UK Pinball Museum

[J.C.Rox]

not really... Someone with a salary of around £25k actually COSTS a company around £50k - so therefore realistic...

Sorry Paul this confuses me, my salaried staff have paye and ni deducted from their salary. 25 = 25 as a cost. However I own a bar so several of them slide drinks to mates and have fingers in the till so maybe 25 is alot closer to 50!! @craiga_uk im in Guildford and recently crunched some numbers on pins + beers + pizzas and would be happy to meet and talk shop if you're ever down this way....

 

[cooldan]

Based on other tourist attractions, I'd scoped out an initial entry price of £8.50 per adult and £5.50 per child. £4 for OAP/disabled.
With a visitor split of 65/25/10 (adult/child/oap) we'd need 1,500 visitors per month to break even -

you, sir, are deluded

 

[mufcmufc]

Agreed, although if we end up serving alcohol on-premise then I would think an 11PM close would be advantageous. I'll re-work calculations based on a 5PM close in the weeks, and 9PM at weekends and see how that alters the overheads.

Didn't realise alcohol would be an option with the "museum"

Yes, I know - however, staffing isn't cheap and it would require 2 people min.

I seriously doubt you'd need 2 people at all times if at all unless doing talks etc, unless you're going more down the café route. A vending machine can deal with hot drinks, cold drinks & snacks and the person taking admissions can also do minor repairs to games. I would suggest more an overlap of open-4 for one shift and 12-close for the other, then breaks can be covered.

Interesting. Where did you work your figures from? I'm basing mine on tourism stats for common visitor draws in the South, plus the fact that it's likely to appeal more to adults than children (IMHO)

My figures are from living in a tourist town for 10+ years and also from having kids. In the summer, If you're somewhere with the kids in a holiday destination it's likely anything you do will include them

I was planning for 40, but as you say there would be a need for swapping/rotating. Hopefully over time there would be some 'historically significant' machines that would stay permanently, and the others would be rotated to keep the games fresh.

If you're planning for 40 on site at once, then that would be a decent attraction

Do Arcade Club market themselves to the mass market, or is it for those 'in the know'?

No idea, I'm only going off what I've been told

I think the only way this would actually work is to draw in a significant amount of visitors, 'casual players' and arcade strays. The core pinheads will be a given market.

I don't think in reality it would work, speak to Pete and Sean from the Pinball Parlour and ask how well it went for them

 

[Kate Rothwell-Jackson]

Sorry Paul this confuses me, my salaried staff have paye and ni deducted from their salary. 25 = 25 as a cost. However I own a bar so several of them slide drinks to mates and have fingers in the till so maybe 25 is alot closer to 50!! @craiga_uk im in Guildford and recently crunched some numbers on pins + beers + pizzas and would be happy to meet and talk shop if you're ever down this way....

I'll put my accountant hat on. An employee has PAYE and employee's NI deducted from their salary. A company then pays EmployERS NI - 13.8% of anything over £676 per month for every employee. And don't forget employees are entitled to holiday pay, sick pay, maternity/paternity pay, pension contributions, etc etc etc.... it all adds up.

Cheers

Kate

 

[DRD]

There is some sort of video machine arcade in Nottingham.....

http://gamecity.org/visit/

I have not been, and the website does not encourage me to go either. But it may be of some limited comparative value

I would love to see a uk pinball hall of fame. But with every sort of endeavour it is all about the required equity.

This is not selling a sexy new product with growing demand. It is not liquid cigarettes, It is selling a niche product that only appeals to a limited number of geeks. I am in my 40s so had the whole nostalgia thing, but most of my friends have zero interest in my games. Amusement arcades as a concept are virtually dead. Most folk below 25 have probably never seen a pinball in the wild. If folk are bored these days they get on tinder and have sèx with someone, they don't visit arcades

Best chance for this is surely in a large footfall destination given the small percentage of customers you would get - sadly that is a cheap part of London

If you own premises and own machines and "own" labour (you and your family/ army of Roman slaves do it) the figures are profoundly different to when you "lease" these things from third parties. The co-operative group in the uk has been an operational shambles for years but has masses of equity so keeps going and generates enough cash to survive.

