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Businesses
June 23, 2021

Hachette Livre joins forces with the Randolph Group, a Canadian board game distributor and publisher, to expand Hachette Boardgames in North America

The Randolph Group is one of Canada’s leading independent distributors of board games, as well as the creator and franchisor of the board game pubs of the same name, and the publisher of some highly successful titles with cumulative sales approaching one million copies sold.

Since 2012, Randolph has developed one of the world’s largest game pub networks, bringing together more than 40,000 players per week. This provides the group with an excellent avenue for listening to the board game public and staying in touch with the gaming community, which should bolster Hachette Livre’s strategy of exploring every corner of the casual game market.

As part of this deal, Hachette Livre will acquire a stake in the Randolph Group, which will become a co-shareholder in the Canadian game studio Le Scorpion Masqué, which Hachette Livre acquired in late 2020. 

This investment will allow Hachette Livre, through its Hachette Boardgames division, to expand its presence in Canada by partnering with a Canadian board game group with significant creative, distribution and promotional capabilities.

The Randolph Group, a long-time distributor for Gigamic in Canada, will now be responsible for promoting Hachette Boardgames titles in Canada and, eventually, throughout North America. 

The Scorpion Masqué team, still led by its founder Christian Lemay, will soon join the Randolph teams in new offices. Both studios will maintain the creative personality and authenticity that has made them successful. The Scorpion Masqué games will be distributed in Canada exclusively by Randolph starting from 1 September 2021.

“This deal will allow Randolph to promote the Quebec game industry throughout the contemporary board gaming space. Hachette Boardgames is proving to be an ideal partner to achieve our ambitions in a fast-growing industry,” says Sébastien Nadeau, Managing Director of the Randolph Group.

The Randolph Group is a company with a unique model, recognised expertise and strong growth, with which we share similar values, ambitions and a vision for the future of board games,”says Isabelle Jeuge-Maynart, CEO of Hachette Boardgames.

Fabrice Bakhouche, Deputy CEO of Hachette Livre, said: “We want to continue and accelerate Hachette Livre’s development in board gaming in Europe and North America. That is why we’ve formed this partnership with the Randolph Group, which I welcome wholeheartedly.”

Hachette Boardgames is the board game division of Hachette Livre. It includes the publishers and distributors Gigamic and Blackrock Games, as well as the creative studios Studio H, Funnyfox, Le Scorpion Masqué and Sorry We Are French, along with Hiboutatillus, the publisher of Blanc Manger Coco. Many games in the Hachette Boardgames portfolio have won awards: Oriflamme (Studio H), As d’or 2020; Roulapik (Gigamic), KinderSpiel des Jahres 2020; Micro Macro (distributed by Blackrock), As d’or 2021; Dragomino (distributed by Blackrock), As d’or Jeunesse 2021 and KinderSpiel des Jahres 2021 .
Hachette Livre, a subsidiary of Lagardère SCA, is the third-largest trade and educational publishing group in the world. With a turnover of €2,375 million in 2020, it is number 1 in France, number 2 in the United Kingdom, number 3 in Spain and number 4 in the USA (in trade publishing). It publishes around 17,000 new titles a year under more than one hundred different imprints in a dozen languages, mainly French, English and Spanish. Hachette Livre covers all segments of trade publishing: general fiction and non-fiction, mass market pocket books, books for young readers, illustrated books, travel guides, school books and study guides, as well as partworks. Its headquarters are in Vanves, France.
Founded in 2012, Randolph now has six game pubs, a store and an entertainment service involved in nearly 1,500 events a year. The Quebec-based company also has a publishing house with some twenty games, including the famous L’osti d’jeu, TTMC, Linkto, Telestrations and Une Patate à vélo – le jeu. Randolph is also one of the leading distributors of Canadian board games.
Press contact

Press contact Hachette Livre
Magali Hamonic - Adjointe à la Direction de la Communication
mhamonic@hachette-livre.fr
+33 (0)6 74 08 12 32

 

Press contact Randolph
info@randolph.ca