Syracuse gaming company TCGplayer sees big growth in the cards

SYRACUSE — TCGplayer, a fast-growing digital marketplace that sells game cards and related products through its website, says it expects to add about 20 full-time employees in each of the next five years.

The Syracuse–based company has added more than 60 employees since the start of 2013, when it had just 12 workers, according to owner and president, Chedy Hampson. The firm currently employs 75, and should be above 80 before the end of October, he adds. All but one of the employees works full time.

TCGplayer is the website and “doing business as” name of Ascension Gaming Network, Inc., the company Hampson co-founded in 1998 with Raymond Moore, who currently works as its VP of products. Its offices are on the 10th floor of the State Tower Building in downtown Syracuse at 109 South Warren St.

TCG is the acronym for “trading card games” — such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! — which represent the company’s core business. TCGplayer does not manufacture any products, but sells and ships cards sourced from about 1,000 stores located across the country, Hampson says. It also sells miniature games (games that use figurines) and board games.

The company has generated considerable revenue growth since its current business model began to take over in 2008. Hampson declines to provide revenue totals, but says revenue increased 160 percent in 2011, 64 percent in 2012, 101 percent in 2013, and 58 percent in 2014. He projects company revenue will rise another 40 percent in 2015.

That growth contributed to TCGplayer’s need to expand its workforce — it has added about 40 new employees since the start of this year, alone — and find space for them. In early 2014, Hampson first began looking for office space, and shortly thereafter moved TCGplayer into a temporary location in the State Tower Building.

The firm moved into its current 6,000-square-foot location last November, but that isn’t enough room to accommodate the influx of employees projected for the coming years, according to Hampson.

“We absolutely need more space,” he says. The company is seeking to expand into a location with between 15,000 and 18,000 square feet.

The types of jobs that comprise the workforce, and that will continue to grow, include information technology (web developers and quality-assurance testers), customer service, and positions in the shipping department, according to Hampson.

How it grew
It took nearly a decade after Ascension Gaming Network was founded (then called Ascension Web Design) before it adopted its current model of selling game cards through the TCGplayer website.

Prior to 2008, the company’s primary business was running content-driven websites (produced by gaming experts, paid for by Ascension Gaming Network) and selling advertising space on the websites to game companies like Hasbro Inc., according to Hampson.

However, around 2008, advertising revenue dried up as the game industry changed its marketing method, and Hampson was forced to change his business model or sell Ascension Gaming Network.

At that time, a handful of smaller stores were paying TCGplayer to advertise in its website, which included links to those stores’ own sites. Hampson decided then to change TCGplayer.com to an aggregate site that would sell game cards for the stores that were advertising on his web page, and TCGplayer would get a commission for each sale.

“We’re going to make less profit per store because we’re taking commission, but if we can get 10 stores … to register with us and sync up their inventory and go through all this work, we should break even,” Hampson says he thought at the time, with the revenue totals earned under the defunct advertising model.

Within a year, 25 stores were represented on TCGplayer.com, he says.

To stay afloat during the transition, Hampson says he took out a $40,000 loan in 2008 from Bank of America, the only time he ever tapped a line of credit for his business.

Hampson and his team were forced to launch the revamped TCGplayer website before the store was completely ready because his assets were running dry. He could not have waited another month, he says.

It wasn’t long before Hampson decided to set up the website to process credit-card payments, he says. Before that, customers had to go through the payment process for each seller from which they were buying. If they bought 20 cards from 10 different stores on TCGplayer.com, they would have to check out on 10 different websites.

Shortly after, the company began seeing irregularities from purchases made in Brazil, so TCGplayer shut down all purchases from South America.

To combat the threat of fraud, Hampson hired the first two full-time developers for the website. “That first eight months, they didn’t build anything that would help us jump forward. All they did was build a credit- card fraud [detection] system,” Hampson says.

“The banks will allow you to process credit cards, but they just won’t give you any information or any help in protecting yourself,” he adds. He expressed confidence in the security system that was developed, comparing it to the security of PayPal.

The new TCGplayer model proved successful. “We were growing at a decent clip,” Hampson says, and the addition of more developers and customer-service representatives was required to maintain it. Advertising was cut out entirely from the company’s revenue sources.

TCGplayer currently sells products from between 800 and 1,000 stores, according to Hampson.

The latest boom
Hampson and his team built upon the model in 2014 when they added what is known as a fulfillment system, called TCG Player Direct. Instead of TCGplayer being only an aggregate website that seeks to connect buyers and sellers, it now keeps many of the trading cards sold by the other stores in stock and ships them to the consumer itself, Hampson says.

