Hobby world

Hobby World ("Hobby World") is a publishing holding.

Aktivs

For April 2019, Hobby World includes:

• Russian publisher, distributor and manufacturer of board games;
• the oldest in Russia genre print magazine "World of Fiction" with the portal mirf.ru;
• CrowdRepublic crowdfunding service;
• Hobby Games, a chain of branded and franchise board game stores;
• online store HobbyGames.ru.

History

2023: Investing 500 million rubles in the construction of a plant in the Tver region

The largest publishing house of board games in Russia Hobby World intends to build its own plant in the Borovlevo-3 industrial park near Tver. This was reported on September 26 by Vedomosti with reference to the general director of the company Mikhail Akulov.

Investments in the project will amount to about 500 million rubles. The company plans to put into operation in 2025, and the production capacity will be 9 million copies per year. Now the publishing house of such games as "Mansions of Madness," "Colonizers," "Mafia. The whole family is assembled, "produces products in a rented room in Tver, a total of about 3 million games a year.

The publishing house of board games Hobby World intends to build its own plant in the industrial park "Borovlevo-3" near Tver

The plant will produce board game parts from cardboard (boxes, cards, chips, elements for creating a playing field). It is also planned to create a workshop for casting plastic figures. Previously, most of the figures were imported. The bulk of the orders for the enterprise will be provided by the publishing house itself, but the company is also "open to cooperation with the market"

The expansion of production is associated with Hobby World's strategic plans, Akulov explained. Within five years, the publishing house wants to increase its share in the Russian market to 20%, increase sales in the CIS countries and enter "new foreign markets." By the same time, it is planned to recoup investments in the construction of the plant.

Experts note that the payback project for five years looks realistic. On the other hand, the company's plans may be hampered by an increase in parallel imports.

The toy market in 2022 amounted to 201.3 billion rubles. The board games segment, taking into account paper and cardboard games, card games and puzzles, accounted for about 12% of its volume, according to the Association of Children's Products Industry Enterprises.^[1]

2019

Purchase of 70% of shares in Mosigra Group of Companies

In April 2019, Hobby World Publishing Holding announced the completion of a deal to acquire a controlling stake in the Mosigra group of companies, which includes Empire Mosigra LLC and Magellan Production LLC. Now the shares of Mosigra are distributed as follows: 30% remain with its founder Dmitry Borisov, 70% is received by Hobby World. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed.

The deal affected all parts of Mosigra's business, including its chain of stores, online store, games and gifts publisher Magellan, production in Podolsk, BTL department, distribution and franchisee network. The chain of stores will continue to operate under the Mosigra brand.

Thus, Hobby World combined under its leadership at once 157 stores of the most popular specialized chains with the largest range of board games: Hobby Games and Mosigra.

"The acquisition of Mosigra is significant for us and is strategic in nature. We did not just continue to invest in our own development, we got the opportunity to increase the audience and even more often guess the preferences of our buyers. It is valuable for us that audiences with different preferences have formed around Mosigr and Hobby Games. It's no secret that Hobby Games is targeting advanced board game fans. In turn, Mosigra has always relied on a youth audience that loves simpler games. Therefore, the range of networks will differ, which will allow us to offer customers games suitable for them for every taste, "says Mikhail Akulov, CEO of Hobby World.

$617,234 raised through CrowdRepublic crowdfunding platform

On April 16, 2019, Hobby World Publishing Holding presented its first full analysis of crowdfunding of board games in Russia. According to the results of the study, 2018 was a breakthrough for the segment: the platforms raised $714,719, thanks to which the market grew by 40.1%. The leading position in the industry was taken by the platform of the publishing holding Hobby World - CrowdRepublic. Read more here.

2018

Publishing holding Hobby World produces about 100 board games a year and in some years was among the top 10 largest publishers of board games in the world. The total revenue reaches 1 billion rubles (500 thousand sets per year), of which 60% falls on proprietary products, and the remaining 40% - on the distribution of strangers.