Dear customer, store owner, reader.

After a month of consideration we’ve decided to proceed a shutdown of all operations for magemarket.com.

Covid — 19 has impacted our company and overall hobby industry in a way no one could have predicted nor prepared for. We’ve experienced 60% less revenue— in a crucial time of our company, where every single $ matters.

Over the past 3 and a half years we’ve given our best to build the most superior marketplace to buy and sell collectibles, first and foremost Magic: The Gathering.

However as a seed funded company by all-star investors such as Y Combinator and amazing angel investors of Twitch, we’ve not found a way to build a profitable business fast enough in order to survive such global crisis and revenue fallout.

Additionally, we observe concerning developments in the “paper” industry of Magic: The Gathering, namely cancellation of Magic Fests, local shutdowns of local game stores, decline of private game nights due to quarantine and much more. While all of these measurements are the correct thing to do, it lead us to the decision to shutdown further operations in this industry.

We do not believe the market will recover in the next 12 months, potentially never.

An option would be to pivot the company into a new market, which might result in immediate layoffs of our team members.

My cofounder Malte and I believe that in these times, the right thing to do is to announce a controlled shutdown of operations and use the little money left to pay all employees extended severances and help everyone to find a new job opportunity.