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Building cabinets to sell.

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GameOver:

--- Quote from: paigeoliver on September 14, 2005, 11:02:51 am ---..just order a container of Candy cabs from Asia...

--- End quote ---

Bleck....IMO those are ugly!

Another idea would be to build a nice one, and convince local businesses to leave it on display.  Maybe like home theater stores or something.  When people inquire, the proprieter would give them your card, or even a brochure you leave with them.  That way you have little invested getting the word out, yet still have decent exposure.

brain21:

--- Quote from: GameOver on September 14, 2005, 11:10:16 am ---
Another idea would be to build a nice one, and convince local businesses to leave it on display.  Maybe like home theater stores or something.  When people inquire, the proprieter would give them your card, or even a brochure you leave with them.  That way you have little invested getting the word out, yet still have decent exposure.


--- End quote ---

Wow, I think that that is a great idea.  At a Home Theater store you are directly hitting your target market.  People with lots of disposable income, people with a media or HT room.  Probably a very large % of them have no clue what mame is.

On one hand most HT stores (or any store) would be averse to having some individual put something like that in there, what with the salesman and the business owner not getting commissions on it, etc.  However, I would be willing to bet that the salesman would be willing to have it in there in this case.  Not a TON of traffic in a HT store (as opposed to say a Best Buy store), which means the salesman may have a lot of downtime, and I bet they would LOVE to have this as a free diversion to them.  They would probably love it enough to not care about getting comission or anything since they really are not selling it.  To them, it takes up a small amount of floor space, and provides them with a lot of entertainment.  You might even get some of the salesman & store owner as customers!

My suggestion would be this:  At least at first, build a really nice cocktail table and put it in there.  Some people building a high-end HT room might not want some big lurking arcade machine in their HT room, but an inconspicuous cocktail table is comepletely different.  Not only that, but I think it might be easier to build (I don't really know personally), and CERTAINLY easier to move around!

Instead of a business card, I would put a brochure there.  Simple 2-sided piece of paper folded in 3rds with pics of full uprights, cocktail tables, and a list of options.  An inportant option to list would probably be finishes - iow, fake wood laminate, black painted, custom painted, etc. - people will really like a cocktail table that can fit in with their current decor.  If they spend $50k making their HT room look like an egyptian tomb, they probably wont want a fake wood grain CT.  But if you can custom paint it to look like sand, and maybe even apply a KingTut Mask sideart to it, it would fit into their decor and they would definitely have something that NO ONE else would have.  Many of these people have $$$ so be sure to charge a std price for a black CT, and a higher price for custom finishes, artwork, etc.

The cool thing about this is that if you get custom finish orders, then you probably wont' get burnt out on making them as quickly as it will also be a creative outlet!

Great idea GameOver!  Shoot, if I had the time & the skills and the motivation I would try to do the same thing!

Brain21

picasso:
If I were going to do it I would target Lawyers and Dr's.   They usally have lots of disposable income and nice homes to put the cabinets in.  You would be suprised how many people would want a arcade machine but don't really care to build it themselves.  People don't even think about them till they see one and then their head really starts to turn and they all want one.  I would do the high end thing and sell them for around $3000.   I am willing to bet you could even buy your cab, have slikstick make your controller put a decent PC in there w/speakers for around $2000 to $2200.  Use Arcade VGA, and a nice 27 inch arcade monitor and your set.

One thing I have wondered.  I know its illegal to sell w/MAME and ROMS.  What if you sold just the cab and then had someone (a friend) come out and install the emulator and ROMS for free?   Would that not get around the limitations???

                         Paul

              Paul

paigeoliver:
If you aren't selling them set up with games then you lose your business to the 1000 builders who ARE selling them that way.

Also, you don't have to BUILD anything. Just order new 6 button 27" VGA cabinets from Dynamo, add the computer and your custom marquee and you are done. 1 hour of work.

I have no idea why the high end builders are futzing around trying to BUILD cabinets for money, when they can buy factory cabs from Dynamo for like $1200.

Stingray:

--- Quote from: paigeoliver on September 14, 2005, 01:09:07 pm ---

I have no idea why the high end builders are futzing around trying to BUILD cabinets for money, when they can buy factory cabs from Dynamo for like $1200.

--- End quote ---

Because they're $1200. They can certainly be built from scratch for a fraction of that.

-S

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