The business was established in 2005 by Julian Deverell who started it from a bedroom in his parents house in Southdown Road in Bath, UK. The initial offerings were budget games and toys, imported from China and sold on eBay and Amazon. During the mid 2000s there was a surge in Chinese imports that were finding their way into people’s garages and onto eBay.

In 2008 the financial crisis was happening, the market conditions made importing from China less attractive and the budget games market was becoming flooded with competition. Julian then decided to change tack and establish a new specialist brand selling only chess sets. The Regency Chess Company was born in late 2008 and within a year had tripled the size of the business. The cheap Chinese sets were out and the high quality sets from Europe, the UK and India were in.

The Regency Chess Company continued to grow as the brand and website become established. Extensive work was done to create a top quality website, branding and marketing strategy that lead to the business becoming the leading retailer of chess products in Europe. While the market for chess & backgammon sets will never be huge, it remains steady and a big enough slice of the sector is a sizable amount of revenue.

Today the business operates from a purpose built warehouse in Frome, Somerset and employs a team of three staff.