Half Century Reached!

Life at 50.

 

So here we are mid 2018 and after four signings in the past week we happily broke through the 50 locations mark. 30 are already open for business and 20 are under various stages of construction so it is fair to say by the end of 2018 we will have 50 open locations which will officially (I think) establish us as the biggest Escape Game company in the world, certainly in terms of opened locations. Of course there are many ways to measure success and various ways to measure the “biggest” and the “best” but whichever way we look at it we have established ourselves as one of the main operators of escape games in the world and we are delighted with our progress so far. I think it’s fair to say that our customer experience is exceptional and it’s certainly one of the reasons for our success. We pride ourselves on delivering the best possible experience to anyone kind enough or brave enough to enter our doors and as a rule (although I let franchises decide this themselves) we never “share” the experience. If you book for just two of you, that’s fine with me and you get the room to yourself. I think escape games are intimate and should be shared amongst friends, families and colleagues - not strangers.

 

In other areas, our Game Design Studio is exciting, well funded and bustling with creativity. We’ve got some fabulous new games which will be released during 2018 and we’ll continue to develop the best games in the industry - giving our franchisees and our customers the best possible choice whenever they visit one of our venues.

 

So why do people choose Escapology over the tens, if not hundreds of other brands offering franchisees? Well I’d like to say it is easy, but it’s not. What we have, which is not plainly visible to a regular game player (or at least I hope it’s not), is a very robust ‘back end’ to the business based on a very successful track record both in the Escape Game business and 25 years producing award winning marketing and training events in the automotive industry. Having that team, with its creativity, production ability and unrivalled training methods means we have the perfect foundation to succeed in this new genre of business.

 

Perhaps the best way to answer the question “why us?” is to give examples of some of the conversations I have with new franchisees immediately after they have made their decision to partner with us. Most of them do a huge amount of homework to see what is available before they make a life changing decision and a significant investment in a new business venture. A typical comment I get is “no-one comes close” and that’s very reassuring to hear.

 

I’m not going to give too many secrets away in a forum that may well become public (my social media guy asked me to write this and I tend to do as I’m told as he’s a semi-pro wrestler at weekends!!), other than to say the 50 venues already signed up can’t be all wrong. Some of the business track records of these people are better than I could ever dream of, so for them to do significant homework and then choose us both above all others, and their own “non-franchise” entrepreneur route is very flattering indeed.

 

So being an Englishman and a minor cricket fan, we’d say “50 not out” at this stage. And like any good batsman, I have my eyes set firmly on 100. And who knows where we could end up if we get into our stride? But for now it remains extremely exciting and I’m very grateful to all the owners of those 50 locations to show such faith in their new Escapology Family.

 

Some Interesting Stats:

 

At the time of writing:

 

- Escapology has 138 games open in 30 different locations in 3 Countries.

 

- Over 127,000 games have been played by over 519,000 people.

 

- Over 28 million minutes of gameplay in total