VISIONARIES: Paul Dedrick
Posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010
by block club
Buffalo Games is a company based in Buffalo that invents, produces and ships its own games and jigsaw puzzles to retailers around the country. Its president, Paul Dedrick, started the company more than 20 years ago with his wife. Today, the company boasts popular games like iMAgiNiff and the new hit, Truth Be Told. Buffalo Games is a business with its eye on the future, from bringing in out-of-town dollars to Buffalo to its extensive green business initiatives. -Leslie Church
Why did you decide to invest in Buffalo?
Well (when we started in 1986), there wasn’t a lot of thought. There was no business strategy saying, we’re going to be in Buffalo versus some other place in the country. It’s just where we went. A lot of things we were very fortunate (for) the first few years that probably helped us stay in Buffalo, and then after that the momentum of Buffalo took over. Soon the company started developing and the products started expanding.
Why is it important for Buffalo to have companies that manufacture here and export to other cities?
It’s really important because it brings in outside dollars to the community. Our sales, I don’t know the hard number, but I don’t think we could do one
percent of our sales in Western New York. I know we don’t. When we make a sale it’s bringing that consumer dollar back to Buffalo indirectly, so that’s really important for the city of Buffalo. The more products they could build here and sell on a national level, it’s certainly going to bring dollars into Western New York.
What makes Buffalo a good place to have a business?
It is a good town because it’s had manufacturing in its past, so for light manufacturing there are a lot of benefits to (being in) the Buffalo area. Our real estate is a good value for what you get. There’s a good core of people to get the right employees. Manufacturing, sales and marketing––all the things you need as a company––you can find those types of employees in Buffalo.
Can you talk about the environmentally friendly products you make?
In our core categories, the products are highly recyclable materials. Puzzle board is all basically newspaper recycled into a board. The games, a lot of the components are paper-based and recycled content, a combination of old and new. It means a lot to us to be able to take something and add value to it. The terminology is up-cycling. You take a product of lesser value and you build a product of better value.
And you’ve been doing this for a while?
Probably before we knew we should be, we were doing it.
You were green before it was cool to be green.
Yeah, exactly, and almost before we knew we were green.
