Panama City, Oct 15, 2018 (Issuewire.com) - With all the hard-luck negative stories that unfold following the aftermath of a hurricane, tornado, or other catastrophe, heres a feel good story which shows that even the most dire situations can be turned around with a little bit of resourcefulness and a whole lot of thinking outside the box.
One year ago, Hurricane Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded swept ashore in the Florida Keys and eventually Marco Island, causing catastrophic damage along its path.
One company, Cracked it Escape Rooms, lost everything. They had an escape room business with 4 escape rooms which had been opened for about a year. Everything was going great until Irma hit, said Rita Nethercote, co-owner of Cracked it. We were busy and were able to breathe easy with one two-year old and another on the way.
Then came Irma. The building they occupied was completely demolished along with all of their equipment and assets. As inexperienced business owners, they did not have insurance for this type of mishap, and had lost mostly everything except for some miscellaneous equipment. Now they found themselves with one child and another on the way with no income and very little saved in the bank to restart. They knew they had to do something quickly or their problems would just compound.
We got an idea from a company that we did business with who originally assisted them when designing their escape rooms. We were able to recover some of our props, but the building was completely condemned. So we decided to go portable. Applied Escapes helped us out by providing us with some more props, and for the remainder, they only charged us the actual cost of the props to get us back in business. We began letting our clients know that we could now bring escape rooms to peoples homes and offices. It worked! In fact, it worked so well, that if we had the chance to do it all over again, we would have chosen to go portable instead of renting the location.
The company has since nearly doubled their revenue from their original industrial park location which was destroyed. They have also decreased their expenses by about 40% since they no longer have the added expense of rent and utilities. Today, the company operates 5 portable escape rooms and have added inflatable bounce houses to their list of services.
We are booked solid just about every weekend, and have begun to add corporate team building escape rooms during the weekdays. Additionally, for anyone who suffers a loss from a catastrophe, we have decided to provide a free bounce house for the day to give the kids some stress relief while giving back what was given to us. My husband says that's our way of saying that we 'bounced' back! said Nethercote.
When asked what they were able to take from this experience; No matter how bad your situation is, and even though you may think its impossible to recover, never give up! We are so grateful.
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Source :Cracked Escape Rooms
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