When Barron returned to London again, he met Phillips who had also returned from France.
However, this time when he came to London, in addition to Phillips, another founder of Asmodee, Mark, also came.
It was obvious that after discussion, they agreed to Barron's investment request.
Although Asmodee was founded in 1995, its most successful board game before that was still "Totem Quick Hand" launched in 1998. As time went by, the sales of this game have been much lower than before.
They have always hoped to find another growth point for the company. In their previous life, they planned to obtain the distribution rights for the French version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) next year, thereby putting the company's development on the fast track. Since 2005, they have successively accepted investments from private equity funds and eventually developed into a tabletop game giant.
And now, what they are eyeing is Werewolf owned by Halo company.
In this transaction, Asmodee will accept a £4 million investment from DS Capital at a valuation of £10 million, thereby obtaining the global license for the board game Werewolf.
They will work with Halo to promote the Werewolf game globally, currently mainly in Europe.
DS Capital, after paying 4 million pounds, acquired 40% of Asmodee's shares and became one of its major shareholders.
Next, Asmodee will redesign and release the regular version of Werewolf, which is expected to be priced at 29.9 euros, and the deluxe version of Werewolf, which is priced at 99.9 euros.
The deluxe version of Werewolf still uses the entire design of Smythson - because Baron paid and commissioned Smythson to design it, so the design copyright of this game belongs to Baron, and now belongs to Halo.
The deluxe version of "Werewolf" still has more accessories, is more exquisite, and is aimed at high-end users.
But now, the 100 game gift packs with the Smythson brand logo that Barron originally customized from Smythson have become rare items.
All the "Werewolf" game gift packs released later will be produced by Asmodee. Since Smythson does not have the authorization for Werewolf, it is impossible for it to customize Werewolf game gift packs for customers. This also greatly increases the collection value of the 100 sets of "Werewolf" game gift packs originally customized by Smythson.
Twenty years later, an unopened original version of the Werewolf deluxe game package with the Smythson logo was sold at an auction at Christie's for a high price of 1 million pounds...
…
A new free newspaper called the London Evening Standard has appeared at every subway entrance in London. This newspaper is a new evening newspaper launched by the Independent Newspapers Company after the closure of the Sunday Independent.
The Independent is a morning newspaper that targets the well-educated elite, while the London Evening Standard covers news, sports, life stories, entertainment, etc. The newspaper also has small games such as crossword puzzles and Sudoku that are very popular with users, which are very suitable for them to kill time.
As a free newspaper, the London Evening News will be distributed free of charge in crowded places such as subways, buses, supermarkets, commercial streets and office buildings - not only now, even twenty years later, people on the London subway still prefer to read newspapers rather than play with their mobile phones.
This is not because the British like to read books and newspapers as some "Reader's Digest" boasted, but mainly because... well, until twenty years later, there was still no Internet signal in the London subway, so people could only rely on reading newspapers to pass the time.
The characteristic of the London Evening Standard is that its content is popular and novel - you can understand it as the shocking style of Toutiao and UC... Therefore, it is very popular among middle and lower class workers.
In addition, this newspaper is easy to use, contains a lot of information, and has many advertisements - especially job recruitment advertisements and special product advertisements...
Therefore, since its launch, it has been gaining momentum. The printing volume of the first issue was a bit conservative, only 350,000 copies, but two days later, the printing volume was increased to 500,000 copies per day, and it was still in short supply. Finally, one month later, the circulation of this newspaper exceeded 1 million copies for the first time!
Even among free newspapers, this circulation is very good.
Many people in the newspaper industry realized that a strong competitor had emerged!
In addition, the sales of The Independent began to rise after the redesign, and now it has stabilized to the 400,000 copies of the previous good times.
It can be said that when many traditional paper media began to feel the impact of the Internet and saw a decrease in sales, the Independent Press bucked the trend and saw an increase in sales, which also attracted attention within the newspaper industry. Many newspapers began to try to learn from the Independent's revised format and make changes.
However, although the London Evening Standard is a free newspaper and is distributed to the public free of charge, it was eventually discovered that its profitability was no less than that of the Independent. Later, it even surpassed the Independent and became the largest source of profit for the independent newspaper industry.
The reason, of course, is the multi-page advertising information it provides to readers.
The space of each copy of the London Evening Post is much larger than that of the Independent. It can be said that half of the space is filled with various advertising information.
Although the price of each advertisement here is far less than that of The Independent, there are many of them. And as the circulation of The London Evening News continues to soar, the value of its advertisements is also increasing - merchants do not care too much about the price of advertisements, but care more about the scope of those who can receive these advertisements and the effective delivery rate.
Compared with these increased advertising costs, the increased printing costs of the London Evening News are nothing.
And with the popularity of the game "Werewolf", each issue of the "London Evening Post" has a special edition that prints cards with various werewolf professions. This way, when everyone gets together and suddenly wants to play this game, they only need to find a free copy of the "London Evening Post" for an emergency - well, you can also read the newspaper while waiting.
If others were not optimistic about the prospects of the Independent Newspaper when Barron first bought the loss-making newspaper, now that the Independent and the newly launched London Evening Standard have achieved success, praises for them have begun to flow in.
…
"Your Highness, it's a pleasure to meet you."
"Hello, Sir Blair. I am also looking forward to this meeting."
Just as the Prince of Wales had said to Barron last time, not long after, the Director of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, came to see Barron on his own initiative.
The full name of MI6 is the British Army Intelligence Agency (MI6). It is known as one of the world's four major intelligence agencies along with the KGB (Soviet State Security Committee, now the Russian Federal Security Service), the American Central Intelligence Agency and Israel's Mossad.
It can be said that there are many legends about MI6. The most famous one is naturally James Bond, the world's most famous agent 007. In the movie, he belongs to MI6.
"I know you are very concerned about the progress of the 'London Star' case, but with the involvement of our MI6, you should be able to guess that the things involved are quite complicated..."
I wish all my book lovers a happy Mid-Autumn Festival!