By Zachary Saine – Contributor & Erik Morrison – Economics and Business Editor

I had the opportunity to interview Zachary Saine, a third-year Bishop’s student in marketing & entrepreneurship who has transformed his following on social media into a brand that is becoming well-known in the chess community.

thechessnerd co. is a luxury chess brand that sells wooden chess boards in a limited edition fashion to people all around the world. The company was founded in May 2021, but the brand goes as far back as January 2018 when a “naive 16-year-old” named Zach started taking dimly lit chess-related photos in his bedroom. What started out as a new year’s resolution to produce chess content on Instagram blossomed into a worldwide following. After three years of posting daily chess content, what was once @chess_nerd8 became @thechessnerd. In 2021, Zach had over 22,000 followers from around the world. This was the inspiration behind thechessnerd co. being purposefully all lowercase and without spaces, to represent an Instagram handle.

As the personal brand was built, Zach began to receive many requests about his personal collection of chess boards from his followers. He was commonly asked questions such as, “Where did you get this board from?” or “Where did you buy those pieces?” This continuous referral of his followers to exterior chess brands exhausted Zach, leading him to see an untapped market. He began selling luxury wooden chess boards and pieces that were handmade at a reasonable luxury price point. thechessnerd co. does not sell mass-produced chess products, nor does it sell $10k chess sets like some other luxury competitors on the market. Instead, it sells a premium chess board that is one-of-a-kind and unique to the buyer. thechessnerd co. does not restock their “product drops” further adding value to their products.

Incorporated in May 2021, thechessnerd co. started out as an idea to source a rare and artistically designed board from Granada, Spain. It would be a product drop of just 25 limited edition blue chess boards that would be sold at a price of $400 USD on their newly launched website. The chess boards were released on July 20, 2021, which is also International Chess Day. Within three weeks, all 25 chess boards had sold out to customers in 14 different countries across five continents. 

After their first success, thechessnerd co. wanted to expand to a widely undiscovered chess calendar market. After intensive research and design, they launched 100 limited-edition calendars in early November 2021. After months of selling and promoting, only 22 were sold.  Although fully designed by Zach himself, and super interesting, the calendars did not reflect the brand in luxury status. Additionally, the price point of $40 USD was considerably high for a calendar. However, thanks to the entrepreneurship practicum program that Zach was a part of, thechessnerd co. managed to recover most of their losses while learning a valuable lesson on market research. Unlike the chess boards that were high in demand before the first drop, chess calendars had never been heard of or requested by followers. Zach learned through this experience to test unknown markets with a smaller sample size before ordering such a large quantity, especially for a product with an expiration date.

Zach has ambitious goals for thechessnerd co. He wants to grow his personal brand on social media (@thechessnerd), which has over 100,000 followers across platforms, while also growing the luxury brand over time. This semester, Zach made a risky move. He decided to do a 12-board limited edition drop during the busy school semester. So far, it has paid off with 75 per cent of the collection already sold at a price point of $500 USD each.

If you are curious about thechessnerd and its projects, you can find @thechessnerd across social media platforms and @thechessnerdco on Instagram.

Photo credits to Zachary Saine