When I was a young lad I attended a boys club called Dawson's Boys and Girls Club in Verdun Quebec. I hung out and played floor hockey, fuze ball, did some woodworking and candle making and played checkers, and chess. The checkers I was pretty good at, chess ummm, ok I was awful at the game. To this day I am awful at this game. But there are some really good players out there and the Queen's Gambit a Netflix show features a young girl who played the game very well. But that is not the story we are going after today. Nope, the story is the cameo of at least one chess board maybe a couple made by a company in Spain called Rechapados Ferrer.
David Ferrer is the manager of Rechapados Ferrer, grandson of its founder. Sir thanks for dropping in to do a Candid Conversation.
David F.: Thank you, Cliff, for your interest. It’s a pleasure for my company and for me to see that our job awakes interest all over the world.
Cliff T.: I bet you and the team over at Rechapados Ferrer were quite surprised to learn about the chess board cameo in the Queens Gambit. What was the initial reaction?
David F.: When the trailer was released, one of the workers at the plant told me that one of our boards appeared in a show. At first I didn’t think it was important, because honestly, I didn’t expect that a series about chess could be very successful.
Cliff T.: How were you able to figure out that it was of the products you make?
David F.: Because some of our chess boards are very recognizable. In fact, the one that is shown at the end of the series, it’s a black chess board and it has a special red and yellow woodwork. That one is a unique chess board that we were only selling to a German customer, so it was quite easy to recognize it.
Cliff T.: Was there one or more boards featured in the show?
David F.: More than one. For example, all the boards shown in the final tournament are from Rechapados Ferrer.
Cliff T.: So now you have interest in the boards, which one of the chess boards has been the most ordered item?
David F.: The ones that are most ordered are the basic boards, with basic colors and wood. But since the news about our appearance in ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, our yearly demand has doubled in only two months. Usually we were making about 20,000 boards a year, and right now we have more than 40,000 units to be produced, and it is still March! So we have some tough, but good months ahead.
Cliff T.: I noted that Rechapados Ferrer has been making chess boards for quite a long time. What was the genesis of that, why chess boards?
David F.: The business started in the 1950’s, in a small town called La Garriga near Barcelona, it is a town commonly known for its furniture industry. My grandfather was a farmer and when he married my grandmother, he started making veneered panels to her brother, who had a furniture business. After a few years, they started making chess boards, because there was a very good manufacturer of handmade wooden chess pieces very close to their factory and they made a deal with him, focusing our work on chess boards.
Cliff T.: I read the history on the website, since 1960, that is quite a long time making chess boards. First are they also making the chess pieces, and secondly are there any chess players in the company?
David F.: No, we only make the boards. That’s where we are good at and we are very specialized.
I play at an amateur level, usually with my friends, but I am not that good. I have 3 siblings, so when we were young, we always had boards at home and we used to play chess from time to time. We had lots of fights between us because nobody wanted to lose.
Cliff T.: Rechapados Ferrer also allows customers to ask for a custom boards. I have to ask have they gotten a request that is very unusual, like one based on Star Wars?
David F.: Yes and no. We allow our customers to ask for custom boards, but our customers are distributors and stores, not final clients, so we don’t have so many strange requests. That said, yes, we had some of them. For example, there is a customer that always asks for particular woods, for example “cocobolo”, which is a tropical hardwood of Central American tree, or coralwood from Africa. But the stranger request came from a man that asked a board of 81 squares, instead of 64. He had a dream of a new game, with new rules, and ordered 100 boards. Never heard if he succeeded to go ahead with his project.
Cliff T.: Lastly David does Rechapados Ferrer ship to anywhere in the world?
David F.: Yes, we manufacture chess boards for our clients from France, Italy, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand or even Japan. Actually, 98% of our boards end up outside of Spain, being the foreign market our first client.
Cliff T.: David thank you for taking the time to do a Candid Conversation with me. It was fun to dive into this story, I found it quite interesting and I hope that you and the rest of the team have a great day thanks for the time you spent with us.
David F.: Thank you for inviting me, Cliff. And also thank you for bringing our story to Canada.
David Ferrer, Rechapados Ferrer’s manager joined us from Barcelona Spain to speak about the famous chess boards produced by Rechapados Ferrer, whom chess boards were featured on the Queens Gambit which is streaming on Netflix.
You can see the boards at this link, http://www.rechapadosferrer.com/en/tableros.html and to see the story that got the attention of the company and payers click here, https://www.tribuneindiF.com/news/schools/spanish-chess-board-sales-soar-after-queens-gambit-cameo-213215.
Thanks for visiting Candid Conversations. I am always looking for the next interesting person to interview. Send me an email and let me know if you are interested in doing a Candid Conversation or would like to see someone featured on the blog.
Cliff T.
