The coin-op amusement industry should be looking to social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to reach out to existing and new customers, according to US operator Chris Cotty.
"We need to reach out and make our fun centres a familiar part of our customer’s daily life," he told InterGame. "We are lucky enough to have these new customers, now it’s our job to work hard to keep them. Even though the US government says we are coming out of the recession I don’t know of one business person that doesn’t think we are still in this recessionary phase.
"Things are, of late, much better, but we still have a long way to go. In the last six months many of the great and famous arcades in the US have closed, most recently Arcade Infinity in California and China Town Fair in New York City. These may be just two of the many arcades that closed in the last few years but, for the industry, they were extremely important. These arcades, along with Sunnyvale Golfland in California, Arcade UFO in Texas and The Break, are world renowned for their forward thinking, creative marketing ideas and for bringing games into the country that just do not exist in the US. These arcades also created the tournament culture that has kept alive the dancing and fighting games. Sadly, two of these cornerstones of the hardcore arcade culture are now a part of history."
The only good news to come out of the situation, according to Cotty, is that the remaining arcades now have an influx of new customers looking for a place to go. "We now have the ability to profit from our competition’s misfortune," he said. "Hopefully we have learned through these tough times that we have to market, market, market to build and keep our customer base. In the last two months we moved into springtime, traditionally a slow time for my business, and amazingly things have really been picking up. March was up 20 per cent from February, a significant increase. Along with the increase in business I found myself purchasing new equipment, so perhaps the recessionary cycle has finally broken after all and business owners like myself will start spending again, finally easing us out of the recession."