This has the added benefit of reducing quality issues with the cards themselves because they are graded by TCGplayer employees when the cards come in (about 3 percent are mailed back to stores because they are in poor condition). It also cuts down on the number of packages that get mailed to customers who order cards from multiple sites in one purchase. Hampson likens it to how Amazon works.

When cards are shipped to customers, TCGplayer places new orders with the appropriate stores to refill its stock. Not all cards are kept in stock by TCGplayer, Hampson says.

The warehouse, as he calls it, is where this work takes place. The addition of the fulfillment system has resulted in the creation of about 40 new jobs, according to Hampson.

The company was founded in Syracuse because Hampson and Moore are from the area, but it remains here, in large part, because of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) location near Syracuse Hancock International Airport, which is designated as a Processing and Distribution Center.

“While most people will say, ‘You need to be in Kentucky or other locations for shipping,’ the size of the product that we’re shipping is in bubble mailers or envelopes, which is USPS–based,” Hampson says.

As the website has boomed, the company has collected data on prices for different cards to add further value to TCGplayer, according to Hampson.

“We take all that data of all these stores in the country and compile it down into pricing algorithms to give people,” He says. “More than anything, we are a price guide. We’re the only way to really establish a price for these products.”

To help facilitate that service, the company provides that pricing data to about 80 mobile apps that consumers can reference. Hampson says other websites have also begun to use its data.

Looking ahead
TCGplayer’s product offerings may expand in the future to include comic books, retro video games, and other related products, according to Hampson.
“It’s the types of things [where] the value is undetermined, it’s out of print, and it’s up to us to barter,” he says.

In addition, he says he wants to begin working with other companies in the Syracuse area to help make the region more attractive to other businesses looking to expand or move.

“The idea is to build up an IT infrastructure here, because it just doesn’t exist; so that’s what some of this expansion is about,” he says.

Hampson can sell a company on TCGplayer, on the city itself, “but then they start wondering, ‘what are my other opportunities, just in case?’ And there isn’t a lot,” he says.

He hopes that by being a company that represents an opportunity, and by combining with other companies to market Syracuse as an emerging tech hub, it will create a movement of other businesses to the area.

“It’s a long-term need,” he says.

Another possible step the company is exploring is expanding its TCGplayer Direct service to international customers. Currently, all orders outside of the country are packaged and shipped by the seller, not by TCGplayer.

To achieve this, the company (as Ascension Gaming Network, Inc.) applied for a $200,000 grant through the Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) program, and also requested $300,000 in tax credits through the Excelsior Jobs Program, both of which are state-run programs.

Both applications were submitted through the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council (CNY REDC) as part of its plan for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI). The URI is a competitive program that will award up to $500 million over five years to three of the state’s seven upstate regions.

The growth projected by TCGplayer includes its international expansion plan, Hampson says. He declines to specify if the growth is contingent upon receiving the grant and tax breaks

“The CNY REDC request would certainly help us accelerate the execution of our expansion and hiring plans and further investments into the business and the CNY region,” Hampson says in an email to CNYBJ.

The state will announce what regions have been awarded funds later this fall, according to the URI website, which did not provide a specific day or month.

On the application, Hampson projected 42 jobs would be created over the five years in which TCGplayer would receive the grant money and tax breaks. “We believe we can bring in 150 new jobs, but the way the grant works is if you miss by one single person, you get nothing,” he says, so the firm provided a significantly lower estimate to play it safe.

The workplace

Many of TCGplayer’s employees are recruited from the retail industry, according to Hampson. The company provides competitive pay, he says, 70 percent of health and dental insurance coverage for full-time hourly workers and 100 percent for salaried workers, and offers a 401(k) plan.

“It goes beyond what you would normally get in a typical retail position,” he says, adding that he has worked to make TCGplayer a positive workplace for the employees.

“They go home and they’re gamers. They love to play games, they love to escape, they love to hang out with their friends, and this job sort of smashes those two together.”

When the company was faced with the need to grow its workforce considerably, the management team spent eight months establishing core values, which are taken seriously and connect with people, Hampson contends.

Finding employees for the IT jobs is more difficult, requiring the use of recruiters, Hampson adds.

The effort to establish a positive workplace appears to have paid dividends, as evidenced by TCGplayer being rated as a great place to work in July 2015, by the Great Place to Work Institute, which collects data from companies and surveys employees. A random selection of 55 of TCGplayer employees were surveyed by the institute, and all 55 responded favorably about TCGplayer, according to the institute’s website.

The firm was also ranked number 73 on Fortune.com’s inaugural list of the 100 best workplaces for women. The Great Place to Work Institute is a research partner of Fortune.com, and its information about TCGplayer was used to determine the ranking system, according to Fortune.com. More than 600 companies and 135,000 women partook in the survey.

Hampson says some of his employees have moved from across the country to work at TCGplayer.               

