Whats been
2005

This is the first game to be released by New Century Games however its creation began in 1985.

The story goes...Debbie, being a very active individual, in a very active job found she had a little bit more time on her hands during pregnancy. Always interested in board games she had a very basic idea to create a simple strategy board game. Wondering if she could make it work she sketched out her plan, made a paper mock-up and began to play. For many months she played it over & over again assessing the different scenarios and making improvements along the way. When Debbie was happy she had achieved a very playable board game, she introduced it to her friends and family, their views were taken on board and minor adjustments were made. It was then played by staff who worked in Debbie's parents business and then eventually to a number of their customers.

Researching the market and attempting to take the project further caused a number of problems and Debbie realised she was unable to fund this project, which, coupled with the lack of time and experience all meant the game was resigned to the cupboard, making periodic appearances along the way. Every time the game was played she was encouraged by the enthusiasm shown, so some 20 years later she feels the time is right. With the help and guidance of people she knew would give heart & soul to this project, the game is finally being produced. All that remains now is for everyone else to enjoy Cash Trap for many years to come.

Febuary 2006

February has been an exciting month!

We had arranged to travel to the New York Toy Fair to start our research of the American market in anticipation of launching Cash Trap in the US in 2007/08.
As luck would have it one of the Cash Trap team, Rory, is American and we decided to make a flying visit to see Rory’s mum in Boston. Whilst there we were advised that a really serious snow blizzard was heading towards New York & Boston and in true Brit style Debbie & I immediately said ‘Oh don’t worry, they always get the weather wrong, it won’t happen’ but we were assured that in America their weather reports are very accurate and it would in fact happen. Armed with this information the decision was taken to fly to New York a day ahead of schedule and hopefully ahead of the blizzard, which luckily we were able to do.
We landed at JFK airport in New York at about 8.15pm on the Saturday night and there was already a covering of snow on the ground. We made it to our temporary, one night only hotel, settled in and waited for the blizzard to hit properly.
Nothing could have prepared us for the amount of snow that fell that night and the next day, although the actual snow fall was just over 2ft it was the powerful winds which caused the snow to drift creating some very deep drifts and even burying some of the cars parked at the side of the road.
Amazingly through all of the chaos caused by the blizzard the exhibitors at The Toy Fair all arrived safely and the fair went ahead as planned. We managed to spend all four days at the fair, where we met people from all over the world and we certainly came away with lots of food for thought and lots of great contacts.

A very exciting trip in more ways than one.

Debbie with Cash Trap in the snow	The Cash Trap Team at The New York Toy Fair	Buying a newspaper has never been this difficult before!

January 2006

In January we travelled down to The London Toy Fair at The Excel in London were we managed to talk to some of the biggest movers and shakers within our industry. They were impressed with Cash Trap and our plans for the future. We are continuing to finalise the details from our discussions with these companies and should be able to

Debbie & Nikki find time to have a dance
with Spongebob  Square Pants & his pal!

September 2005

We held our official Cash Trap launch night on the 15th September 2005 and from a few modest ideas a charitable extravaganza was achieved.
The launch night had a dual purpose, firstly the launch of Cash Trap and secondly as a major charity event to help raise funds for  3 charities – Hope House Children’s Hospices, The North West Cancer Research Fund & Children with Leukaemia. New Century Games raised money for the charities by donating the first 100 games of Cash Trap off the production line. All of the games were authenticated & signed by Debbie Keigan, as the game’s creator.

Game number 100 was offered as a raffle prize and raised £402.00 (Won by Mrs Mary Moore)

Numbers 11 – 99 were sold for £30.00 each on the night

Nick Icke and Darren Pugh auctioned off game numbers 1 – 10 raising a further £755.00 towards the final total. Many thanks are due to Mr Bob Nixon who very generously bid £260.00 for game number 1.
And finally, Debbie & her husband Rory very kindly contributed a substantial amount of the bar takings to increase the charity funds even further.

On the night Debbie, Rory & everybody who very generously donated their time and money, raised an amazing total in excess of £4,000 for the charities to use towards their respective goals & aims. The event proved to be of great interest to a wide audience and in addition to raising funds for the charities we have also provided them with some much needed and always appreciated publicity.

October 2005

After the launch night, and having negotiated the dramas of the lorry carrying our stock being held by French customs for about 2 weeks, we barely had chance to draw breath before we were heading full steam ahead to Essen in Germany to the highly regarded SPIEL’05 games fair. 
WOW!!  We knew it was big but to have such a huge collection of games and game players in one place was amazing, Debbie thought she had died and gone to heaven!
Having arrived at Essen on Tuesday 11th October 2005 we made ourselves busy setting up the stand and the press & trade buyers area in preparation for the press conference on the Wednesday, and having been on the road since about 6pm on the Monday by Tuesday evening we were all beginning to flag, so we headed for an early night. The following day, Wednesday, was press day and we all had our first chance to try out our well rehearsed ‘international sign language’ (complete with silly voice??) as we are not very fluent in German. But all went well and we made some excellent contacts with various press representatives from all over Europe. Having finished at the press conference we set off to the airport to pick up the fourth member of our Essen team.
Thursday 13th October 2005 was the first day of the exhibition and as the doors opened at 10am we were feeling quite apprehensive and just a little nervous about our unknown journey into the world of European gamers, but we need not have worried. Within minutes of the doors opening there were hoards of people eager to experience everything that Essen had to offer and especially the new games on offer, consequently we were all kept very busy playing games of Cash Trap on multiple game play tables with nationalities from all over the world and making sales to most that took the time to sit down and play and even some to people who liked the game from just watching other people having fun. I’m pleased to say this trend continued for all four days and we now have Cash Trap being played in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and even America, not to mention all of our British counterparts who had travelled over and decided to bring the game back into the UK. Anyway, suffice to say we had a great time at SPIEL ’05, an experience I am sure we will repeat again at SPIEL ’06.

Setting up the Cash Trap stand at Essen
&
Debbie, Nikki & Denise ready to meet the thousands of boardgame enthusiasts at Essen

November 2005

In November we started a local PR campaign to raise the profile of Cash Trap and to make sure the public awareness level was high enough to warrant sales from the shelves. The campaign was very successful – Debbie even had friends saying they were sick of seeing her face - it was every where!!

Press Coverage Received

Cash Trap has had editorial features in several publications across four counties:

December 2005

By the time we got to December we had managed to secure shelf space for Cash Trap in some of the toy shops spread across our 3 local counties Cheshire, Shropshire & Wrexham N. Wales, on the run up to Christmas all of the shops did a superb job selling Cash Trap to the public and we received re-stocking orders from most of the shops.
We also secured a deal with a major UK distributor that will help us to expand the Cash Trap shelf space nationally.