Eureka 433: Checkmate and the city

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Ian Flood is an architect-turned-entrepreneur who took a late-night chess game and turned it into a global brand. In 2013, Ian and his flatmate, fellow architect Chris Prosser, had a simple idea. What if chess pieces were shaped like buildings? That idea became Skyline Chess, a company that turns City Skylines into beautifully crafted sets to play the game. Landmarks like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai or the Willis Tower in Chicago take the place of the Rooks and Knights, cast in bronze, metal and marble.

0:59Now, more than a decade later, Ian and Chris have grown Skyline Chess from a fun side project into a thriving business, featuring collaborations with the likes of Chanel, Harrods and the Vatican Museum. Most recently, they were at MIPIM in Cannes, meeting developers and showcasing how Skyline Chess can create custom sets for urban planners, architects and corporate clients. So how do you swap blueprints for board games? Well, here is Ian with more on making the first move.

1:32We make chess sets based on different cities from around the world. We started with London, this was the first city we did, now we've got 12 different cities. and the idea is you can play cities against each other. So you can have London versus New York, Paris versus Dubai. We do completely custom sets so a developer could make a chess set based on their city or their portfolio and these can be used as corporate gifts or a showpiece for the office. So myself and Chris were both architects and we used to be flatmates and we'd play chess together in the evenings and it was over a game of chess where we had the idea to swap pieces with buildings.

2:09so we started with London and we designed it 3D printed our first set crowdfunded it and then we've gone from there we take the form and we use the architectural language of the original chess set so the bishop has the mitred hat for example and that's played by the gherkin in the London edition and the Chrysler building in the New York edition the knight is always a flat profile piece we've used the London Eye and the flat iron building and then the king and queen are always the tallest two buildings.

2:48So we do acrylic pieces, which is our entry level, and we do stainless steel and bronze. So we use investment casting, and we have a foundry in Istanbul, and then we do smaller runs in the UK in the jewellery quarter in Birmingham. So the pieces are playing over the city itself, and then we screen print these all in the UK by hand. We do wooden boards and marble boards as well. We're in the Shard, we've been in Harrods, Liberties, Selfridges. And two years later we launched New York and that was what really took us off. So we're a bestseller in the MoMA. At the moment we're pretty busy with the chess sets.

3:24We do have a range of playing cards, which we do all the illustrations, all the cards, the buildings on them. And we're expanding that this year, but at the moment it's new cities. So Riyadh is going to be the next one. we're also doing an Indian Monuments edition which is a country wide set and then yeah hopefully more bespoke projects at the same time

3:50That was Ian Flood the co-founder and director of Skyline Chess and you can learn more about the business at skylinechess.com And that's all for this episode of Eureka we'll be back at the same time next week do look out for the entrepreneurs available every Wednesday Eureka was produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. Listen again and find out more about the show at monocle.com or follow us and catch up with the archive wherever you get your podcasts. To contact the team, email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to Eureka.