Read on Twitter
Happy new year, guys! Since I know people are interested and I have very little secrets to keep, here's some data from last year. How bad was the year 2020 for Sugoi? Well, let's see.
Attached is a graph. It shows both last year and the year before. The graph is for payments made at the arcade premises, both card and cash. Basically, it's 95% ticket sales. The remaining 5% is more or less snacks. Anyway, let's just call them ticket sales for simplicity's sake.
January and February account for 40% for all of the ticket sales for last year. So I had a really great beginning of the year, and then it all went pear shaped.
Overall ticket sales were down 31% from the year before. Fun fact, I couldn't even pay rent with the ticket sales I made last year. So how did I make ends meet? I sold cabs. 40% of last years income came from cab sales. You gotta roll with the punches.
Thanks to everyone that bought cabs from me! This one guy even bought a IIDX machine and put it in his bedroom. He's my hero. I'll retweet that in a bit.
(PS. I've started to put cabs on pallets. Hit me up if you can't do local pick up, but are still interested in something)
For anyone wondering if there's going to be an arcade for you to return to after all this is done, fear not. I still have 190 arcade machines. A somewhat daunting amount of those are non-working, but what I can say, I like working on cabs. It's what I enjoy.
However, I don't have multiples of everything. Sugoi is an arcade, not a museum. I've shed my collector skin. The arcade matters to me, not individual cabs. If you see something you want to play, make an effort to come and play it. I won't promise you it's there a year from now.
Which brings me to me another thing I want to say aloud. Do not take arcades for granted. Almost all arcades in the west (North America excluded) are run by passionate people that have a hobby background. There are no big corporate enterprises backing any of us.
I feel for anyone that just started out last year (I see you @MIKADO_EUROPE) or expanded (Arcade Club). I talked to a guy that got out of running an arcade cafe just before COVID happened and he was relieved of the timing. Oh boy, would I have done things differently had I known.
So will Sugoi open again in the middle of the month? Well, let's hope so! COVID numbers have gone down dramatically, but then there's that new strain of the virus now out. It's going to be a rocky start to a year in any case.
Whatever happens, for anyone that visits Sugoi, lucky for you, the only shareholder of Sugoi Ltd. is a certified, grade A idiot, and he's in way too deep for a quick exit out.
It's a Saturday, so naturally he's working on some cabs. For you.
