it suddenly went viral on TikTok and now it’s a top title! It was one of the first games to go viral on TikTok as well.

Deservedly so! It’s brilliant. We call it Think Words in the UK – and, arguably, that’s a better name… I think it’s one of those games where the abstract name doesn’t help. But as you say, it’s doing the business now!
Yes, it took years for it to hit that switch. But that speaks to the point that good games remain good games. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel… Sometimes society just isn’t ready for it. Or sometimes the name isn’t right, or the subtitle; the strapline.

Yes – I’m looking round for a good example… Oh! Here we go! This is from, Gamely Games in the UK… Six Second Scribble. The strapline is, “The fastest drawing game in the world” – open bracket, “probably”, close bracket. So between the title and the strap, you know EXACTLY what you’ve got to do!
Right. You get it.

And I know you also paved the way for Bananagrams and – correct me if I’m wrong – Settlers of Catan as it was… So let me ask you this – without giving away trade secrets, Jaime, what’s the process you go through?
Well, it depends – and it changes! In fact, I think it’s worth saying that, of my whole career, my process has changed the fastest in the last two years… Since the world opened up post pandemic. Before that, I would look at gameplay, and asked myself: what’s the demographic? Does it appeal to the millennial or Xennial mom that’s sharp shopping at Target? Is it accessible? Are the rules easy to comprehend? Is there marketing support? Those were the things that I looked for…

And more recently?
More recently, you have to think about how amazon, Walmart and Target are now racing for market share. So I hate to say this, but a lot of buyers are looking on amazon and using that as kind of benchmark… How quickly are products going up the ranks of amazon? And are you growing your business fast enough to show up on the radar where mass retail buyers can identify your product as something that’s proving itself?

So even retail, if I understand correctly, has now become dependent – to some extent – on whether or not someone knows how to market their own products digitally?
Yes. To the extent that – two years ago – I might’ve said, “Keep your product off amazon… Let’s give Target an exclusive. Not anymore… Now I say put it on amazon and sell, sell, sell! And I think this can be disheartening because it takes a lot of the fun out of it, but it is the reality. It’s just a lot easier to get real shelf space if you’ve proven to a retailer that the product sells pretty consistently on a daily basis.

That’s fantastically interesting.
And some of these newer, smaller companies can figure it out. But I will tell you, some of the older game companies are having a really hard time keeping up with these young whipper snappers who have really figured out how to market online. They’re not necessarily game designers, but they’ve created a game, and they know how to market and pull all the levers on amazon and TikTok… And they can do it so much better than some of these old game companies who are great at what they do, but really can’t get out of their own way and understand how the industry has changed.

It’s worth saying, though, that it still helps to have a great game – because I believe in my soul, and I will tell this to every new Target buyer in the future, that games is such a word-of-mouth industry. And this is where it’s so different for toy companies that might have a formula for TV and radio launches, or social media… Games still have to be on the shelf for at least nine months before you get a real read because people have to play it and try it!

Which they might not do right away?
Exactly. And if the average guest picks up three games a year at Target, you need to give them time to play it with their friends and have their friends go pick it up. It’s word of mouth! You’ll see games that end up in the ‘Top 20’ that have a really slow start for the first couple of months – and that was pre-social media. So it’s like this fine art and science of understanding: do we give it a while to get people to start talking about it? Or is it just DOA?

DOA! Brilliant. And something you said there really interests me because you described it as an art and science – but you’re very honest about it being instinct-driven in the end…
Yes, because I can help your chances but – in the end – it’s still a crapshoot! People’s intuition sometimes says a game will sell, but it might not strike a chord for some reason. I like to think I have a really dialled in gut instinct. That’s one of my superpowers! I can just kind of say, Nope. Yes… Yes… No… This needs a tagline, this needs that… And maybe it’s because I’ve seen so many games! I don’t have all the answers, but I know enough to say, “This will never work!” Or “This hasn’t worked in the past and will never work. But let’s try this.”

And top line; gut instinct – what things could you tell at a glance aren’t going to work?
Big boxes come to mind! Everything’s now in a tall, skinny box. You don’t want too many components – that can feel dated… A lot of buyers just want cards. Again, this has changed: I remember the days when every single board game came in a beefy 10-by 10-box… I sound so old! But those days are over.

This is fabulous! Jaime, we’re running out of time, but I need to ask this for your sanity’s sake… In terms of people that should be approaching you, who should absolutely NOT be coming to you? Whom don’t you want to see?
Ha! Well, thank you Deej! Who should not come to me? Don’t come to me if you’ve created a game in your mum’s basement and you’ve never sold it. Don’t come to me if you have another full-time job and your game is not your first focus… Because everyone who was in lockdown created a game – everyone! That whole next year, I just shuffled through a bunch of people who had nothing but high hopes – and it takes a lot more to get on the show!

Ha! Gosh, I can imagine that was very time consuming…
Yes – but then, games are fun! But that’s just not how you do it. On the other hand, DO come to me if you’ve already had success on amazon, or if you’ve had success at smaller accounts…

Smaller accounts? Like you’ve already proved yourself in smaller retailers?
Right. We also call on Barnes and Noble, for example, and we can use that as an incubator for a lot of games. That’s because they really focus on specialty and hobby. They allow a lot of new vendors in; they consider themselves a hobby store and they have an amazing buyer who’s really dialled in on the newness in the industry. So sometimes we can start there, and – if it makes sense – we can graduate to Target from there.

Well, listen, this has been great. I have one more question to wrap things up: what – this’ll be different! What is the most interesting object on your desk?
Oh! I feel like I need to show you… Ha! I have this toy axolotl…

Ha! Course you do!
I also have a little donkey because donkeys are my favourite.

Donkeys are your favourite, but why on earth have you got an axolotl?
I saw it at a toy store; he was sitting up like this – he’s so cute! He just smiles at me all day. And even though I sell games, my life can be incredibly stressful… So I have him sitting on my desk, just kind of staring and smiling at me all day long.

I get the same thing with Billy Langsworthy…
Ha! Well, this is just such a happy axolotl. I just love him!

And axolotls – I don’t know if you know this, Jaime – if they lose a limb, they can grow it back!
I actually did not know that! Is that true?

Oh, yes! They’re a type of salamander, but they’re of great interest to scientists because they regenerate their limbs. So there we go… What an intriguing note to end on!

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