Five reasons why you should buy from Inked Gaming

 

 

Inked Gaming was founded by our CEO, Thomas, because he wanted to have a playmat that represented himself and his art style at the gaming table. Customization was a number one priority of his – as the only playmats at that time were cloth ones or a few rubber ones that were mass produced in warehouses in China.

Thus, Inked Playmats was born (now, Inked Gaming)! Thomas started this company with his friend, Jeff, who is a digital image specialist and Photoshop wizard. Both are Magic: The Gathering players and even more avid tabletop gamers. Their love for art and gaming was what founded this company and it still holds true to this day with everyone now involved in the company.

Take Jim for example. Jim is our customer service rep, known as “Sherpa Jim” for his excellence in guiding our customers through the purchasing process. In his spare time, Jim loves to board game, and cultivates board gaming for his local community here in the Willamette Valley. He runs board game nights at businesses throughout our local towns and is always looking for the next group of eager people to which he can pass down his love of board gaming.

Or, take our design and marketing managers, Kat and Sarah, for example. Both love the DnD community and regularly attend and host DnD sessions. Some of their favorite podcasts involve DnD casts and you can feel their love for gaming in the email campaigns and social media posts they create.

All together, we have Warhammer 40K fans, competitive Magic: The Gathering players, PC gamers, console gamers, and everything else in between working here at Inked. There is a reason that we feel the pulse of the industry so well. It’s because we ARE the industry. We’re gamers too. Let’s game together!

 

Inked Gaming has been known to adapt and change with the times to make sure that our products are sourced from top level facilities with material that has meticulously gone through quality control and production inspection before it is printed and shipped to your door.

How the process works:

1. We source our material from trusted sources.
2. Once at the warehouse, the materials are quality control checked and inspected for any potential issues in production.
3. The products are then prepared and cleaned individually before they are sent through our heat presses.
4. After pressing, the mats are checked by our heat press technician for any blemishes or issues with the artwork.
5. The mat is then moved into shipping, where it is inspected one last time by our shipping team (all of our production and shipping team is trained in color, printing, and quality control) before being sent to your door.

 

At Inked, we pride ourselves on working hard and playing hard. We want that mentality reflected in all of our customer service interactions. When you write in to Inked Gaming, we want you to be met with a helpful, honest, and thoughtful person that speaks on your level.

Do you have a wargaming session soon that you really need a mat shipped for? Or maybe you have a MagicFest that you are looking to attend in another state and want to rep your style with that new playmat you ordered?

Our customer service team understands how important accessories and peripherals are to the gaming experience. We will work with you to make sure that you know the shipping times, and work with you on finding solutions. We do not just copy and paste a response from a premade chart of responses.

At the same time, because we are gamers we know how important weekends and evenings are to our hobbies in the gaming industry. Since our inception in 2011, we have never made our customer service representatives work full-time in the evenings. We want our employees to have the freedom to game when they want, and not be working during prime gaming hours. So don’t worry if you don’t get a response immediately, we have customer service reps coming in before the sun comes up to make sure all issues from the night before get taken care of!

When your work life and your hobby life have a healthy balance, you are better able to meet the needs of your customers. We are nurturing a culture that does just that and more.

 

Inked Gaming was founded with the idea that helping you represent yourself in the way you want was our top priority. Whether that be through custom submissions, or predesigned store artwork, we wanted you to have a way to show your true self and be proud doing it.

We started with custom submissions and began adding artists and predesigned artwork shortly after. The entire goal was to provide an easy and simple way for customers to find professional artists, while also supporting those artists in the form of commissions. Since 2011, we have sent out over $75,000 in commissions to our artists - some professional, some aspiring artists looking to make a name for themselves.

Our artist/merch program has helped college students pay for rent on a monthly basis, enabled professional artists to travel to shows, and given many artists around the world a steady amount of static income on a monthly basis.

In addition to all of that, we have a love of artwork that runs deep through the entire company. Take for example Hannah, one of our newest hires in the sewing department. A few weeks into working at Inked, we get a new artist submission, and it was Hannah! Upon hiring her, many of us had no idea that she had such an art background. It’s amazing how many people at Inked have art backgrounds – either as a hobby or through their education. Our love of art runs deep, and we hope that it shows in our company.

 

With over 13,000 five-star ratings between all of our sales channels, it’s apparent that people love the Inked Gaming experience. 

Take one customer, Morpheus, for example. In his 5-star review of his custom playmat from November 2019 he states, “In the words of Keanu, YOU’RE BREATHTAKING. Much love.”

How did we get a fictional character to order from us who apparently lives in Canada? We’re not sure, but we’ll take it!

While we have much respect for our competitors out there, there is a reason that people keep coming back to us to make sure the job gets done right. For another example, we have world class color profiles. If you want the job done right, Inked Gaming delivers color optimization on both of our printers, as well as by having trained design professionals on-staff making sure that your image will look as good on a mat as it does on your computer screen or mobile device.

We take pride in our color profiles and have our color expert come in on a consistent basis to reoptimize our printers and make sure that everything is functioning correctly. In order to compete with companies overseas, we’re constantly striving to make sure that we are the best and will stay the best. Color optimization is just one of the many ways we go above and beyond for our customers.

We never said it was easy being the best. But after being regarded as the best playmat company in the gaming industry for almost a decade, we’re dedicated to making sure that no one can catch us.

Those are five reasons why you should buy from InkedGaming.com. If you have other reasons why you bought from Inked, let us know in the comments or send us an email at support@inkedgaming! We love hearing from our friends and customers.

Tune in next time where we talk about, "Five reasons why you shouldn't eat BBQ ribs at your local game store!"

*Hint: No one likes their cards getting all sticky from BBQ. 

Mitch Gross

Inked Gaming