The Line Review Playbook
Do not pitch the buyer — make them play, pull it away at the peak, and engineer everything around being their tenth meeting.
- Difficulty
- Expert
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 8
- Confidence
- 93%
Tim calls Elan one of the best in-person salespeople he has ever seen, and this is the mechanism. Twice a year, category buyers hold line reviews in which perhaps a dozen or two dozen meetings are granted and twenty to fifty games are pitched in each. Elan's whole approach inverts the format: two oversized checked suitcases of beautiful games including ones not being pitched, a refusal to pitch rather than play, a demo pulled away at the peak, and a commercial half covering box, shelf mockup, pricing and — newly decisive — the social media plan. For Exploding Kittens, seventy percent of sales are in-person retail, so the room is not a channel among many; it is the business.
Origin
Exploding Kittens spent years unable to get their own line review meetings despite Kickstarter success, going through three different publishers Elan was unhappy with. The Kickstarter and Amazon numbers gave him leverage to move between publishers, and once sales were high enough the company began publishing its own games and booking its own meetings — around ten best-selling SKUs being the threshold that made a direct meeting worth a buyer's time.
Core principles
- 01Retailers buy by category, and each category has a buyer with limited shelf space and only a dozen or two meetings per cycle, twice a year.
- 02Getting the meeting is a harder problem than the meeting — Exploding Kittens took about five years to earn one directly, even after Kickstarter success.
- 03Until you can get your own meeting, you rent one: find someone who already has the slot and hire them as your publisher to represent your product in it.
- 04You are always their tenth meeting, even when you are not — assume exhaustion and design the first minute to break the funk.
- 05Do not pitch the product; make them experience it. Elan refuses the 'just pitch it' request and forces buyers to play.
- 06Pull the demo away at the exact moment they want another turn, and start the commercial pitch while they are drooling.
- 07Sequence matters: open with the shortest easiest pitch for momentum, put the real target second in the glory spot, and accept that the last two will not sell.
- 08Details compound — retailers have annual colour themes, buyers have incentive targets, and mood tracks meal times.
- 09Dress as the role the room expects; Elan learned at Microsoft that a suit costs him credibility as the creative guy.
- 10Rehearse as though a bad meeting ends the company, because for Exploding Kittens this meeting is roughly seventy percent of the year's business.
How to run it
- 1
Get into the room, by proxy if necessary
Buyers only take a set number of meetings. If you cannot get one — and Elan says 99.9 percent of people cannot — you find someone who already has a meeting and hire them as your publisher to represent your product in it.
Pro tip Around ten games, and specifically ten best sellers, was the magic number that made Exploding Kittens worth a direct meeting.
Watch out Your representative may pitch you badly; Elan went through three publishers before he could publish himself.
- 2
Hire the best agent and use them as intelligence
Elan retains agents in the cities of Target and Walmart — he first thought they were unnecessary and friends in the industry told him he was an idiot. Agents are permitted to read the retailer's all-hands notes, so they know company priorities.
Pro tip Ask the agent what the buyers get promotions and raises for this year, then frame every game against that incentive.
Watch out The best agents already have too many clients; you find them through friends of friends and persistence.
- 3
Engineer the slot and the room
Push your agent for the spot right after breakfast or right after lunch, when buyers are in the best moods. Agents will give the prime slot to the client who asks for it. Bring two oversized checked suitcases of your most beautiful games, including ones you are not pitching, and set them all up.
Pro tip The premise is buy into this world — Exploding Kittens is not a product, it is a whole world you can have on your shelves.
Watch out Tim's parallel is the research on judges' verdicts before and after meals; you are competing with other people who know this too.
- 4
Refuse to pitch and make them play
Instead of pitching one game and then the next, Elan says: we're going to play a game. Buyers usually protest that they do not have time and ask him to just pitch it, and he says no. He then plays cheerleader and orchestrates the session so they have as much fun as possible.
Pro tip He does not usually let them win, but he engineers the sequence of feelings — I can do that, I did that, I can do the next thing too.
Watch out It is confrontational and Elan acknowledges that; the confrontation is the price of breaking the tenth-meeting funk.
- 5
Pull it away at the peak
At the precise moment the buyer thinks 'oh, I know what the next thing is', Elan removes the game: we're done playing now, let me tell you how we're going to sell this game. At that point they are drooling. He repeats this up to ten times in a meeting.
Pro tip Never play to the end; five minutes of rising competence beats a completed session.
