Weekly Store Update: 11 April

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood here at Stone Valley Games! We're at that magical moment of the year right before temps spike, and we're loving every minute of it! Another wonderful week in the books including a few timely restocks, some great new items, and a lone preorder. Just a bit of shop news too!

Greetings and salutations, it's Eric, your humble guide through the weekly store update. This top portion of the post contains our shop news, and if you're not into all that chatter you can jump down to the bottom of the post to see the restocks, new items, and preorders we laid in last week. Onto the news! 

Not much to report this week. Many of the things we've discussed over the last several weeks are nicely percolating right now, but we have a few things to discuss.

Continuing the story from last week, you might remember that our distributor sent us a vague and interesting "next week's going to be a big week" which spiked our interest because he'd never told us that before. Well, it turned out to be a regular week and when I talked to him about it he doubled down and said 'just wait for it..." so, we'll see. I'm hoping we can break our 'games added to the store' record... that's the kind of thing that gets me fired up!

Regarding our mission to give away more games this year it's been a bit over a month since we've done a game giveaway, but if you listen to next week's Solosaurus podcast you just might find that bit of a dry spell is ending! In case you didn't know, we sponsor the Solosaurus Podcast, and are excited about the synergetic relationship we've developed over the years. It's an excellent podcast focusing on solo board gaming. Solo gaming is no longer for outsiders or weirdos (like me), but becoming a force of its own. Players end up playing solo by choice, by force, or by necessity, but in case you didn't know I can definitely report that solo gaming is here to stay. If you check our inventory you'll see that about 99% of the board and card games we carry have a solo mode. Best thing, most of those games with great solo modes are also fantastic at the 2 - 4 player count too for when family or friends would like to play. Wins all around!

I'm also happy to report it's been all clear for over a month now. You might remember when our webstore was attacked several weeks ago and we picked up a team (WP Tech Assist) to help us. Well, great news, they've almost doubled our loading speed on mobile devices! It's just a tick under the bar for "good" but it's a heck of a lot better than what I could do. For computers we remain in the "very good" range, right at the precipice of "great" and we'll take it! They continue to pick away at the speed and functionality (as security has already been taken care of) and the only thing I wonder is why I waited so long to ask for help. 

Let's wrap up the news with a tidbit about shop operations. We've had a few questions about media mail and here's the deal. We've set the webstore up so that if you have just books in your cart you'll be able to select media mail at checkout and can enjoy extremely reasonable shipping rates. If you mix a non-applicable item to that order it'll switch to regular shipping. There are two distinct differences between media mail and regular shipping. First, the package moves a little slower through the postal system, but not that much more slowly than priority mail. Second, we only add the invoice to the box - not our normal handwritten note, or sticker or anything like that as those items violate the rules for media mail regarding advertising. What you DO NOT lose when selecting media mail is our exceptional packaging standards and speed from order to shipping...those are the same regardless of any shipping you chose. The more you know!

Well, enough news! Below are the Restocks, New Items, and Preorders added to the shop last week. You can click on the item to learn more, many of the products have review and gameplay videos so you can see the game in action. If you're visiting and you'd like to keep up with our giveaways, sales, new products, and articles like this one just create an account here. Once created you will be subscribed to our newsletter and become enrolled in our loyalty system, instantly earning 50 Stones that you can use on your very first order. A Stone? One Stone is equivalent to One Cent. That doesn't sound like much, but you earn 2 Stones for every dollar spent and 5 for each product review, so though it may seem small, those savings add up fast! Redeem your Stones upon checkout, and they can save you up to 10% off your cart total. Loyalty Matters!