If you walk in a meeting room of the board game company Grow, you can forget PowerPoint presentations or sales projections.

It is more likely for you to find an open board on the table and colorful chips in executives’ hands. The turn, there, is reserved to test the most recent bets of the business.

Surrounding them are the titles that marked the childhood of a good amount of Brazilians: Perfil, Imagem & Ação, Senha and, of course, War, the absolute leader of the brand since 1972.

Today, Grow launches around 100 products a year, ranging from board games to jigsaw puzzles. Most don’t survive more than one season – and that’s alright.

“We play, test, observe. If the game makes us sleepy, we change it. If it’s not exciting enough, it drops in sales”, says João Nagano Junior, the company’s director.

Since 2016, Grow has left the world of dolls to focus on what it does best: games that unite people around the table. Still, 300 products are in the market.

For this year, the perspective is to grow 12% in revenue, sustained by a robust portfolio, a loyal fanbase and a clear strategy: to make games with timeless appeal – even in an increasingly digital world.

This appeal has been winning even grown-ups over: a public that, decades ago, would maybe be uncomfortable buying “children’s toys”.

The game sector (such as board games, cards, pictures and memory game) increased sales from 9,1% in 2017 to 14,8% in 2024, according to the Brazilian Association of Toymakers (Abrinq).

What was once seen as a childish pastime has become, to a lot of people, nice Saturday night plans. With a bonus: to stay away from the screens for a little while.

But Grow hasn’t given up on children – or on technology. In the last few years, it has started to integrate digital resources into physical games, such as augmented reality and explanatory videos.

One of the examples is a game in English in which the child scans the card and listens to the appropriate pronouncing of the words.

Another important front was matching the appeal of known characters, such as those from Paw Patrol, with games that stimulate thinking and co-living.

The Top Trump card game, for instance, has 28 versions, with themes that range from cars to norse mythology.

“Children hardly ask for board games alone. Who makes this decision is still the adult. So, out effort is offering a product that pleases both”, says the executive.

Beit in the parent role, as fans or due to nostalgia, adults and children still gather around the same tabletops. This is Grow’s trump card.