5 Reasons My Store Didn't Back the Kickstarter

1. I didn't know it existed. There are 600 live Kickstarter game projects at this moment. I'm currently backing 29 Kickstarter projects that could be anywhere from a day old to over a year old. 29 is about 5% of what's live right now, but since my 5% represents a year of Kickstarters, it's more like half a percent. I tend to follow the lead of my peers who back more Kickstarter games than I do, so we can at least cry together when they take our money or the game is late. I'm also not an "alpha" board gamer, and that's often where most of my KS money goes.
2. The publisher didn't offer. We can't just back games like a consumer, we need an appropriate margin. Some publishers have no idea how to structure a game for retailers. Some do the math and realize their project has no way to support that retailer margin. Building in a retailer margin so the game is "marketable" outside of direct sales, requires planning in advance and not all games are going to sell in the volume to make that happen.
3. The terms weren't good. Perhaps the publisher did offer the game to retailers, but the terms were poor. Perhaps the margin was too low or the buy in was too high. If my turn rate on board games is six per year, and you require I buy 12 copies, I will need to be certain that game is a hit. Since I only back a small percentage of what's out there at any given moment, I can often swing for the fences on the hits, or at least try. With supply chain problems, all games right now are one-shot print runs, so buying a years supply is becoming more common place.
4.  It was wrong for the store. I get a lot of push from my customers to carry Kickstarter games, but often that customer is an outlier. They may love train games with crayons, but they're the only one. Sometimes I'm the only one, like when I back Italian, spaghetti fantasy RPG books, and then bang the drum to create interest (there was no interest). I back a lot of experimental RPGs because I think they're cool. The game might also be wrong for the local culture, like yet another offensive game in a black box.
5. I can't afford it. Kickstarter games are a marketing expense. 29 projects might sound like a lot, but this week I received 16 new board game titles and none of them came from Kickstarter. That's one week. Kickstarter games assume: a) I may never get my money back again, so it's a gamble, b) My ROI is irrelevant, because it often makes no sense at all when you run the numbers, and c) I can afford to essentially use staff "pizza money" to fund the games in a financially irrelevant fashion. I call it a marketing expense because it drives people to the store and allows us to stand out against competitors. 

If you're a publisher and want to learn some well accepted guidelines on how to structure a project to work with brick and mortar retailers, join the Game Retailers Who Back Kickstarter Facebook page and read the pinned post.