How Big-Box Buyers Decide What Earns a Spot on the Shelf

Making a product is one problem. Getting a national chain to stock it is harder, and the buyers who decide rarely let outsiders watch.

A team from NPR's Planet Money got closer than most. The show spent the last two years designing a board game based on Nobel Prize-winning economics, and then it had to convince stores to sell it. In a segment that aired Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, on All Things Considered, Kenny Malone and Erika Beras described what happened when their game went in front of big-box buyers. NPR framed the stakes plainly: the choicest shelf space in national big-box retail "might just be" the most coveted real estate in business.

A Few Minutes in Front of the Buyers

Planet Money built the game with its game-making partner, the company Exploding Kittens. When word came that two big-box retail reps were headed to see the company, Beras was given a few short minutes to make the pitch. Game designers Elan Lee and Thor Ritz coached her first.

Lee told her what a lost cause looks like. "I certainly have seen them do things that mean they're definitely not going to buy it, like if they start checking their phones," he said. Ritz offered a reminder about where a supplier stands in that room: "We are just one of many people that they do the same sort of meeting with."

NPR described these as "Shark Tank"-style meetings and called them highly sensitive. The reporters agreed not to record the session or reveal which major big-box store was visiting. Beras turned off her recorder as she headed into the room and called Malone as soon as it was over.

The first thing she was told was to sit down. The buyers did not check their phones while she argued that Planet Money has a loyal audience who would love a smart, fun party game. What they wanted to discuss was price.

Why the Price Question Was Good News

Beras recalled the buyers saying the game "kind of almost feels like it should be one of those 9.99 card games." Their read, as she relayed it, was that it was not a $10 game but did not seem like a $20 game either.

To the two reporters, that sounded like trouble. Malone's first reaction was that $9.99 was too cheap. Lee heard something else entirely.

"They said, how set are you on the price point?" Lee told NPR. In his reading, "they're not asking about whether or not they should sell this thing. They are now asking about the best way to sell it."

By Lee's logic, a retailer that has already ruled a product out has no reason to ask how it should be priced.

Every New Product Replaces an Old One

Because they could not ask their own buyers what they were thinking, the reporters called Matt Adelmann, a former buyer for Target. Adelmann handled deli and prepared foods, not games. In his telling, buying hummus or charcuterie is no different from buying board games when it comes to big-box retail.

"Like, it's putting a box on a shelf. Like, the same analysis goes into it," he said. "How many dollars did you generate? How much margin did you return?"

Big-box retailers map their aisles with planograms, the blueprints of store shelves. The space on those blueprints is fixed, so every yes means a no for something already there. "If I bring this in, I have to replace something," Adelmann said. "And I need to make that space as productive as I possibly can."

Audience enthusiasm only carries a pitch so far. The buyer is weighing the newcomer against whatever it would push off the shelf, judged on dollars generated and margin returned. Who gets the final word on those trade-offs matters inside large chains, too. TradeFlock reported this month that Target's board wants a clearer merchandising owner after a stretch of overlapping initiatives.

The Planet Money team hoped it had made the productivity case for its game, which is called Sell Me A Sasquatch.

Three to Six Out of 100

A few months after the meeting, Lee called with the answer. "The exciting retailer news is that for the two big retailers in the U.S., the Planet Money game, Sell Me A Sasquatch, has been accepted full chain throughout North America," he said. NPR did not name the two retailers.

That result is rarer than it sounds. Adelmann told the reporters that of every 100 pitches he gets, just 30 earn a meeting. Of those, only three to six make it onto the shelf. So even a product that wins a meeting has roughly a one-in-ten to one-in-five chance of being stocked, and across all pitches the rate is 3% to 6%.

For suppliers, the lessons from the segment are practical. Notice whether the buyers reach for their phones. Treat a question about price as a sign of interest rather than a rejection. And come in ready to explain why your product will earn more from its slice of the planogram than the item it replaces.

Big-box chains are not the only national outlets for toys and games, either. TradeFlock has reported that Toys"R"Us plans 120 standalone U.S. stores for the holiday season. That is one more set of buyers with finite shelves asking the same questions.