SYRACUSE — TCGplayer, a fast-growing digital marketplace that sells game cards and related products through its website, says it expects to add about 20 full-time employees in each of the next five years.

The Syracuse–based company has added more than 60 employees since the start of 2013, when it had just 12 workers, according to owner and president, Chedy Hampson. The firm currently employs 75, and should be above 80 before the end of October, he adds. All but one of the employees works full time.

TCGplayer is the website and “doing business as” name of Ascension Gaming Network, Inc., the company Hampson co-founded in 1998 with Raymond Moore, who currently works as its VP of products. Its offices are on the 10th floor of the State Tower Building in downtown Syracuse at 109 South Warren St.

TCG is the acronym for “trading card games” — such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! — which represent the company’s core business. TCGplayer does not manufacture any products, but sells and ships cards sourced from about 1,000 stores located across the country, Hampson says. It also sells miniature games (games that use figurines) and board games.

The company has generated considerable revenue growth since its current business model began to take over in 2008. Hampson declines to provide revenue totals, but says revenue increased 160 percent in 2011, 64 percent in 2012, 101 percent in 2013, and 58 percent in 2014. He projects company revenue will rise another 40 percent in 2015.

That growth contributed to TCGplayer’s need to expand its workforce — it has added about 40 new employees since the start of this year, alone — and find space for them. In early 2014, Hampson first began looking for office space, and shortly thereafter moved TCGplayer into a temporary location in the State Tower Building.

The firm moved into its current 6,000-square-foot location last November, but that isn’t enough room to accommodate the influx of employees projected for the coming years, according to Hampson.

“We absolutely need more space,” he says. The company is seeking to expand into a location with between 15,000 and 18,000 square feet.

The types of jobs that comprise the workforce, and that will continue to grow, include information technology (web developers and quality-assurance testers), customer service, and positions in the shipping department, according to Hampson.

How it grew
It took nearly a decade after Ascension Gaming Network was founded (then called Ascension Web Design) before it adopted its current model of selling game cards through the TCGplayer website.

Prior to 2008, the company’s primary business was running content-driven websites (produced by gaming experts, paid for by Ascension Gaming Network) and selling advertising space on the websites to game companies like Hasbro Inc., according to Hampson.

However, around 2008, advertising revenue dried up as the game industry changed its marketing method, and Hampson was forced to change his business model or sell Ascension Gaming Network.

At that time, a handful of smaller stores were paying TCGplayer to advertise in its website, which included links to those stores’ own sites. Hampson decided then to change TCGplayer.com to an aggregate site that would sell game cards for the stores that were advertising on his web page, and TCGplayer would get a commission for each sale.

“We’re going to make less profit per store because we’re taking commission, but if we can get 10 stores … to register with us and sync up their inventory and go through all this work, we should break even,” Hampson says he thought at the time, with the revenue totals earned under the defunct advertising model.

Within a year, 25 stores were represented on TCGplayer.com, he says.

To stay afloat during the transition, Hampson says he took out a $40,000 loan in 2008 from Bank of America, the only time he ever tapped a line of credit for his business.

Hampson and his team were forced to launch the revamped TCGplayer website before the store was completely ready because his assets were running dry. He could not have waited another month, he says.

It wasn’t long before Hampson decided to set up the website to process credit-card payments, he says. Before that, customers had to go through the payment process for each seller from which they were buying. If they bought 20 cards from 10 different stores on TCGplayer.com, they would have to check out on 10 different websites.

Shortly after, the company began seeing irregularities from purchases made in Brazil, so TCGplayer shut down all purchases from South America.

To combat the threat of fraud, Hampson hired the first two full-time developers for the website. “That first eight months, they didn’t build anything that would help us jump forward. All they did was build a credit- card fraud [detection] system,” Hampson says.

“The banks will allow you to process credit cards, but they just won’t give you any information or any help in protecting yourself,” he adds. He expressed confidence in the security system that was developed, comparing it to the security of PayPal.

The new TCGplayer model proved successful. “We were growing at a decent clip,” Hampson says, and the addition of more developers and customer-service representatives was required to maintain it. Advertising was cut out entirely from the company’s revenue sources.

TCGplayer currently sells products from between 800 and 1,000 stores, according to Hampson.

The latest boom
Hampson and his team built upon the model in 2014 when they added what is known as a fulfillment system, called TCG Player Direct. Instead of TCGplayer being only an aggregate website that seeks to connect buyers and sellers, it now keeps many of the trading cards sold by the other stores in stock and ships them to the consumer itself, Hampson says.

