Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave and Tamara Cook.
Their little company of Zipwhaa Inc was created in 2000 but before that, it all started with a single prototype of a game. Management Material was their first game, designed in 1997 by Dave and his roommate Eric “Scooter” Life-Putnam. At the time, Dave worked for a telecommunications company and “Scooter” worked at a law firm. Neither of them actually liked their jobs but they brought home a paycheck so life went on. One day Dave took a “Sanity Day” off of work and just crashed out on the couch, unable to cope with co-workers that he saw constantly avoiding and passing off their work to other people. It was actually a wonder that any work at all was completed with this amazing, and yet quite disturbing practice. To Dave’s surprise, while he sat on the couch, “Scooter” came out of his bedroom and announced that he also couldn’t cope with his co-workers for the exact same reasons as Dave.
The two of them laughed for a bit and in jest, Dave mentioned to “Scooter” that there should be a game where you try to avoid doing work. For a moment they both passed off the thought of a game as a passing joke until Dave thought about it for a second time and then looked at “Scoot” and said…”No really… write this down…” Two hours later, the very first raw and rough Management Material game was born. It was so rough that it wasn’t even called Management Material at that time. Instead, the two of them thought they were very clever with the simple name of “Promotion”. It seemed good at the time. There was no artwork or fun quotes from the characters.
All that made up that first deck was some small sheets of blue and gray construction paper with the name of the card and the point value for it. A few weeks later, Dave and “Scoot” took the game to a friend’s party and played it with other people for the first time. Its true intention for that particular night was that of a simple beer drinking game. The idea was that you would drink as many points as you took in projects.
Well, Dave and “Scoot” quickly realized before it was too late that they were too old to drink that much at a party anymore, so they just played to have fun. Gradually more and more people started to play the game. 7 1/2 hours later, everyone was too tired to play anymore, and Dave and Scoot were having a very hard time believing what they had just watched. During that night, new cards were designed and even the name changed to Management Material” that you see today.
After that amazing moment, Dave and “Scoot” were fired up and tried to sell the game concept to another publisher. That idea didn’t ever get any traction and all thoughts about publishing it were promptly forgotten for two years.
In 1999, Dave had relocated to Chicago Illinois and had taken his non-gaming girlfriend, Tamara, to her first Gen Con when it was still in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While Dave wondered aimlessly, playing games and absorbing the glory that is the Gen Con experience, Tam wandered the dealer hall and started asking any publisher she could find if they would be interested in purchasing the game. She came back to Dave with a stack of business cards from people that had shown interest and simply said, “You should either print it or sell it. People are interested.” Dave thought about it and then promptly ignored it again for another 6 months before Tamara brought it up again. This time though, she had more pull since she was now his wife.
In 2000, Dave called up a friend of his that he knew was better with the financial aspect of a company that he was, Don Moffett, and asked if he wanted to create a company with him. A few months later it was done and Zipwhaa Inc was born. Revisions, more play testing, and amazing artwork were added to the game that started out on those little card stock years earlier, transforming it into their first game; Management Material – General Office. The basic premise had stayed the same as the original idea. Use lame excuses to get out of ridiculous corporate projects and pass the buck. If any player took 30 points in projects then they were promoted to management and kicked out of the game. After a year and a half of working out the details and fine tuning as much as they could, they released it in 2002.
There were enough cards and ideas in the original game to make the team realize that they could split the game out a little and create a more specific version of it as a new game/stand-alone expansion. Management Material – Information Technology, was released in 2003 as its own game, but with the same backing as Management Material – General Office, so they could be combined into a larger deck if desired. During the release of Management Material – Information Technology, Ray Keller joined the team with the idea that he could help us the company with logistics as it started to grow.
In 2004, the team decided to try a different theme for their game engine and brought out Marriage Material. This game used the same basic mechanic as the Management Material series but focused on the dating scene instead of the corporate world. In Marriage Material, a player uses lame excuses to avoid all those terrifying commitments that make them look like the marrying type. If they take 30 points in commitments, then they’re drug down the marriage isle kicking and screaming and out of the game.
All of three of the original games were beer and pretzel style games that played in about 30 minutes and designed to have a fun laugh at situations that most people had experienced something at least close to them.
After the release of Marriage Material, Zipwhaa worked through the usual small business issues. There are a lot of new games created each year and if there isn’t an effective way to reach people and still stay within your budget then it’s hard to keep sales strong. The company watched many others in the industry close shop because they had over-extended. Had Don Moffett not been able to personally help with the finances for Zipwhaa, it very well could have followed the same fate. Thankfully, the company decided to not follow in the footsteps of what many companies in the industry did, which was to create a new product in order to use the sales to pay for the bills of the previous product. The hope was always that the new product would sell so well that it would pay for both the previous debt and any new debt. Unfortunately, that model only worked on rare occasions, more often just creating more unsustainable debt for the company. They didn’t want to fall into that trap, so after the release of Marriage Material, they put the brakes on any further development and tried to focus on selling the games they had in stock. That ended up being harder than they had hoped, but over time they still continued to sell their products. They just weren’t selling them at a rate that they wanted to. Around 2007, Ray stepped aside from the company but continued to help when and where he could in an unofficial manner.
