Ravensburger NA CEO Explains Why Now Is the Right Time for Disney Lorcana

Ravensburger NA’s CEO is explaining why now is the perfect time for Disney Lorcana and why Ravensburger is the right company to make a Disney trading card game happen. At Gen Con earlier this month, ComicBook.com had the chance to speak with Stephane Madi, the CEO of Ravensburger NA, to discuss the upcoming launch of Disney Lorcana. The hotly-anticipated Disney trading card game has taken the tabletop world by storm, which has led to some wondering why a Disney trading card game hasn’t been made sooner. 

One of the first questions we asked Madi was why now was a good time to launch Disney Lorcana and why Ravensburger was the company to do it. “I think it was a good time for Disney to collaborate with a meaningful partner to get into the category,” Madi said. “We have been publishing games and puzzles for a very, very long time. We’ve always taken a great amount of pride in creating meaningful content that is delivering a sincere level of immersion, unique experiences that give justice to the characters and the content that we are collaborating with. The trading card game category is such a high involvement category. And the TCG fans and collectors are so heavily vested in their products and their relationship with the contents. It just made perfect sense for us to evolve our existing identity into this wonderful, wonderful platform. I’d say it just came together. The time was right, the stars were aligned, and here we are.”

One challenge surrounding Disney Lorcana was that demand for the game exceeded expectations, even when it was initially announced, with promo cards released at D23 quickly running out and fans re-selling them for thousands of dollars online. We asked whether the high demand for the game reset expectations for the game and how Ravensburger responded to the challenge. “We have been through a very interesting journey of reestablishing expectations and remeasuring all kinds of plans,” Madi said. “It’s been a fantastic journey. Sometimes it’s been a confusing journey at multiple levels. I mean, this is the result of fantastic game design, beautiful art that’s taken a long time to design as well, marketing, commercial strategies, production. And it’s really so many of these different avenues that all come together in this massive roundabouts. We’ve constantly been sharing information on a regular basis to communicate all of our learnings and trying to come up with the best decisions. We really have had a wonderful journey and along the way, we’ve constantly had to readjust expectations and we’ve done it really well. I have to say that’s the thing we’re most proud about.”

Madi noted that Ravensburger was able to deliver on launching a new card game at such a scale because of the company’s size and expertise. “We’re not a young company,” Madi said. “We’re not a small entrepreneurial group. We are a large international company. We’ve been around for a very long time. We have established processes, we have established bureaucracy. We were able to pull this off because our leadership trusted us in managing this project and segmenting it as its own task force and leading it that way by creating this perfect collaboration between all of the functions in our team.”

One lesson Madi has learned from the response to Disney Lorcana is shifting how the game was marketed. “You asked about D23 and if that impacted our expectations,” Madi said. “It was one thing in a list of many things that affected this product in the end, in its multiple avenues. Not necessarily how the product is designed, but in how it’s strategized. We realized that there is a very strong correlation between the Disney fan and the trading card game enthusiast. We realized how strong that correlation is and how perfect this product is for what it is.” 

Over the course of marketing Disney Lorcana, Madi and Ravensburger learned how strong of a correlation there is between the Disney fan, the collector segment of the market, and the overall gamer is. “It is a consumer that’s looking for quality. It’s not a consumer that you can impress with just an attempt of adding a popular IP onto a popular platform,” Madi said. “This consumer is very sophisticated. This is a intellectual consumer. This is a consumer looking for deep and real experiences. And so, I’m really glad that they trust us with the content. I think that when Lorcana was announced, I believe that the audience, knowing who we are, believed that we would do our outmost best to give it justice.”

Another key to Disney Lorcana is not only getting the product out to fans, but also provide a variety of product ranging from individual booster packs to gift sets and Illumineer’s Troves. “We had many very important intentions to make the game very accessible, to make it truly immersive, to have a perfect balance between gameplay experience and collectibility,” Madi said. “But we also really wanted to make it very clear to the audience that we are here to stay. We are a brand to be trusted. And we are going to be available in the most beloved formats that exist. That’s why you see some of those formats. We also know that it’s going to be a highly gifted brand. It’s a highly giftable product. We want to also have these giftable formats in our product line.”

Madi also noted that the launch of Disney Lorcana is just the beginning of the game.   “There is a mountain of ideas and content, some of it in development, some of it in conceptual phase, across multiple different avenues,” Madi said. “There’s a lot that our fans can expect and should expect. We’re working really, really hard and we’re going to have fun for a while.