This has the added benefit of reducing quality issues with the cards themselves because they are graded by TCGplayer employees when the cards come in (about 3 percent are mailed back to stores because they are in poor condition). It also cuts down on the number of packages that get mailed to customers who order cards from multiple sites in one purchase. Hampson likens it to how Amazon works.

When cards are shipped to customers, TCGplayer places new orders with the appropriate stores to refill its stock. Not all cards are kept in stock by TCGplayer, Hampson says.

The warehouse, as he calls it, is where this work takes place. The addition of the fulfillment system has resulted in the creation of about 40 new jobs, according to Hampson.

The company was founded in Syracuse because Hampson and Moore are from the area, but it remains here, in large part, because of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) location near Syracuse Hancock International Airport, which is designated as a Processing and Distribution Center.

“While most people will say, ‘You need to be in Kentucky or other locations for shipping,’ the size of the product that we’re shipping is in bubble mailers or envelopes, which is USPS–based,” Hampson says.

As the website has boomed, the company has collected data on prices for different cards to add further value to TCGplayer, according to Hampson.

“We take all that data of all these stores in the country and compile it down into pricing algorithms to give people,” He says. “More than anything, we are a price guide. We’re the only way to really establish a price for these products.”

To help facilitate that service, the company provides that pricing data to about 80 mobile apps that consumers can reference. Hampson says other websites have also begun to use its data.

Looking ahead
TCGplayer’s product offerings may expand in the future to include comic books, retro video games, and other related products, according to Hampson.
“It’s the types of things [where] the value is undetermined, it’s out of print, and it’s up to us to barter,” he says.

In addition, he says he wants to begin working with other companies in the Syracuse area to help make the region more attractive to other businesses looking to expand or move.

“The idea is to build up an IT infrastructure here, because it just doesn’t exist; so that’s what some of this expansion is about,” he says.

Hampson can sell a company on TCGplayer, on the city itself, “but then they start wondering, ‘what are my other opportunities, just in case?’ And there isn’t a lot,” he says.

He hopes that by being a company that represents an opportunity, and by combining with other companies to market Syracuse as an emerging tech hub, it will create a movement of other businesses to the area.

“It’s a long-term need,” he says.

Another possible step the company is exploring is expanding its TCGplayer Direct service to international customers. Currently, all orders outside of the country are packaged and shipped by the seller, not by TCGplayer.

To achieve this, the company (as Ascension Gaming Network, Inc.) applied for a $200,000 grant through the Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) program, and also requested $300,000 in tax credits through the Excelsior Jobs Program, both of which are state-run programs.

Both applications were submitted through the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council (CNY REDC) as part of its plan for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI). The URI is a competitive program that will award up to $500 million over five years to three of the state’s seven upstate regions.

The growth projected by TCGplayer includes its international expansion plan, Hampson says. He declines to specify if the growth is contingent upon receiving the grant and tax breaks

“The CNY REDC request would certainly help us accelerate the execution of our expansion and hiring plans and further investments into the business and the CNY region,” Hampson says in an email to CNYBJ.

The state will announce what regions have been awarded funds later this fall, according to the URI website, which did not provide a specific day or month.

On the application, Hampson projected 42 jobs would be created over the five years in which TCGplayer would receive the grant money and tax breaks. “We believe we can bring in 150 new jobs, but the way the grant works is if you miss by one single person, you get nothing,” he says, so the firm provided a significantly lower estimate to play it safe.

The workplace

Many of TCGplayer’s employees are recruited from the retail industry, according to Hampson. The company provides competitive pay, he says, 70 percent of health and dental insurance coverage for full-time hourly workers and 100 percent for salaried workers, and offers a 401(k) plan.

“It goes beyond what you would normally get in a typical retail position,” he says, adding that he has worked to make TCGplayer a positive workplace for the employees.

“They go home and they’re gamers. They love to play games, they love to escape, they love to hang out with their friends, and this job sort of smashes those two together.”

When the company was faced with the need to grow its workforce considerably, the management team spent eight months establishing core values, which are taken seriously and connect with people, Hampson contends.

Finding employees for the IT jobs is more difficult, requiring the use of recruiters, Hampson adds.

The effort to establish a positive workplace appears to have paid dividends, as evidenced by TCGplayer being rated as a great place to work in July 2015, by the Great Place to Work Institute, which collects data from companies and surveys employees. A random selection of 55 of TCGplayer employees were surveyed by the institute, and all 55 responded favorably about TCGplayer, according to the institute’s website.

The firm was also ranked number 73 on Fortune.com’s inaugural list of the 100 best workplaces for women. The Great Place to Work Institute is a research partner of Fortune.com, and its information about TCGplayer was used to determine the ranking system, according to Fortune.com. More than 600 companies and 135,000 women partook in the survey.

Hampson says some of his employees have moved from across the country to work at TCGplayer.