A local village butcher has just closed. Old folk retiring from a traditional living above shop establishment. The same thing happened in my village years ago. And another adjacent village last year. These places never reopen. The same thing applies to pubs, if you own the freehold, you work in it, you cook the food you stand a chance. Leasing it, hiring staff to work in it .... no chance a village butcher can survive on that model

I wish you well, but even if you could get over the niche market, inherent unreliability if pinballs ..... Then the uk offers some terrible barriers to enterprises like this (stupidly high property costs, economically retarded business rates regime, eu led costly bureaucracy throttling you at every turn...).

I personally think this is a rich man's plaything, like owning a football club. Or a charitable/ mutual type undertaking. Anyway, "I am out" but will visit if you get it off the ground

 

[PinballDaze]

If all the members on here visited once a year.... how many is that? How many visited Ramsgate? How many visited Brean sands? Or were they too far away? Like Merthyr Tydfil?
I have an event today in city centre Cardiff. I will post the total number of people who come to play. Guesses welcome.

 

[mission65]

I'm going for 30 and 6 sheep

 

[Replay]

If all the members on here visited once a year.... how many is that? How many visited Ramsgate? How many visited Brean sands? Or were they too far away? Like Merthyr Tydfil?
I have an event today in city centre Cardiff. I will post the total number of people who come to play. Guesses welcome.

Went to Brean Sands a few times. Played for an hour or two and I was only person in there. Plenty of people walked by. Games were 50p or £1. Most of the em's played awful, which doesn't encourage people to put money in.

 

[johnwhitfield]

Hi Craiga,

Firstly welcome to the forum. My digs yesterday we're nothing personal about you, more about the state of the world with people using other people's money to shoot for pipedreams. Prior experience running record labels and promoting gigs has made me very cynical about people thinking it's easy and making bold statements before burning through other people's money and walking away from a **** up leaving other people to pick up the pieces, You wouldn't believe some of the **** I've had to sort out in the past

If you are going for this idea then good for you.

However, some things to consider:

The UK shows are about as big as it gets for anything scene in the UK. Do you think any of them actually make a profit? Would any of them still be profitable if they paid for staff costs? What about your opportunity costs? Doing something as a hobby is fine but if you look at it from a hard business position would you be better off getting a job in McDonalds? Andy Heighway might be willing to share a little of his experience here

The school angle is interesting for me but again you need to think about what you want to do here. Would you be able to dove tail anything into the physics GCSE? (It's not a popular subject but would have direct links into our hobby). Does triple science cover any of the concepts? Maybe you would be better off running a session on marketing for Business Studies instead. Now that you are considering inviting school kids into the building you would need to go through a **** load of admin in terms of health and safety, Classes can't just turn up. Are your staff CRB (actually it's something like DRB now but I can't recall the name at the moment) checked?. This will cost about £50-£100 per person. If you are employing 4 people then are you certain none of them will have any form of criminal record (including speeding etc). It may not be a barring issue but it needs to be investigated. What about the price you will charge for schools. Believe me schools are incredibly tight about trips. Entry price isn't really a factor but a coach to get kids to a venue will cost about £700 which is a big consideration. Are you really prepared to have 60 teenagers in your venue? Some people will love it, some hate it. Alcohol and teenagers are also an interesting mix. None of this couldn't be solved but it does need to be thought about. Would your Public Liability insurance cover school parties? I know a place in Sydney tries to do kids parties as well but I'm not sure what the success rate for this is. Plus from my own experience I know that my machines take a real bashing after having kids parties as they machine gun the flippers to hell.

How many machines would you need to make it a museum? 40+? That would be a lot of machines to source. If you borrow machines then what happens if they break? What about parts that can't be sourced?

How many people would honestly care about the history of pinball? I suspect it would be a very niche market. Do you have any info about visitor numbers to the Paris museum?

What about SWL? They are based in the Westcountry. Peter might be able to shed some light on the amount of people interested in playing pinball in the area.

Personally I suspect a stand alone museum isn't ever going to be financially viable. However, using a back room combined with another venture such as a kids "fun barn" type venue might work but even here I doubt you would recoup your initial investment. Do barcades work as an arcade or is it the drinks/food that provide the income and the games a USP? Much as I love the Pipeline sometimes when I've gone there for gigs the machines are virtually unplayed. The pool tables are always in constant use though. Again though the machines are a great USP for the bar


Nothing above is a reason not to do what you want but it is food for thought.

