Veteran German board game publisher Amigo Spiele has restructured its top leadership for the second time since the start of last year, after long-serving executive Joachim Ulbrich revealed he will retire at the end of 2025.

Ulbrich, who has been working for the company since 1989, and fellow company veteran Alexander Jost were only promoted to managing directors in February last year as Amigo laid the groundwork for a future beyond Uwe Pauli – the man who helped save the German board game maker from financial peril in the early 1990s.

Pauli, who withdrew from day-to-day business at Amigo in recent years, previously spent more than 30 years as sole managing director, having turned the business around after the company lost the rights to card game Uno amid the takeover of International Games by Mattel.

Amigo has now named two more new managing directors in Alexandra von Reeken, the former head of marketing, and Cristiano Scibetta, the commercial director, to work alongside Jost following a shake-up of the company’s organisational structure this year.

Von Reeken, who has been part of the Amigo team since 2007, will be responsible for the operations and growth-focused “organization” division, while fellow long-serving employee Scibetta heads sales and Jost leads the company’s “games” division.

Amigo, best known in recent years for games such as Bohnanza, 6 Nimmt! and No Thanks!, built its name on small card games in the 1980s.

The company scored a huge early success with the German distribution of Uno, but found itself on shaky financial ground after Mattel took over distribution rights for the game in 1992 – leading to Amigo founders Rudolf Jansen and Günther Voigt selling the company to a German investment house the same year.

Pauli came in to lead the business as part of that deal, making use of years of experience working in logistics to right the company, despite having little experience of the board game industry itself.

He said of Ullbrich’s retirement, “We thank Joachim Ulbrich for his decades of work and commitment to Amigo. He has helped shape the company with great dedication over the past 36 years.”

Amigo’s latest leadership shuffle comes three weeks after the publisher revealed it was shuttering its US arm after eight years, after struggling to overcome the double impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the current tariffs volatility.

The US operation, called Amigo Games, will close at the end of the year “due to the ongoing economic challenges since the coronavirus pandemic”, Amigo Spiele said.

That decision comes despite Amigo Games being one of the few hobby board game publishers that had managed to diversify some of its manufacturing away from China – one of the countries which has been hit the heaviest by recent US tariffs.

Late last year Amigo Games arranged for some of its titles, including flagship games such as Bohnanza and No Thanks!, to be manufactured in the US through a tie-up with Cartamundi North America.

Amigo said that while there were successes in its transatlantic gambit, such as the relaunch of the Bohnanza series in the US and new long-running titles like Lama and Cabanga!, the “constantly changing situation with rising shipping and component costs presented the company with challenges in implementing these goals”.

The company’s recent releases have included Reiner Knizia card game Meister Makatsu, dice-rolling bidding game Biddle and trick-taker Shadow Cards.

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