Are You Experienced?

For decades I have been advising organizations about what the impact the Experience Economy should be having on their business strategy. Some have moved faster than others in trying to innovate their offerings to take advantage of this seismic shift in what consumers are willing to pay a premium for.

And yet, for all of my talk I had never experienced an escape room. Sure, I have been reading about their expansive growth for years and hearing about them from friends and family but I had never experienced them for myself. That all changed last weekend.

Not only can I tell you that the escape room experience is a blast I can tell you that the gargantuan growth in this industry is tied directly to the emotional and rational pleasures sought by consumers in the experience economy. It is the epitome of the experience economy

For those of you who have yet to experience an escape room a quick introduction. Typically three to seven people play an Escape Room as a team.

• The team is set loose in a room, “locked in” for usually an hour and tasked with solving a theme-based series of puzzles that will help them escape before time runs out. They typical ticket price is $25-$30.
• The first Escape Room opened in Tokyo in 2007. In 2014, there were 22 U.S. locations, and the last count I saw claimed more than 1,850 rooms. Those who track the growth of Escape Room retail estimate that worldwide there is only 10 percent of the general population that know what the concept is; however, that is changing rapidly. According to MarketWatch statistics, from 2010 and up to this day there are more than 2.800 permanent Escape Rooms worldwide with forecasts of over 5,000 injust the next year or two.. Furthermore, Escape Rooms prove to be a really good business, as the first one that opened in the Pacific Northwest U.S., had an investment of $7.000 and the gross in 2015 was over $600.000. Another famous Escape Room in Dallas, Escape Expert has monthly revenues of $70,000.
• The rooms are most often the invention of the owners who might be a small chain, local and making it work with their own sweat equity. A typical room (you need at least a few) per location can run from several thousand dollars to build up to as much as $50K. These early days of Escape Room retail vary from vintage Doctor Who-level set design to the extraordinary like Steampunk and The Airship room in Moscow.

Some may say that escape rooms are merely a 3 dimensional way of bringing board games to life. Others may say that the industry is just a natural extension of the video game phenomena. Well, they would both be right. But to slough it off as just those things would be a huge mistake. Participants are not just millennials – they come from all demographic groups with a sizable percentage coming from aging baby boomers.

All brands and especially retailers can learn from the escape room industry. And yet to date I wonder how many people in senior positions at major retailers have ever been to an escape room. I suspect there are a surprising number of people in management who don’t even know what they are. Based on the fact that most are local businesses big business isn’t paying them enough attention.

I suspect that this will change in fairly short order.

For now, I say if you haven’t you must experience an escape room at least once. Have fun and good luck!