Octopus Overlords

Anyone have any experience with Geek Chic? We're reworking our living room to create a section at one end that needs a nice, furniture-grade gaming table. Right now, it's mainly going to be used for cards, kid-level board games (monopoly) and puzzles, but down the road, as the kids get older, I'm hoping I can get them off the computer and XBOX now and then for some more serious board gaming (I used to love Axis and Allies, and I'd really like to get more into board gaming if I had some willing compatriots - hopefully, the kids 10, 8, and 5 will start to come around).

Anyway, I ran into Geek Chic at Pax East a couple years ago and remembered being really impressed with their stuff. Two main drawbacks: (1) price (WOW!) and (2) my wife insists that the space needs a round table, and all I can see on the Geek Chic website is square/rectangular offerings.

So, any thoughts? Is Geek Chic worth the money? Are there better alternatives out there that are just as nice but a little less pricey? Any round options?

Thanks!

I'm sure they could make you one to perfectly fit your space.

You could learn to build your own and give it a bunch of tries in the time it would take you to get a GC table. I haven't looked recently but they had a 12-18 month wait last I heard. They are impressive table but the cost is significant.

12-18 months??? I was thinking maybe 12-18 weeks.

If there's that kind of demand that they can't meet, there must be competitors/alternatives out there, no?

In the high end gaming table space, AFAIK there is only Geek Chic. And the wait (according to their website as of March 2013) is 6-18 months.

That said, I have long wanted one of their Emissary tables. I played a game of D&D on a Sultan once, and while kind of nifty, the depth of the playing surface was kind of a pain to adjust to.

Right now my gaming table serves as a giant spot to store all of my boardgames. It's basically a 4x8 sheet of plywood that I put a lip around the edge, and mounted that onto a long old fashioned cafeteria table. The table was designed to play minis games on, but we haven't done anything with minis other than Wings of War and Sergeants Miniatures Battles in years, so the need for such a large playing surface is diminished.

Rebuilding my gaming room is my huge procrastination project right now. Maybe I'll spend the afternoon trying to clear it off. It really needs to get done, I've put it off long enough. Once I have my gaming room rebuilt, I'm planning on putting one of these Bjursta round tables in it's place. Round would work well for most of the boardgames I'm playing today, plus it has an internal leaf in it that pops into place when you pull the table apart for bigger games.

I have a Hoplite (the "coffee table" model). We saw Geek Chic at New York Comic Con in 2011 and put a deposit down. After that, dealing with them was actually extremely pleasant and they are very customer focused. One of the first things they do is take an initial order which is an estimate of the cost then they set up a call and we talked through all the options and figured out a delivery time frame. To give an idea of the process at the time, New York Comic Con was in October and we had a tentative delivery date of end of May in 2012. This is in large part building schedule combined with how they deal with logistics. I don't know if it is still the case but at the time they had a team that actually did a cross-country drive to deliver to an area so being on the East Coast put us into a "delivery window" so to speak with metro NYC. They ended up contacting me and slipped about a month on the date and were going to set up a delivery at June's end which I was unavailable for due to a business trip. This actually worked out because we were in the middle of buying a house so I pushed off until the "late summer window" which was still being scheduled. This allowed the delivery to go straight into the new house and this ended up being late in August shortly after we closed on the house.

As to the table, it is a beautiful piece of furniture and is very functional. We don't use it as a coffee table actually and instead it is the center piece of our game room in front of our fireplace. We tend to use it two ways: when there is a board game with dice rolling we usually pop out the leaves and play on the surface inside. We sized it for Arkham Horror with an expansion. If we got a few of the shelf desks we could probably do two expansions easily. For card games, we usually just put a table cloth on it and play on top of it. For seating, originally we intended to have floor pillows around it but we couldn't get it to work very well but you can sit at it on plain chairs with so issue. This is mostly because I got it at the highest height available in the model.

For those prices, I'd like to think you could go to a local carpenter have them build one but I could be wrong. For all I know the price of high quality lumber has gotten even more expensive than when last I looked.

At the same time, I suppose people pay that kind of money for cabinet furniture/pool tables/etc.. that aren't nearly as cool, so what do I know?

Hope you got your Sultan if you wanted one - as of today, Geek Chic is out of business.

They must have gone out of business because they couldn't handle all the business they were getting.

err...

https://www.geekchichq.com/

It is with great sadness that I must announce Geek Chic has ceased operation. Despite heroic efforts by many, this outcome is out of our hands. While I am certain there are many outstanding questions, we are currently limited in our ability to respond. I will update this page with appropriate contact information and procedures as they become available.

I am forever indebted to those who joined us on this adventure, and am absolutely gutted about it's end.


Robert Gifford

There's definitely something strange going on as they were apparently on Shark Tank late last year indicating they did $2 million in sales in 2015.

Smoove_B wrote:There's definitely something strange going on as they were apparently on Shark Tank late last year indicating they did $2 million in sales in 2015.

What's so strange about that?

To go from $2 million in sales in 2015 to bankrupt (seemingly) early in 2017? I guess I was under the impression that their business was swamped and they were doing their best to keep up, i.e. sales were strong.

Doesn't matter if their costs were higher.

we are currently limited in our ability to respond

Makes me wonder if this is something other than purely financial.

That was my first thought. Some people actually listen when their lawyers tell them to shut up.

Blackhawk wrote:

we are currently limited in our ability to respond

Makes me wonder if this is something other than purely financial.

It may be around all of the deposits that they have taken on tables that never got delivered. I assume they are filing for bankruptcy protection.

Smoove_B wrote:To go from $2 million in sales in 2015 to bankrupt (seemingly) early in 2017? I guess I was under the impression that their business was swamped and they were doing their best to keep up, i.e. sales were strong.

The article above mentions commentary on Shark Tank that for the $2M year, they still netted a $100k loss. Comment on the article mentioned that they filed for bankruptcy on 6/9/17.

Bummer. I had 'get me a Geek Chic table' on my bucket list.

There's always boardgametables.com.

Zaxxon wrote:The article above mentions commentary on Shark Tank that for the $2M year, they still netted a $100k loss. Comment on the article mentioned that they filed for bankruptcy on 6/9/17.

Another puzzle piece - they purchased Crash Games in February of 2016.

Crash Games was founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 2011 by Nickell, named “Crash” because, according to the company’s website “Crash is the designation given to a group of rhinoceros.” The company’s existing catalog includes more than 10 games, including Council of Verona, Pirate Den, Dead Drop and Yardmaster. The company plans to publish six new games in 2016.

Crash (of) Games website is shopify-hosted, and not presently available.

I was bummed to hear this. I was planning on getting one in 3 years (yes specific timeline I know, but hey that means a deposit in like 2 years is all and 3 years is when we will be moving likely to a place with room for a table). I've had my eye on their tables for a long time. Lots of drama on BGG over it all.

I guess I will just go to GeeknSon or Rathskeller tables now. Still good options out there. And, I like the lighting and bluetooth speakers these two offer. Very nice.

I have a table coming from BoardGameTables.com by the end of the month. I can post impressions of that if you are interested.

Lordnine wrote:I have a table coming from BoardGameTables.com by the end of the month. I can post impressions of that if you are interested.

definitely. And I'm jealous by the way.

I'm jealous too. But that's because I haven't gotten my shipping notice yet.

Change.org - Beg IKEA to make an affordable tabletop gaming table.