In 2008, Dave and Tamara started to develop a new game. It was on a whim, but it came together for them so easily that they made a prototype and started to play test it. When most paly tests came back with strong positive results, they knew they had a game with significant potential. Heebie Jeebies was born. It was the first game that Zipwhaa had made with a different engine than the “Material” series. Heebie Jeebies is a social party game, where a person draws four cards and reveals them to the rest of the players and reads them aloud. The players then try to figure out which single card of the four bothers that player the most. So, it’s basically a game where you try to read the person to see what triggers responses, or you know them well enough to understand their phobias and the things that disturb them. Some examples of the cards are “A Spider Crawling up your Leg”, “Driving Between Two Semi-Trucks”, “The Word Moist”, or “Clowns”. There are 250 different cards in the game and the ability to make your own if you desire.
They knew that they didn’t have the funds to create the game themselves without having a guaranteed sales force, which they didn’t. So, the initial thought was to sell the property to someone that did. In 2009, Zipwhaa sold the rights to the game to someone that was planning on making it a cornerstone of a larger group of games. Time passed, and plans changed to the point where the game simply didn’t have the strong expectation of its publication happening anytime in the immediate future. In 2013, Zipwhaa bought the rights back and decided to try and fund it through a Kickstarter funding.
In early 2014 the Kickstarter campaign successfully completed and allowed Zipwhaa to take the game to print without having the crushing debt as they had with previous games. Heebie Jeebies was a reality and on store shelves in early December of 2014.
Since the release of Heebie Jeebies, Zipwhaa has again focused on selling the existing stock before committing itself to release new products. Don Moffett decided to break for the company, so he could focus more on his new marriage and his safety engineering career. The company can never thank him enough for his time, energy, love and generosity and he will always be welcome back if ever he desired to return.
In the background, Dave and Tamara Cook still run the company. They are working on the development of expansion material for Heebie Jeebies as well as other possible games should the ability to release them arise.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Oh, heavens no.
As a small company, like so many others, we have never been as well funded as we need to be in order to spend on the things that have the potential to grow the company as we desire. Primary, the biggest void has been advertising and just finding a way to let the public know that we exist, outside of the small pockets of people that we’re able to show the game to at conventions or personally in game stores and the like.
We have tried many different forms of advertising in the past from print to radio ads, but they have never increased our sales in any measurable way and the cost has always been much higher than any return that we’ve seen.
So, advertising has been the largest obstacle. If people don’t know you exist, then they won’t know to buy your games.
Distribution has been another difficult path. Over the years we have had several distributors carry our games, but they have slowly dwindled. Distribution is important because it hasn’t cost effective for a small company to be able to ship directly to customers without taking a massive loss to potential profits that are needed for other things.
The will to create more games and content is there if we can get the audience increased in order to make it cost affective to do so.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Zipwhaa Inc – what should we know?
We’re a small game creator and manufacturer. We have designed four card games and self-published them. Our first game, Management Material – General Office was a nominee for an Origins Award. It’s kind of a mini Oscars for the game industry. Though we didn’t win, we were incredibly proud to have been nominated at all.
At the moment our latest game, Heebie Jeebies is the point of pride. With this game, we seem to have found the right balance of humor and conversation. It’s the kind of game that you can leave the table to attend to something and still come back without it hurting the game at all. As an unexpected side affect, we found that this game, in particular, has brought out amazing stories from people that may not have been told before. It has been truly amazing to play this over the years with thousands of people and see tear flowing laughter at times.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
We have so many people to thank for helping us be where we are now, even as a small company.
Tamara Cook – The company wouldn’t have existed at all without her. She’s been the heart of it to make sure things moved forward. She tends to deny her importance in the company but there is no question that there wouldn’t be a company at all, or any of our games if she weren’t part of it. It is fitting that her title in the company is “Schmoozer”
Don Moffett – We couldn’t have even begun without his help and guidance. He has always been a very close and amazing friend both in the company and out. Don’s official title was “Chief Spare Change Guy.
Ray Keller – He has always been an amazing friend both inside and outside of the company and remains a cherished friend. His soft-spoken wisdom carried a lot of weight throughout the years in helping to avoid potential pitfalls. His official title, while he was with Zipwhaa, was “A2G2” which stood for “All Around Good Guy”. It is fitting.
Andrew Burkett – He is our #1 Minion. Every company needs champions to help you promote your stuff. Andrew is ours and we cherish him. Over the years, he’s been amazing in helping show off our games to people that we would never have reached otherwise. We will never be able to thank him enough for his kindness and generosity of his time with our games.
Anyone that has ever helped us or said kind words for us. The value of that kind of help cannot be stressed enough. We are grateful for any and all help and kindness and try to never take that for granted and see it for the gifts that they are.
Pricing:
- Management Material – General Office – 14.99
- Management Material – Information Technology – 14.99
- Marriage Material – 15.99
- Heebie Jeebies – 34.99
Contact Info:
- Website: www.zipwhaa.com
- Phone: 608-318-4418
- Email: zipwhaa@zipwhaa.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zipwhaa/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZipwhaaInc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/zipwhaa
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