As an aside does anyone know what happened to the pinball café in Ealing that was going to happen at Easter. Did it ever open it's doors?

 

[cooldan]

yes welcome Craig and i'm sorry for being negative too, just think you overestimate the size of the hobby. i think 1500 visitors a month is about 10 times of an overestimate of the number of people you'd get, especially if you wanted people to pay £8.50 to get in. seriously. i think after an initial flurry of 100 or so people a week initially, you'd settle within a month into a routine of getting 5-10 people a day, sometimes less, sometimes a lot less.

is this you at the races by the way?

or is it motor racing? did you win?

i'm always interested to hear people's back story by the way, why not introduce yourself in the new members thread? it's right where you'd expect it to be in the newbie forum

 

[johnh]

Yeah, that's the worry and the big unknown... how much of a draw would it be?
Based on an estimate of 75% of the visitors being weekend, and a man math calculation of 4 weeks in the month, this would mean needing around 140 visitors per weekend day (280 per weekend in total).
Broken down into the opening hours, this would be around 10 per hour.

The other businesses next door are shops (large chains) so getting the figs would be tricky. I may just pop down in the next few weeks and sit and count the passing trade for an hour or two.

I live just outside Bournemouth so know the arcade reasonably well. It's in the best possible location for an arcade and in the summer, and at weekends, there's hundreds of people going through it. But during the winter, if its open, you have the place to yourself. So your calculation needs to assume that the majority of traffic , outside of the pinheads who will make an effort all year round, will come in the summer months.
You could do an FOI request to Bournemouth council to get their visitors numbers. That might help you figure the attraction levels - http://www.bournemouth.gov.uk/Counc...domofInformation/FreedomofInformationAct.aspx

 

[Wizards_Hat]

Hi Craiga,
...
The school angle is interesting for me but again you need to think about what you want to do here. Would you be able to dove tail anything into the physics GCSE? (It's not a popular subject but would have direct links into our hobby). Does triple science cover any of the concepts? Maybe you would be better off running a session on marketing for Business Studies instead. Now that you are considering inviting school kids into the building you would need to go through a **** load of admin in terms of health and safety, Classes can't just turn up. Are your staff CRB (actually it's something like DRB now but I can't recall the name at the moment) checked?. This will cost about £50-£100 per person. If you are employing 4 people then are you certain none of them will have any form of criminal record (including speeding etc). It may not be a barring issue but it needs to be investigated. What about the price you will charge for schools. Believe me schools are incredibly tight about trips. Entry price isn't really a factor but a coach to get kids to a venue will cost about £700 which is a big consideration. Are you really prepared to have 60 teenagers in your venue? Some people will love it, some hate it. Alcohol and teenagers are also an interesting mix. None of this couldn't be solved but it does need to be thought about. Would your Public Liability insurance cover school parties? I know a place in Sydney tries to do kids parties as well but I'm not sure what the success rate for this is. Plus from my own experience I know that my machines take a real bashing after having kids parties as they machine gun the flippers to hell.
...

I'm going to chip in here, because I perhaps have more experience than others in this area....and sorry, but it's going to be negative as well.
As a physics teacher (actually Head of Physics, and previous Head of Science) I know I would really struggle to justify getting a school trip out to a "pinball museum" - we have the Manchester Science Museum less than 10 miles away, and in 15 years of teaching across 4 schools I've only ever been there with a school trip once...and that was on a special "gifted & talented summer school" (where there was loads of additional funding available for trips!). I get work spam all the time about museums etc & it pretty much all goes straight in the bin...obviously a pinball museum mailshot would catch my eye, but not a chance in hell it would be given a second look by anyone not into the hobby.

