
Weekly Store Update: 20 March
Spring is officially here, and we sympathize with all of those allergy sufferers out there. You know, it might be a good time to stay indoors and, you know, play some games! Another busy week with lots of new games and restocks refilling the shelves, plus a handful of interesting preorders. Why not stop in and check it all out and find out what's happening around the store too!
INTRO
Welcome to our weekly newsletter! For our new readers I'm Eric, and Wendy and I run Stone Valley Games. This newsletter is our way to discuss both local and world-wide gaming news of interest that popped up last week. It also provides our customers, both local and remote, some information on the going's on around here so everyone feels like part of the action. At the bottom of this newsletter we show you the restocks, new items, and preorders added to the store last week. Not too difficult to navigate, so let's get to it!
CLOSED TO FOOT TRAFFIC
We are going to have the store closed to foot traffic from Sunday 20 March to Friday 25 March. Nothing too crazy, but I'll be heading out of town on business. While I'm away Wendy will do her best to keep up with the web sales, but it's just too much for her to keep everything else going.
It's not that she cannot handle it, but as I mentioned in a newsletter several months ago, she's also taking care of our grandson. There is no way I'd ever expect or would I even ask her to forgo that for the store. I'm sure you can understand.
Curbside pickup is still available, but please call and set that up at least a day in advance so we can make sure to accommodate your arrival.
STONE VALLEY GAMES TAKES THE FIELD
Another story I brought up a few weeks ago is that we're sponsoring a local junior league baseball team, the Senators. We were notified we could design and have a patch added to the uniforms. The uniforms are black, and the design could only be in a maximum of two colors, so this is what we went with:

That's not too bad at all, right? We're looking forward to getting to a game and showing the patch off on the uniforms. There's also going to be an event soon where we will donate to another charity side by side with the baseball team. We're happy to be in a position to help! We'll try to remember to grab some photos and share with you, as you helped make it all happen!
TAXMAN
The dust has mostly settled on the frantic tax preparation season. It's quite a bit of effort to piece everything together, and we literally wouldn't be able to do it all on our own and rely on our accountants to make sense of it. You should see the reams of documents involved just for our small operation. Incredible.
Now, if you have dreams of boundless excess and trips to the Bahamas funded by your own small business you may want to look away for a few minutes, this isn't going to be pretty.
First, the amazingly good news is that we are a fully financially viable small business and were on the right side of the ledger for 2021. The shocking news is that almost 15% of our earnings went to either taxes or tax preparation. So, even though it was written over 50 years ago, the lyrics to the titular Beatles song still rings as true today as it did then.
Oh well, it is what it is as the saying goes. We're going to just tuck it away and get back to work. The tax situation is just the "cost of doing business" and we love what we do - so in the end it's all worth it. Just to see the happy hobbyists talking up their latest victory is all we really need, and it's why we're in this business in the first place - and that hasn't slowed down at all. So, full speed ahead!
EYES UP
One quick note here. We have the latest 20 items cycling on the front page of the webstore, and we have this roll up every week of all the new things in this newsletter. We've seen a significant uptick of restocks lately, and new items have begun to roll in at a fairly steady click. More specifically, we're seeing the arrival or projection of some of the long-awaited Kickstarter games popping up. Many of these are very limited in quantity and it's a first come first served kind of situation.
So, as you're a newsletter reader, just wanted you to know that thru a combination of the frontpage scroll and this weekly newsletter you will have the best chance of seeing what's new before "they" do.
See! The newsletter is good for more than sharing board game giveaway information! Which reminds me...we need to start kicking around a few ideas. Because of the strange, extra long month of March, we'll most likely kick our next giveaway off on the first weekend of April. More on that later!
THE WRAP UP
Okay, enough news for this week! Below are the Restocks, New Items, and Preorders added to the shop last week. You can click on the item to learn more, and many of the products have review and gameplay videos so you can see the game in action. If you're visiting our page 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!