Dice made in America? Is that possible? Considering today’s tariff concerns, these are timely questions that Bob Spircoff, owner of Botch Dice, has been working on answering. In this interview, Bob talks about why he decided to manufacture dice before American tariffs were even a discussion, the costs, and what makes Botch Dice different from their competitors.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Thanks for reaching out! You’re building a business to manufacture dice in the United States of America. This project predates the US/China trade war by years, correct? What inspired you to go with “Made In America”?
BOB SPIRCOFF (BOB): That’s right, I’ve been putting everything together for a little over a year and a half now. At the beginning, I hadn’t really considered a trade war, but after Covid those supply chain shocks have always been a concern. I was inspired by my time living and working in Shenzhen, China back in 2014 actually. I saw what was possible with dedicated people and local suppliers. I sought to create that locally.
EGG: Your plans aren’t for stock standard dice, but a specific variety. What can you tell us about your art dice?
BOB: We call our process InkFX, and a big part of our R&D time was devoted to it. It allows us to put high quality, full color graphics on every face of every dice. That opens up a whole world of design, we started with our own custom font, which we creatively call the Botch Font *laughs* and quickly moved on to graphics that change from number to number. Not all sets feature that, but it’s an exciting new frontier.
EGG: The art sounds interesting. What can you tell us about the dice themselves? Will the standard set of polyhedrals be available? What dimensions?
BOB: Our first product will be the classic 7-Die RPG set, post-Kickstarter we are looking into D6 sets as a second product. The best part of making things yourself instead of relying on a traditional dice manufacturer overseas is that you can do whatever you want. I found myself making different sized models of dice and just handing them to friends all the time, “Do you like this size or this, what about this style of D4?” over and over again, drove them nuts *laughs*. So our dice are all bigger than standard, the D20 is about 30% larger than normal and the rest are between 10-20% larger. Our D6 measures about 17.7 mm while the D20 is roughly 31mm from tip to tip.
EGG: That’s big! Are you planning to partner with game publishers to create dice for their properties?
BOB: Absolutely, and while I can’t give anything away right now we have some surprises planned for our Kickstarter. I went to GAMA with nothing but a briefcase full of dice and got a really warm reception. One of our major Kickstarter goals is to be able to rapidly expand capacity so we can dedicate a certain amount of internal resources to help support smaller publishers with some great custom dice.
EGG: In terms of cost, what will dice manufactured in America cost compared to something like Chessex?
BOB: Our Kickstarter pricing will be $35 a set, when it ends up at retail they will MSRP at $40.
EGG: Speaking of Chessex Manufacturing, they’re an American dice manufacturer with a European branch and a long history in the world of dice. They manufacture their dice in places like Germany and Denmark, packaging in America. Why craft these dice in America over Europe?
BOB: About 10 years ago, I was living and working in Shenzhen, China in consumer electronics. Being on the ground made all the difference. Nothing beats the ability to meet with people in-person to work through a tough challenge or having the ability to just hop in the car and be at your component supplier within a half an hour when there is an issue. I knew that was something I could recreate here, though at the time I had no idea how tough it would be. I chose southeastern Wisconsin for a few reasons, first it’s where my home is, second RPG games were invented about an hour away from me in Lake Geneva so it felt like adding to a legacy, finally I’m lucky we have a lot of manufacturing resources in the area to get started with.
Unlike a lot of Kickstarters, we are actually in production now in Wisconsin, just in limited quantity. Kickstarter will be our first sales and we are utilizing the platform to scale more than anything. We are currently looking for US sources of packaging. Our packaging for Kickstarter comes from China, but won’t be what we use for retail.
EGG: That’s a good reason. Let’s expand on that as many dice manufacturers produce their products in China and other Asian nations. So, why America over China?
BOB: They do, and you know historically it all comes down to cost. It’s just cheaper and you make more money having them made in China, but there are some big tradeoffs. Personally, I think the reason we haven’t seen much innovation in the dice space is due to the lack of any sort of IP protection making things in China. It’s a tremendous risk to innovate, you spend countless hours and, in my case, most of my life savings developing something innovative. But if I had done that in China, I would have been giving it away. Most people don’t want to take the risk, and I get that. I heard a lot of “That’s not possible!” and I don’t know if it’s a confidence borne out of defying the odds a few times or just plain obstinance but I just kept pushing. It’s also nice knowing that every step of our product supports local businesses, from the injection molding, to the tumbling, then finally to us with the application of InkFX, which is done in-house.
EGG: At this time, there’s a political component to any manufacturing discussion in the United States. As a US-based company, how will the tariffs impact your production and pricing?
BOB: Virtually no impact, fortunately, and we will not be adjusting prices. While I think there is tremendous value to making things locally, to both support the local economy and cut down on the amount of international shipping required, these tariffs are not the way to do it. They do more harm than good. Where is the industrial policy to encourage investment in local manufacturing? It’s all stick, no carrot, and the haphazard and heavy handed way it’s being applied isn’t encouraging anyone to reshore, just freeze all plans and brace for the impact.
EGG: What’s your background in manufacturing? What inspired you to create dice?
BOB: I’ve been apart of a few startups that were heavily involved in manufacturing, first in Wisconsin and then China. I was even a product line manager for a major consumer electronics company in-charge of their video game controllers category. My time in China though was most impactful, I was on a factory floor multiple times a week, really left a big impression on me. As for the dice, I was shopping for a gift for family and started looking at the fancy options. While I had a pretty big dice collection, I hadn’t purchased anything in a while and was fascinated by all these stone, metal and hand poured choices. They are quite beautiful, but I found them deeply impractical. Can’t roll them on a table with damaging it, can’t put them in a dice bag without them beating each other up, the sharp ones were not comfortable to hold. I wanted something fancy while being as durable as any normal dice. While researching we came upon a lot of different ways to put numbers on dice, but what we developed with InkFX really has no compromise.
EGG: That’s a good reason to start making dice! On your website, the “shop” is listed as coming soon. Where are you on your timeline? What’s left to go? When do you anticipate the first manufactured dice to roll on gaming tables?
BOB: Kickstarter in June, hopefully. We had planned on launching earlier but after attending the GAMA Expo, we had some collaboration opportunities that I never imagined, so we had to delay to get them on board. Limited quantities are being gamed with now with close friends and family, but hopefully reviewers should be getting some sets before launch.
EGG: Thanks for talking with me. For fans interested in following your work, where can they go?
BOB: I could talk about dice for hours and I’m glad to! Check out our Kickstarter and our website.
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