Editorial There’s a new movie called The Founder that made the rounds of theaters recently. It tells the story of a hamburger stand in San Bernadino, Calif. that grew into the 36,000-store McDonald’s mega chain where over a million people buy food every day. As the title suggests, it also tells the audience how a salesman/visionary named Ray Kroc pulled that trick off. One of his dictates hit me in the puss when I saw the picture recently. As played by actor Michael Keaton, we hear Kroc preach his vision to his initial franchisees, that includes this observation (and I…
Author: RePlay Editor
Small Footprint, Big Profits Don’t Overlook the Potential Success of Small Market Locations! by Howard McAuliffe, Partner, Pinnacle Entertainment Group The highest average sales revenues for the first month after opening we’ve ever seen happened last year in a small facility (and in a small market): a whopping $1,000 per game per week! At first this appeared to be an anomaly, but now we’re seeing the emergence of a trend with similar facilities. This result defies some common assumptions, specifically that the heyday of the arcade is in the past, that large population centers are key to profitability, and large…
Today Is a Good Day for a Party Get Inspired to Build an Outbound Sales Effort Today! By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment People often ask me, “What is the best day to call on companies, churches, or school groups?” My answer is always the same, “TODAY!” There is no day in the world that people don’t want to have fun or make a memory. They may choose to skip the party on a Monday, but the truth is that none of us gets a do-over on any day that is past. So, whether you are the sales person responsible for…
Managing Expectations What Road Should You (& Those Around You) Be Traveling On? by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com I’m sitting in an airport terminal at the moment waiting to board a flight home. That’s not unusual for me, but a little bird is flying around and just sat on a window sill near me in the sunshine. In looking at this little sparrow and wondering how the bird got in here (and wondering how it will it find it’s way back to freedom), I’m musing about how I approach the subject for my column which Key Snodgress…
Third Wave of VR Looks Like A Tsunami And If You’re Not Careful, You Could Get Swept Away – Part One by Bob Cooney Those who attended the fall IAAPA Expo in Orlando certainly felt the buzz around Virtual Reality. But unless you went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, you probably didn’t get a real sense of where the technology is heading. This last year marked my 25th anniversary going to IAAPA, and my 20th anniversary of CES. Both shows are useful to get a feel for the direction the respective industries are heading. Since…
Early Days of Coin Machines A Trip Back In Time to Learn About Trade Stimulators People in the trade today operate equipment that seems very far removed from the coin machine industry of yesteryear. The coin-operated phonograph has given way to the digital downloading jukebox, and even the ubiquitous coin is giving way to cashless payment systems. But, way back in the day, around the turn of the century (1800s to 1900s, not Y2K), “trade stimulators” were all the rage. These machines with coin slots did just what you’d think: they stimulated trade. Games were played on these sometimes quite…
Editorial Most of the people who get RePlay are small businessmen, many of whom started their companies from scratch. Others either inherited theirs or worked their way up the ranks to the top spot and ended up with the company that way. In every case, however, the more successful companies are the ones run by a guy or gal blessed with a creative curiosity and competitive drive to push the bottom line as high as it can logically get. But, the lifecycle we’re all subject to puts limits on just how long anyone can push that hard and for that…
You’re Going to Be Regulated, Like It or Not Why What’s Happening in Ohio Is Important to All by Tom Fricke Ohio has been a “battleground state” in respect of games for prizes for as long as it’s been a “battleground state” between the major political parties. Right now, a battle is brewing in the Buckeye State that requires an immediate response from the amusement machine industry. There have been skirmishes over many gambling-related subjects including video poker, charitable tip tickets (the Ohio name for pull tabs), games supposedly free of chance because you could see the next outcome before…
Sale-Sell-Sail Away Celebrating Your Successes Can Be a Big Motivator! By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment At TrainerTainment, we’re focused on helping others grow their people and their businesses. We teach a lot of entertainment centers how to “sell” more. Sometimes it takes a “sale,” but most of the time, it takes excellent “selling.” People use language like “when my ship comes in, I’ll be able to…” In order to have that ship “sail” your way, you’ve got to learn to create more sales! To that end, we started the year at our company by taking the team on the second…
Team Play Strikes Again Game Maker Lays Out Some Juicy Hints About New Products On the Way Amazingly, after spending many decades in the amusement business, Team Play toppers Frank Pellegrini, Ed Pellegrini and Ken Fedesna keep coming up with new ideas to tap. After wowing the industry in 2014 with its award-winning, cashbox-filling Fishbowl Frenzy, the small, Illinois-based manufacturer immediately went back to work developing its latest redemption title, Launch Code. The new game uses the same transmissive LCD technology that helped make Fishbowl a hit, superimposing 3D animated imagery over the game’s mechanical aspect in an entirely new…