True that currently there is a big "STEM" push (Science Technology Engineering & Math's), and we do organise trips for these events (& this would include tying it in with Business Studies)...it's only ever a few pupils (up to 15 - i.e. a minibus full) - I'm sure you could get some footfall from that (but it would strongly depend on "local" schools, and in reality they'd only come once). One school I worked at several years ago used to suspend the timetable to have "enrichment" weeks, one year I persuaded science/technology/ICT/art to do a pinball theme...took all my machines in for kids to play, had classes in all the other subjects mentioned all based around pinball (very varied work)...got lots of praise for it from the senior leadership...but it was the last time they ever let departments arrange their own activities

Now in a different school and currently working with the Head of Sixth Form to try & organise some form of end-of-year, in-school pinball competition to raise money for charity...and we're even being very cautious about how we raise this with the Senior Leadership as we perceive they are going to see "pinball machines" as "gambling machines", or just think that it doesn't fit with the school's "reputation". The point I'm trying to make here is that it's not just about money (& staff/curriculum time) for schools, but it's also about it being 'pinball' and the perception that it has in the wider community.

I would also echo John's comments about school kids wrecking stuff...not necessarily deliberately (though it wouldn't surprise me to find coin mech's bunged up with God knows what, and graffiti appearing on stuff, etc), but they would hammer the machines in a way that they wouldn't if accompanied by parents.

I would love to be saying, "yeah, brilliant idea, go for it!", but tbh I can't see it turning a profit, and schools are not going to help you there.
(Really sorry to be so negative, but if you're going to risk money on it you need to be realistic).

Regards,
Dan.

 

[astyy]

as we perceive they are going to see "pinball machines" as "gambling machines"

Having grown up at a seaside town with amusement arcades we were dissuaded at school from visiting them let alone arranged trips

 

[johnwhitfield]

Ironically I suspect that I could easily get my pupils out for the day to go to a "pinball museum" (assuming they wanted to go, which I doubt would ever happen). The school always seem very positive when I take their vocational students out. Three or four years ago I had to teach a travel and tourism class. I'm convinced that every day I took the students out there was a strong correlating decrease in the number of "in school" incidents for the day.

Thorpe Park, Woburn Safari Park and Ripleys have previously been regular destinations for us (And there were even two pins at Ripleys), it just means I have to write assignments around the venues as a business. Not convinced I could ever get a machine into the school though

 

[RudeDogg1]

Wish I'd had you as a teacher though's trips are awesome

 

[cooldan]

Wish I'd had you as a teacher though's trips are awesome

yep i hardly ever got to go on school trips but when i did they were like this -

Box factory
Factory owner: And so you have seen the workings of the box factory. Any questions?
Ralph Wiggum: What goes in boxes?
Factory owner: Many things. Books, other boxes, children's candy, for example.
Milhouse: Do any of these boxes contain candy?
Factory owner: No. We only make boxes to ship nails. Any other questions?
Martin: When will we see a finished box, sir?
Factory owner{chuckles}: We do not do that here. That is done in Flint, Michigan.
Bart: Has anyone lost their hand in the machinery?
Factory owner: No, that has never happened.
Bart: And then the disembodied hand suck out and starting strangling people?
Factory owner: I do not know what factory you are talking about! We only make boxes.

 

[Wizards_Hat]

The school always seem very positive when I take their vocational students out. Three or four years ago I had to teach a travel and tourism class. I'm convinced that every day I took the students out there was a strong correlating decrease in the number of "in school" incidents for the day.

LOL - yeah...sorry, been teaching in a 'very good' school for the last 4 years & forgot about "vocational students" - true, it's often much easier to get them out of school for a day...though back on topic - exactly the sort of kids you want to avoid having thump your pinball museum machines about

Regards,
Dan.

 

[mufcmufc]

Thorpe Park, Woburn Safari Park and Ripleys have previously been regular destinations for us (And there were even two pins at Ripleys, believe it or not), it just means I have to write assignments around the venues as a business. Not convinced I could ever get a machine into the school though

Corrected your statement, how did you miss that part out?

 

[Moonraker]

What about SWL? They are based in the West country. Peter might be able to shed some light on the amount of people interested in playing pinball in the area.

We don't get many but you might fair better if you're near the main sea front in Bournemouth. Bournemouth Pier Arcade has 4 pinballs that may entertain perhaps 5 people in an hour... I'm sure @robotgreg and @I TiltAlot will testify.

 

[I TiltAlot]

We don't get many but you might fair better if you're near the main sea front in Bournemouth. Bournemouth Pier Arcade has 4 pinballs that may entertain perhaps 5 people in an hour... I'm sure @robotgreg and @I TiltAlot will testify.