Watch out Elan is explicit that the last two games he pitches usually do not get bought, because the roller coaster has exhausted them.
- 6
Sequence the lineup deliberately
Open with the shortest, easiest pitch — for Exploding Kittens usually an expansion that always sells — to warm the room and build momentum. The number two spot is the glory spot and holds the game you are actually there to sell; Coyote sat there. The next five are equal and usually all sell. What happens after that is very iffy.
Pro tip Treat the tail of the meeting as free optionality, never as where your priority product goes.
- 7
Sell the shelf and the social plan, not the product
The commercial half starts with the box and a shelf mockup, often photographed in that retailer's own store that morning: here's what your shelf looks like, here's our game right there in line. Then pricing, then — now roughly half the meeting — the social media strategy, because that is the only marketing for games that works anymore.
Pro tip Show hard numbers from prior campaigns: views, likes, shares, subscriptions, plus the specific video type planned for this game.
Watch out Three years ago website plans, TV commercials, billboards and product placement carried this section; Elan says today none of that matters.
- 8
Rehearse like the company depends on it
Elan's team rehearses constantly, makes changes constantly, and builds custom props. This is arguably seventy percent of their business for the year; if they mess up the meeting, they see a seventy percent drop, and he does not know that the company would survive a zero-purchase meeting.
Pro tip Also match your boxes to the retailer's colour theme for the year — it makes it much easier for them to say yes.
Watch out Winging it in a room you waited years to enter is the most expensive possible mistake.
In the wild
The first Coyote line review was with Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas. Tim badly wanted to be in the room and a scheduling conflict made it impossible, and the meeting could not be moved. Tim's solve was to record a video riffing on the game — why he loved it, why it mattered to him, why he made it, why it was the first time he had put his name on a thing. Elan walked in, refused to describe the game, set it up and played, and within five minutes the buyers were laughing and asking how he was going to sell it. He said: I'm going to play a video for you now.
→ A full-line purchase — every single store — which Elan says has never happened on an initial pitch for them; normally they get a subset of stores and roll out from there.
Elan walks into line reviews with two of the big suitcases you have to check, not the overhead kind, filled with their most beautiful games — including titles they are not pitching that day and titles they know will never see the light of day — and sets all of them up. The basic premise is that Exploding Kittens is not a product but a whole world, and the buyer can have that world on their store shelves.
→ A staging move that reframes the meeting from an item decision to a partnership decision before a single game is demonstrated.
Tim assumes Elan shows up in a tuxedo and top hat for a meeting this important. The opposite is true: Elan learned in his Microsoft days that if he dresses up — a suit, or even just a button-up shirt — nobody takes him seriously, because he is supposed to be the creative guy. So he wears the creative guy uniform: t-shirt and jeans.
→ Credibility calibrated to the role the room expects, which he notes is also a comfortable uniform for him.
Common mistakes
Showing up without representation
Elan initially thought they could just fly in the day before and walk into the meetings; industry friends told him he was an idiot. Buyers are less likely to take you seriously without an agent, and the agent is also the person who has pre-briefed the buyer on your lineup, checked inventory levels and prevented the meeting from being derailed.
Complying when the buyer says just pitch it
The request is reasonable and accepting it is fatal. Everything Elan has that the other nine meetings do not is in the felt experience of playing, so agreeing to describe the product instead reduces him to the same slide deck as everyone else.
Putting your priority product late in the lineup
Elan is very aware that the last two games in a meeting usually will not be purchased, because the buyers have been up and down that roller coaster too many times. The glory spot is second; anything critical placed at the end is being sacrificed to fatigue.
Pitching yesterday's marketing plan
Elan says the marketing section changed completely within three years — websites, TV commercials, billboards and product placement no longer matter, and social is the only form of game marketing that works. Bringing the old plan signals you do not know how the category currently sells.
Is it for you?
Best for
Physical product companies pursuing mass retail distribution through category buyers at chains like Walmart, Target or Barnes and Noble.
Not ideal for
Pure direct-to-consumer or digital businesses with no shelf, and first-time makers with no track record and no representation, who should build proof elsewhere first.
From the transcript
“you first you have to keep in mind you are their 10th meeting”
“and usually they say, we don't have time to play. can you just pitch it? and i say, no, we're going to play a game”
“right at the point where they're like, oh, i know what the next thing is. i pull the game away”
“we try to get the spot either right after breakfast or right after lunch cuz that's when they're in the best moods”
From the episode
#821: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens