Sam Kidd's thoughts on business

Myself and Dan were sitting down having our morning coffee, when we got talking about the fact that there are casino's popping up everywhere in Cork City. There is the Macau club, and a few doors up from that there is the VIC. There is also a casino at the top of Winthrop street, which has been given a face lift, and now there is the new one the on Father Matthew St, The Bank. I know there are a few more around the city as well.

They are now the new type of business to set up by the looks of it. Hopefully it's taken over from the "lets set up an Internet shop" craze that's been going on since we set up AREA51. Cork must have some amount of Internet cafés now. They all open, need customers fast so offer crazy low prices, and this in turn ends up making them no cash at all in the long term. I'm never quite sure why people want to set up a business,  drop the price so much to try get customers and end up killing off their business.

As we have found out, the price doesn't seem to be as important for most people as you would think. So long as you're not too much more, and if you offer a great service, and you build up a good loyal customer base that's the most important thing.  

Looking after your customers, going beyond what they expect is the most important thing.  I believe whole heartily in 'the customer is always right' mentality.  A good experience for a customer is just worth so much to a business. Because a happy customer is the best sales person you can have. (And they work for free)
 I'm sure people just aren't doing the maths on how much a place costs to run these days. Rent, rates,repairs and power all add up fast once you're up and running. If I look back at our business plan that we had for AREA51, we would have died a death so fast if we had only brought in what we had put down in that.  It's amazing how much you actually have to pull in to survive.

Still this happens in every business type I imagine. I haven't been into the casino's here but I bet there is a load of price wars and bitching of other casinos happening here at the moment. I wonder how they are all doing, and if there are the amount of people around to keep them all going.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  I must one of these days actually go into one for a look.