When I used to visit Bournemouth Pier, the Pinball Parlour in Ramsgate or many other seaside arcades, often I used to be the only one playing the pins for all the time I was there.

There just isn't the interest from the general public in playing pinball. The amount of diehard pinheads in the UK isn't enough to support a pinball museum here unfortunately.

The only person I know that has made a success out of a pinball themed business is Dave at @Tilt Coffee House in Leicester, and this relies on a majority of non-pinball footfall.

PS: I forgot The Pipeline bar in London, again that relies on the bankers during the weekday lunchtimes and the music crowd at the weekends.

 

[J.C.Rox]

I have to agree with the general vibe here sadly, it's just not a viable business concept IMHO, but switch it around, not a pinball museum that has an alcohol licence, but a cool querky boozer that happens to have an awesome pin in every corner or a back room loaded up to the hilt. Even better find a venue that has overnight accommodation For the wayward traveller. Most pub-cos have ongoing concerns for sale, enterprise inns for example, already established, already staffed, probably for sale because the landlord has a liver disease or has knocked up his 21 year old bar girl and needs to leave dodge asap....far less risk and resellable should your new edgy pin vibe not work.

 

[lukewells]

I 'm lucky enough to have spent around 20 days in the Pinball Hall of Fame so far, and one thing I can tell you a few things about why it works.

1) The owner / organised (Tim Arnold) is a very successful man from back in the day, and now he works for free 7 days a week 12 hours a day to give back to charity.

2) The other people who work there restoring/maintaining machines are volunteers working for free

3) Las Vegas is a massively popular destination with hundreds of thousands of tourists per year from all over the world.

4) The place is very basic not a penny is spent on the building/decor outside of essential maintenance. All the money goes into maintaining the machines or charity

5) Many people / companies donate parts to the Pinball Hall Of Fame to keep the machines running

6) In the USA, Pinball is "nornal" on many days I have been there 50% of the people playing the machines are female, either lone in couples. Everyone plays pinball. I have seen many couples out on dates at the PHOF, that would just not happen over here. Pinball is considered wierd or for geeks/nerds over here.



As someone who is very close to the running of Arcade Club I need to raise some further points:-

1) How are you going to maintain the machines? Who are your technicians going to be, and do you realise how much an experienced tech will cost?

2) Arcade Club is open for only 4 hours on a Saturday night (plus private events on other days) and yet it still takes a handful of people to maintain the machines in between openings

3) I loan a few machines to Arcade Club and the wear and tear on the machines is massive (again - open 4 hours per Saturday) compared with using them at home. If you were expecting people to loan you machines, how do you expect to compensate them for playfield wear / broken plastics etc?

And finally, best of luck to you!

If you do go ahead with your venture, then I genuinely wish you luck! There were people that said the Arcade Club would not work, and they were wrong, but there are great differences between what you are proposing, and what Arcade Club does, so you need to be aware of these! (mainly that Arcade Club already owns well over 100 machine before they opened their doors and they are maintained by a group of people)

 

[steve brum]

Pinball need to be the USP of a hospitality business ie pub/diner and realistically it needs to be freehold premises with an owner manager. The fact that events we hold are rammed to be he hilt blinds us to the fact that is it rather a geeky hobby that has limited appeal to Joe public. When I did my pop up arcade at Christmas the video games far out performed the pins despite being much cheaper to buy and much easier to maintain. Doesn't mean that dIdnt have plenty of visitors including youngsters who tentatively ventured off the video games. Many had tried pinball arcade and were drawn to play funhouse for that reason as they had an idea of the rules. For the pop up I was given free rent. Unfortunately the same space and adjacent bar of twice the space has a commercial rent of £3000 per week so that's a no go lol

Anyway if someone wants to buy / rent somewhere large enough I've plenty of games willing to be put to good use and even a personal license ( for supply of alcohol) lol

 

[craiga_uk]

Lots of food for thought, thanks guys. I'll have a read through and reply in depth tomorrow.

in the meantime:

is this you at the races by the way?

No, Goodwood Revival. I love motor racing but I'm no driver, just a keen spectator who dresses up for that particular event!

I'll do a newbie intro tomorrow too. It would be good to hook up with some locals to play more pinball!

 

[windoesnot]

Top man, the Revival is a great event to get to