A dad who invented a successful board game to entertain his kids on holiday has claimed his ‘ethical’ approach to selling it makes it a must buy this Christmas.
Game inventor Shaun Delaney, 61 began to sell his game Jask but when he noticed the high street struggling against online sales he made the move to put up all online prices.
Shaun hopes that the strategy will be a roaring success this Christmas after he pushed up the price of the widely played game to help and save the high street.
He says that increasing the price of the game from £25 to £27 pounds on websites such as Amazon, he is playing his role in keeping British stores alive.
Shaun from Aylesbury said “I’m doing this so that when customers go into UK stores they will see my games at a lower price than online – supporting the high street and UK firms.
“I would like to play my part in keeping British retailers alive and if it means I will take a hit with online sales, then so be it.
“It is a policy which I have undertaken so that retailers I supply will have customers who will hopefully buy within store and the business will not go to the online companies who do not have those overheads.”
Shaun hopes that making the move to overprice the game online to help the high street will mean other sellers will follow suit.
He invented Jask which is described as ‘a cross between Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit’ in 2003 during a fraught car journey shortly after his divorce in the early 2000s.
During the trip the solo he struggled to entertain his three young children.
He said: “I was divorced at the time so it was only me in the car with the kids.
“So I was on my own, I’ve got three daughters in the car and I had to try and keep them quiet
“I just tried to think of trivia questions like ‘name me an animal beginning with B’ and that’s how it started.
“Then I found out that their geography was absolutely terrible so I then made up questions like ‘name me capitals of’ and ‘countries beginning with a’ and stuff like that. We did that and it whiled away quite a bit of time.
“Then when we got down to Cornwall it was raining for three days – so typical dad I’d taken my chess and drafts but they wanted something that was a bit of fun.
“So I got an 8X8 squared board and put letters on the board – then I’d got some counters and I played against them to start with. And they loved it.”
The dad-of-three later later developed the game further and moved the game onto a board before patenting it in 2003.
But it was only in 2009 that he started selling the game after losing his job as a warehouse manager.
Over the years Jask has become Shaun’s full time job – and it is now available in stores including John Lewis, Waterstones, Foyles and WH Smith.
Statistics released show that high street stores are closing at an alarming rate of 14 a day in the UK and Shaun wants to put a stop to it.
He said “We have to protect our high street and local businesses this Christmas- they need it now more than ever.”