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Sales at a local arcade shop have been levelling up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Edmonton’s Retro Active Arcade customizes its game machines per order and the shop owner said sales have increased up to 200 per cent for about 14 months of the pandemic.
Casey Browning, owner of the arcade, said sales were almost nonexistent for the first 30-60 days of the pandemic in 2020 but order requests skyrocketed last April, and stayed high until May 2021. He said a lot of customers cited pandemic restrictions for their decision to purchase an arcade machine.
“What we found was that the common theme for everyone buying an arcade machine was that they had money saved up for vacation and they can’t go anywhere, so instead they were going to have a vacation at home,” said Browning.
Sales were off the charts for the arcade store, but profits were not seeing the same drastic uptick.
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“It was the busiest year we’ve ever had, but the problem that we had with it was that the cost of everything and doing business went through the roof, and almost doubled as well,” said Browning. “The profits were actually less than what they would normally be.”
Browning said supply-chain issues and the cost of shipping for supplies and the added duty and taxes were a hit for the company. Retro Active Arcade is the largest supplier of arcade parts in Canada, but those parts aren’t made here and are ordered from countries such as Brazil, Spain, the UK, US, China and Japan.
He added the Canadian dollar dropped and most of its competitors operate out of the United States and already work with U.S. dollars, while his shop has to take currency conversion into account while ordering materials.
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“We can’t raise our prices because our competitors never did,” said Browning. “As soon as we raise our prices, Canadians start shopping abroad and start going across the pond, over the border, or Amazon becomes their best friend because 95 per cent of our business is done online through ecommerce.”
Browning said a two-player standup arcade machine starts at $2,400 and can go for as much as $5,000, depending on the requested modifications. He added machines can come with 3,000-5,000 games installed — including some classics.
“It’s got all the original classics you’d have in a sit-down cocktail arcade cabinet, all the way up to the stand ups which you’ll have your Donkey Kong, your Frogger, your Pac-Man, all that stuff and we’d go all the way up to Mortal Kombat, we have the Street Fighters as well,” said Browning. “We kind of cover the gamut there for what people want.”
Browning said business is back at a regular pace but he could see it picking up again because the fall season is typically their busiest, as people start shopping for Christmas. The local shop also ships its products around the world — including bi-weekly to Australia at times, said Browning.
