Such a thought would not come to a sane person. The business itself must take a lot of time, and especially for those who also work at the main job. But sanity is not for those who dream of doing something more. That's probably why he decided on a second business.
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My first business
In 2015, we founded a daily rental company and have been doing it for some time. At that time, quest rooms or escape rooms were in trend. After my first experience in these rooms I was impressed. I liked not only the experience itself, but also the business model. On daily rent, we earned 50 euros a night, and here quest rooms gave 50 euros per hour. A very profitable bet, although almost immediately dismissed the idea of doing something in this direction, since this business has a finite market. The market is limited to the population of the city, no one will play a second time.
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How did you come up with the idea to make quest rooms?
For the sake of a joke, I threw a phrase, but what if we open our quest rooms? The administrator who conducted the game turned out to be the owner and laughing, said that it was from this phrase to his friend that they first thought about opening their rooms.
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After some time in the gym, the thought came that we had very good acquaintances from the old insomnia and night watch projects. And it wouldn't hurt to talk to them. On the first call with them, it turned out that they already own quest rooms in another city and would be happy to take on new projects in the new one.
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From that moment we began to plan. Quite thoroughly, downloaded a lot of reports from existing companies on the market. They began to calculate the economy and “break through” what kind of traffic competitors have.
In general, the “economy” has converged with us. We watched the competitors. Claustrophobia, ingame, escape rooms, the numbers screamed that you could make good money.
Beginning and first rooms
Therefore, they invested 14k, opened a company and went to look for premises. We searched for a short time, although it is thanks to the general enthusiasm and talent of a partner in a short time bypassed many options. We found one difficult to deal with, but right in the center and with 160 square meters and beautiful banners at the entrance.
Emergency room planning and renovations began. In general, you can write a separate article about repairs and, as it happens, you are unlucky with builders. We also had construction issues. Expensive, poor quality. But the fuse did not subside even after bad builders.
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But in the end we got the premises in February. And in April they were already able to accept the first customers. The income encouraged us. A room could generate 350 euros per day.
First difficulties
But unfortunately, difficulties were already waiting for us at the next turn. The first room was given to us very easily both in terms of room plans and its development-construction. We recopied an existing room where everything was known. Difficulties arose when planning a completely new one, especially ventilation, a small room, automation that had to be brought from St. Petersburg, the collection of devices and jumping voltage, which knocked out the electronics and did not allow everything to be debugged. Problems began with partners, as our plans began to get out of schedule. Also, the distribution of forces became far uneven.
And a broken schedule is immediately lost money and new emergency planning. We were faced with a harsh reality. Plus, we made a few bad hiring decisions. The staff was already hired, one room was making money and a new one was about to be ready, but every delay caused the economy to suffer greatly. Salaries are being paid, dismissing people is also a difficulty in hiring in the future, and the end of a new one seems so close. After all, all that remains is to install the relay, paint the room and cameras, and you can start testing.
Endless tests and fixes of the new room and various problems led to disagreements among the partners. We had two from Tallinn and two from Narva. The main load fell on the Tallinn rooms, and I mainly write about them. But partners from Narva, for obvious reasons, could not constantly come to Tallinn, and various force majeure situations significantly complicated relations and load distribution, since problems had to be solved here and now, and it was quite difficult to get support for an area for which two Tallinn partners should not have been responsible .
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Tension gradually accumulated, the fuse and enthusiasm of one partner from Narva began to subside. We ended up finishing the second room in Tallinn. They constantly worked at a loss and spent a lot of time supporting and polishing processes. But to be fair, the income from the rooms was on the level, on good days it is 700 euros per day (note that this is the maximum load of the day, this is not a wonderful 21k per month 🙂 )
The dam broke
Finished the room and what's next? We still have about 90 undeveloped square meters + the opportunity to get about 30 more and in total we could make 3 more game rooms. With partners began to think what to do next. In addition to rooms, we had a growing popularity of virtual mobile tours through the application and randomly managed to find an interesting solution to make our own application and develop a new and perhaps more promising direction. Our budget was already bursting at the seams. Just like that, I had to immediately send all the salary I received to a loss-making business in order to develop further, but everyone understood that this was temporary and that we just needed to increase the mass.
After this last cash injection, we were left with 2 options. Direct all resources either to the development of the last room, or to the creation of the application. Here the opinions of the partners are divided and, probably, we have made the worst choice for the escape room business. Two partners invested in the application and the remaining budget tried to invest in the creation of the 3rd room, which was the most difficult in terms of plot, implementation and the largest in terms of area (this was probably also another mistake when choosing a strategy).
As a result, the company ran out of money, the reduced budget was not enough to create even half of the 3rd room, the wallets and nerves of all partners also turned out to be at 0, and from that moment one of us raised a white flag, saying that he wanted to get out of business. And this in the team is even worse than the lack of money.
Write your opinion in the comments and don't forget to read article about my first business.