Taking a spin around the board

In 2003, armed with master's of business degrees from the university's business school, Dominic Crapuchettes and Satish Pillalamarri set off to conquer the board game industry.

Within two years, they were almost bankrupt.

North Star Games, their start-up company, had partnered with a firm that went out of business. The firm owed North Star $70,000, and, because of a clause in their contract, the budding entrepreneurs had to pay the defunct company to get their 16,000-game inventory back.

"[We] emptied our bank accounts to buy it back," Crapuchettes, 38, recently said.

The pair soon recovered, raising cash from investors and generating buzz at industry events. Last fall, Target decided to carry Wits & Wagers, a North Star trivia game, at 30 locations as a trial run; this year, the retail chain is selling it nationwide in all 1,600 stores.

A video game version of Wits & Wagers is slated for release next month, and the company is negotiating with a Los Angeles talent agency to start a television game show based on the game.

In Wits & Wagers, players write down answers to trivia questions that are displayed openly. Then each player votes for which response he thinks is correct.

"We're growing a lot right now, and Target's a big part of that," Pillalamarri, 28, said. "It's the biggest thing that ever happened to us."

Despite the surge, North Star still operates on a tight budget. The two-person company is based out of Crapuchettes' Greenbelt apartment, which is crammed with board games, filing bins and stacks of press releases. State labor laws are slapped on the wall just outside the kitchen.

Almost everything is outsourced. The games - North Star has two available for purchase - are manufactured in China, stored in Chicago and distributed by contractors.

"This is an industry that, when a game hits, the profits are just spectacular," said professor J. Robert Baum of the university's business school. "But it's a struggle to get a hit."

Baum predicts North Star will achieve that success. He taught entrepreneurial studies classes attended by both Crapuchettes and Pillalamarri and was an early investor in their company.

"I thought they were a great team," Baum said. "Dominic was the master game player, and Satish had the financial skills."

Crapuchettes, a Southern California native who spent a decade as a fishing boat captain in Alaska, has been a fervent board game player his entire life. His first game, which he designed in middle school, was banned in eighth grade because students started played it during class. He still owns roughly 50 board games, most of which are stored in a hallway closet.

"In my world, people look at that and say, 'That's all the games you have?'" said Crapuchettes, who has given away more than 100 board games in the past three years to clear closet space.

Pillalamarri, a Long Island, N.Y., native who lives in Silver Spring, spent two years as a financial analyst before enrolling in the business school. Pillalamarri said he played board games as a child but never imagined working in the industry.

That changed when he joined the master's of business program in 2002 and met Crapuchettes, who was already looking to form a board game company. Pillalamarri said he liked the idea of taking a big role in a small start-up.

"I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think it was viable," he added.

Still, the company faces a host of challenges. North Star, which never recovered the $70,000 from its former partner, has finished every year in the red, and its games have minimal name recognition among consumers, Crapuchettes said.

As a reflection of its newcomer status, Wits & Wagers is stocked on the bottom shelf at Target, he acknowledged. A message left at the Target press office was not returned.

Nevertheless, the business school graduates remain confident that North Star will thrive.

"A lot of growing companies aren't profitable," Pillalamarri said. "What would scare me is if we weren't profitable and we weren't growing."

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